NOVEL NEXT Chapter 9 - Backdoor
Backdoor. It’s a term commonly used in real-time strategy games, referring to a tactic of tying up the enemy’s main forces and directly striking the enemy’s base that lacks main forces using separate units.
If you’re lucky and the enemy base’s defense is weak, it’s a tactic that can achieve the best efficiency with just a small number of troops—and at the same time, it’s the tactic that the ants are trying to use against me now.
Judging by the increasing intensity of the vibrations detected by my tentacles, the time left until that separate unit arrives by digging through the cave is roughly 10 minutes.
Watching this raid, which seems to be using ants specialized in excavation, I was laughing at them inwardly.
‘…Look at these guys?’
Certainly, if we assume we’re dealing with ants, a backdoor is an efficient strategy. The queen ant, the leader of the ant monsters, is strong but not overwhelming.
The queen ant is the largest and strongest in the ant group, and in terms of psychic abilities, it’s comparable to a grade 7 psychic-specialized monster.
But conversely, that’s all there is to it. Its psychic ability is just at the level of a grade 7 professional psychic user, and its physical abilities don’t greatly exceed the average of the colony.
So their judgment might be correct against other ant monster colonies—but against a Hive Mind, it’s a completely different story.
They don’t know the strength of the Hive Mind’s main body.
※ ※ ※
10 minutes later. With a loud noise, the wall was breached, and from there, ants poured into my main base like flowing water.
As if they’ve used their brains a bit, the ants running at the very front of the swarming ant group have exoskeletons made of metal, and judging by the repulsive force against the psychic energy filling their insides, they’re presumed to possess psychic resistance as well.
It seems their plan is to pour in these guys to buy time, while striking the main body with a carefully selected special force to attack me directly… but is this all they’re trying to use to confront the main body of a Hive Mind?
‘…It’s not enough.’
Yes, it’s not enough. To take me down, those ants are lacking in every aspect.
[Psychokinesis (D) has been activated.]
[Psychic Amplification (D) has been activated.]
[Psychic Amplification (D) has been activated.]
[Psychic Amplification (D) has been activated.]
[Psychic Amplification (D) has been activated.]
[Psychic Amplification (D) has been activated.]
Yes, they particularly lacked power.
[Psychokinesis (D->A) has been activated.]
As the psychic amplifiers planted throughout the infiltrated cave—in the form of crimson fruits buried in the ground—activate, the output of psychokinesis shoots up to A rank in an instant.
Top-tier psychic power that would require at least a grade 2 monster to use, bursting out from a grade 7 monster whose limit was using just D rank psychic power.
This is the power possessed by Hive Mind type monsters in exchange for the penalty of being unable to move.
Psychic Amplification, a skill that greatly increases the rank of psychic skills using psychic amplifiers placed throughout the base.
In the game, it was a pattern added to rescue the Hive Mind, which was treated as a pushover due to the immobility penalty, and after its addition, it was evaluated as having temporarily elevated Hive Mind-type bosses to the highest difficulty.
And now that the game has become reality, I could keenly feel what it means to be able to actively use what was just treated as a pattern in the game.
Crack!
There was no need for flowery words. In just 5 seconds, with the psychokinesis raised to A rank, I simply extended my psychokinesis into the breached passage and strongly squeezed all detectable life forms.
[Level has increased.]
[Level has increased.]
[Level has increased.]
[Level has increased.]
[Level has increased.]
[Level has increased.]
[Level has increased.]
And that was the end of it. The ants that came charging in with full preparation were converted into my experience points, as evidenced by the countless status windows popping up before my eyes.
Thus, I gained sufficient experience points and leaped from level 19 to level 27 in an instant.
※ ※ ※
After taking a short rest to stabilize my body, which had been a bit strained in the process of amplifying psychic power, I used psychokinesis to lift the corpses of the ants that had come for the backdoor and put them into the Digestive Gland, obtaining a large amount of satisfactory results.
[Trait ‘Metal Exoskeleton (D)’ has been acquired.]
