They Say Arachne Eggs Are Good for the Skin
They say hydra tails are good for hair loss. Once that rumor spread, every man in the galaxy rushed out to hunt hydras.
They say Arachne eggs are good for the skin. Once that rumor spread, the Arachne were hunted nearly to extinction.
Only then did the greatest man in the galaxy, Starlord, finally grasp the solution to the Space Locust crisis.
"They say Space Locust meat boosts your inner energy."
And so the Space Locusts were wiped out.
Too embarrassed to watch Gong Ryun bathe, Medilla had shyly wandered off in the other direction — and found herself standing before the Arachne eggs.
With practiced ease she circled them, inspecting each one.
"Hmm! Nicely ripened, these are!"
She yanked an egg half-buried in the mud free with a wet pull, wiped it off with a few casual swipes, and stuffed it into her bag.
The whole sequence was far too natural. She had clearly done this many times before.
Medilla toddled off toward another cluster of eggs and harvested them the way a farmer gathers autumn cabbages. One after another, eggs the size of human heads stacked neatly inside her enormous crossbody bag.
"About five, is it! Just the right amount! Zone Three really is prime real estate!"
With the look of a farmer who has just finished a good harvest, she patted her bag in proud satisfaction. It was stuffed full.
Gong Ryun, who had watched the entire performance, felt his eyes go wide with horror.
That bag. He had thought it seemed a little large just for packing tea. So this was what she had been carrying it for all along.
Even the capacity was suspiciously perfect — room for exactly five or six Arachne eggs, no more, no less. She had even anticipated roughly how many she would find.
In other words, this place was no natural Arachne habitat. It was planned. Designed.
"An Arachne farm?!?!"
Queen Medilla cheerfully confirmed the very guess Gong Ryun had been praying was wrong.
"Precisely so, my retainer! Is this lady's genius not magnificent? Kishishi!!!"
Medilla beamed, planting both hands on her hips.
Gong Ryun recoiled.
"Why… why?"
He asked it as if the answer might somehow make sense.
Medilla hoisted one of the eggs above her head and launched into an explanation.
"My retainer. Hast thou ever heard the claim that hydra tails are good for hair loss?"
"…?"
"Regrettably, scientists have proven that hydra tails produce no such dramatic effect. There was even a galaxy-wide hydra-meat craze for a time — a pity, truly. But these Arachne eggs? Their efficacy is real, scientifically verified. Which is to say, Arachne eggs are the genuine article."
"What are you…"
"Kishishishishi! Arachne eggs!!! Are truly, astonishingly good for the skin!!! Proven by science! Yet continuous extermination campaigns have nearly wiped them out, so supply is desperately short! Do you know how fiercely the noble ladies of the Righteous Faction seek them out? The price has soared to the heavens!!! Do you know how much a single one of these eggs is worth? Gather just a few and you can buy a high-grade secret manual!!! Kishishishishishi!!!"
Shock and awe.
Gong Ryun pressed a hand to his forehead.
He could roughly reconstruct the situation now.
About six months ago, Arachne had overrun the western sewers. People went missing, and the planetary government hired a capable expert to deal with it. Her name was Medilla. She resolved the crisis perfectly and was appointed the official in charge.
But Medilla had not killed every last Arachne. She reported total eradication to the government, then secretly siphoned off a portion by some method of her own and began raising them somewhere in the sewers — without anyone knowing.
That was why she had spent the past half-year hunting mole-beasts alone instead of hiring mercenaries, and why she had marked so many places on the map as restricted zones and warned him not to go near them.
The unusually labyrinthine western sewers. Maps full of deliberate gaps for water-security reasons. An ideal ecological environment for Arachne. And she had more than enough power to keep them under control…
It really had been possible.
And because it was possible, she had done it.
That was all.
Gong Ryun's mind went blank.
She actually looked at that and thought, Yeah, I can pull this off?
This was a madness beyond comparison with "all-stats-in-arms Jason" or three-sword-style lunatics.
This was true madness.
He felt as if he were staring at the pinnacle of the Unorthodox Faction.
"Hold on… aren't Arachne… those things Space Locusts? Is this even remotely okay?"
Gathering the last shreds of his reason, Gong Ryun pushed back.
Arachne were Space Locusts. The same creatures that had nearly destroyed the galaxy once. Their danger level was the kind of issue that still resurfaced in the news whenever people started to forget.
What if they just started breeding out of control and wiped out the whole planet?
"Kishishi! No need for such fretting. Arachne are an evolutionary dead end. They paid for the luxury of intelligence by sacrificing their reproductive capacity. Their breeding rate is so low you can barely even call them Space Locusts — roughly on par with your ordinary, run-of-the-mill monsters."
"…Even setting the breeding rate aside, is raising them even possible?"
"Where there is intelligence, there is fear — and where there is fear, husbandry becomes possible! This lady is an expert, so it is more than feasible!"