[Trait ‘Excavation Expert (D)’ has been acquired.]
[Skill ‘Heat Detection (D)’ has been acquired.]
[Skill ‘Psychic Tracking (E)’ has been acquired.]
[Trait ‘Superhuman Strength (E)’ has been acquired.]
[Skill ‘Inorganic Matter Digestion (D)’ has been acquired.]
[Trait ‘Exoskeleton Regeneration (D)’ has been acquired.]
[Trait ‘Neurotoxic Blood (D)’ has been acquired.]
[Skill ‘Neurotoxin Secretion (D)’ has been acquired.]
Status windows announcing other acquired genes popped up as well, but the acquired genes I’m focusing on the most right now can be narrowed down to about three.
First, there’s Superhuman Strength (E), which was one of the most overpowered traits even in the game. As the name suggests, it’s a trait that significantly increases the Strength ability score, and it’s a trait that both players and monsters can have.
It was one of the rare traits that increased ability scores by percentage rather than a fixed amount, so most high-level melee players had biological implants with this trait as an option. It’s definitely beneficial to have.
While it’s a skill rather than a trait, Inorganic Matter Digestion (D) is also a very good skill. Although it might be a bit plain on its own, when used together with the Digestive Fluid (C) trait, it can achieve extreme efficiency.
If you somehow chew or cut something and put it into the digestive fluid, you can not only digest and absorb all kinds of metals that were impossible with digestive fluid alone, but also incorporate them into traits or biological weapons.
In the game, it was something every player carried around, and in this world that has become reality, it’s possible to do things like creating body organs that mass-produce all kinds of rare metals that are extremely scarce in reality.
…Of course, we’ll need to raise the rank a bit more.
Anyway, let’s end this discussion here. From now on, let’s talk about the last acquired gene, or more precisely, the biological weapon.
When I first discovered it, I couldn’t understand why these guys had it. It’s the Laser Shooter (D).
It was a weapon attached to the upper two of the four arms of a bipedal ant that seemed to be the commander among the ant special forces. Its appearance was exactly like the streamlined gun that you wear on your arm and shoot in SF movies.
Well, I said it like that, but in reality, it’s just a laser gun. It’s usually the ultimate weapon that appears in FPS games and such, but in Project Monster, the story is a bit different.
The basic appearance of laser guns in Project Monster, surprisingly unlike the name “laser gun,” resembles modern firearms. It has a plastic buttstock, pistol grip, box-shaped magazine (battery), and sights.
Also, it’s a basic weapon that’s provided in all three weapon sets that you have to choose one from at the start, in the form of laser assault rifle, laser pistol, and laser submachine gun.
The most unique point here is that despite being a basic weapon, many people use it as their final weapon through continuous upgrades.
If you ask why this is the case… the biggest reason is because of the characteristic that the power increases if you just raise the output of the laser weapon.
If you use 50 shots worth of power at once, it becomes a high-firepower weapon, if you use half of 1 shot’s worth, it becomes a weapon for dealing with small fry, and if you fire about 10 shots’ worth in single shots, it can even perform the role of a DMR.
Depending on the customization, it can even be modified into heavy weapons like medium machine guns or anti-tank weapons, and there’s also a method of mounting a large laser gun on a bipedal war machine called Titan Armor and using it as a heavy weapon.
While laser guns used by allies show this versatile weapon aspect, laser guns used by enemies… I think they’re really overpowered weapons.
When dozens of small fry swarm together and concentrate fire on one target, it’s annoying even for max level players.
The power of ranged weapons, especially gun-like weapons, is the same no matter who shoots them, so high-level players, although they don’t die thanks to various survival skills, end up consuming various resources.
It’s really rare that it’s a good weapon whether I use it or the enemy uses it, so I can’t help but be happy about this Laser Shooter (D) that has appeared.
Although the grade is low, I can finally respond to some extent to the appearance of humans—and especially, it will be possible to wipe out those persistent ants that are bothering me now.