"Oh. So you're like a biologist? Did you go to university or something?"
"One need only search! My retainer! All the knowledge of creation resides upon the internet!"
"That's amateur hour!!!!!!"
The deeper he dug, the worse the horror story got.
She had looked up how to raise a lethal organism online and just… started raising it?
If the Righteous Faction or the planetary government found out, they would not sit still. What if they came after her with blood in their eyes?
"Then one simply does not get caught. Naturally."
Medilla said it cheerfully.
"Couldn't they escape outside?"
"Fear not. They do not escape."
"How can you be so sure? I ran into an Arachne while passing through and got attacked."
"Tut-tut, my retainer! Did this lady not personally mark the restricted zones for thee? Thou shouldst have read the map more carefully!"
"Scold-gal!" Medilla scolded him primly.
"Are you saying I wandered off the path and that's how I ran into an Arachne?"
"That is the only possibility. Each Arachne nest has a designated space in which it is permitted to roam — a 'pen,' if you will. Leaving those assigned zones is physically impossible."
"Physically impossible?"
"Indeed. This lady has packed the place with mechanism traps. Special devices that detect an Arachne's vital force ring every pen. Should an Arachne try to leave, it triggers the traps and suffers fatal damage. A sewer is, by nature, a network of passages. Seal off a few key tunnel mouths and the zone within becomes, structurally speaking, a sealed room. In a way, the ideal place for husbandry."
"…Did you learn those traps from the internet too?"
"As if! Of course this lady summoned specialists to install them! If one is going to do a thing, one must do it properly! Do you know how cautious this lady is? Safety first!"
Safety first, and you're doing this? Gong Ryun swallowed the retort.
"Are these people trustworthy?"
"The tteokbokki shop lady introduced them herself through her suspiciously excellent connections — first-rate contractors! Soon this lady plans to hire watchmen for the nests as well! And while we're at it, pawn the mole-beast extermination off on them too!"
Gong Ryun clearly remembered what Medilla had said when they signed the long-term contract. She had asked him to handle the mole-beasts for a few weeks until she could gather more people. The tteokbokki shop lady was looking for reliable candidates.
He had wondered why recruiting mole-beast hunters was taking so long. In reality, she had been recruiting Arachne watchmen — people trustworthy enough to keep a secret.
"Kishishi! In any case, it is impossible for an Arachne to leave its pen. Other creatures, however, can enter. That is how the Arachne feed — by eating the mole-beasts that wander in. People can enter as well, of course."
…
Gong Ryun rewound his memory.
He had always checked the map carefully. But lately he had grown familiar enough with the routes that he only glanced at it now and then instead of watching it constantly. That much was true.
It was genuinely possible that he had let his guard down and taken a wrong turn. The sewer where he had met the Arachne had been quite dark, making it hard to tell the paths apart. And all sewers looked more or less the same.
…Still, he refused to accept it. Take one wrong turn and you walk straight into an Arachne pen? That could not be pinned on him.
This time, Gong Ryun did the scolding.
"Medilla! Even so, me getting attacked by an Arachne is still your fault!"
"What?! How so? All you had to do was not stray from the path! And this zone is so dark you can barely see — why would you even come here?"
"You think I just toddled into a restricted zone for fun? Into that pitch-black place?! I walked in there because I heard your voice!!"
Medilla's breath caught.
"Uh… huh? My voice?"
"Scold-gal!!!"
Exactly. He had heard a voice and naturally assumed they were playing hide-and-seek again. It happened every day — it was practically a conditioned reflex by now. How was he supposed to guess it was an Arachne? This was entirely Medilla's karmic debt.
"…You followed nothing but my voice into that darkness?"
"That's right."
He still had to clock out, after all.
"U… uhhmm. Is that so. Heehee. Well, I suppose that does count as my karma…"
"Exactly!"
"Kishishi…"
Medilla twirled a lock of hair around her finger.
"Hmm. Whatever is to be done about this."
"Obviously! Someone almost died!"
She should at least throw in a bonus.
Wounded hearts are supposed to be soothed with material compensation, aren't they?
That was what he had been about to say.
"There is no help for it! This lady has no choice but to hire thee as a full-time employee at a high salary! If this lady does not take responsibility for her own retainer, then who will!"
"…Come again?"
"This lady shall hire thee under especially favorable terms! No more daily wages — thou shalt receive a monthly salary! But fret not! This lady shall come find thee every day before thou clockest out! The jump-scare content shall continue without interruption! And not only that…"
"I refuse."
"…"
"…"
"…What didst thou say?"
"I said no. I'm not doing illegal work."
"…"
"…"
"…"
Silence settled over the sewer. The only sound filling the space was the occasional drip of water from the ceiling.
Medilla's two crimson eyes fixed on Gong Ryun.