Queen Medilla, the Sewer Queen
"Hahaha. Young friend. Galaxy moles arise naturally. Just like fruit flies that appear out of nowhere whenever there's fruit."
— A researcher's answer to a young field-trip student's question about why they don't wipe out every galaxy mole under the city
"Might be the most carefree creature in the whole galaxy."
Gong Ryun stared down at the thing sprawled out asleep and couldn't help the admiration in his voice.
"Hey. You. Get up. Move over, will you?"
Thump. Thump.
He prodded the mole with the toe of his boot.
—Kyu-uuuuung?
The mole stirred just enough to open a pair of pure, simple eyes and look up at him.
And then…
—Zzz…
It went right back to sleep.
"No. Hey. I told you to move. Don't you dare shut those eyes again!"
Unbelievable. Truly an astonishing life-form. Not a shred of survival instinct to be found.
In the end Gong Ryun simply stepped over it.
The springy belly fat was oddly satisfying underfoot.
—Kyuing-eok…
It made a strange little noise when he stepped on it, but with a belly that fat it couldn't possibly have been hurt.
The job description might have been "mole hunting," but a mole like this was nowhere near a kill target.
There were two kinds of moles. The gentle ones and the vicious ones. As they grew they split into one of the two.
The fellow he'd just seen was a gentle one. Far from harming people, it couldn't even manage a proper counterattack when someone beat on it. Round and plump, it was almost cute in its own way.
Killing a gentle mole was pure loss. They broke down organic matter in the sewers and ate it—beneficial insects of a sort, not bad for the city at all. They could even digest chemical waste, so some cities deliberately farmed them. You got zero reward for killing them and nothing but trouble for your effort.
Plop. Plop.
Even as he walked he still spotted them now and then, paddling around in the water's edge. Smaller than the last one.
Every face wore the same pure, simple smile.
Opposite the gentle ones, of course, were the vicious ones.
Those… were not good for the city. The difference in appearance was so stark you could tell them apart at a glance. It was almost enough to make you question how they could possibly be the same species—a true mystery of life. The moment you saw one you were supposed to put it down. So far he hadn't seen any.
Splash. Splash.
"Why's this place so complicated?"
Heading for the very center meant the paths grew steadily more tangled.
Ups and downs, endless forks, and just now he'd even had to climb a ladder.
Did ordinary mole jobs usually go this far…?
In every mole-hunting commission he'd taken before, the client would just dump a few mercenaries into the underground waterways and tell them to kill moles. The client himself would kill time near the entrance, then pay out according to the body count once the work was done.
You didn't normally hike three thousand li through a maze of sewers just to find the client. And the client was sitting right in the middle of the underground channels, no less.
"Must be an extremely dedicated site supervisor…?"
Anyway.
Following the navigation deeper and deeper, he finally neared the space where the client was supposed to be.
It had been a long journey.
"Oh! At last! Just past this corner—!"
"Madoka★ Shining Moonlight♩♪ Magical Girl of Justice♬"
"…?"
What Gong Ryun saw was a woman wearing enormous headphones, watching something on her personal device. She was humming what sounded like song lyrics.
Her hair was a long, messy black tangle that completely covered her eyes. She was sprawled in the most comfortable viewing posture imaginable, using something big and cushion-like as a pillow while she stuffed potato chips into her mouth.
…No. It wasn't a cushion.
The thing the woman was using as a pillow was a mole. A gentle mole.
The mole seemed perfectly used to its role as a pillow and was simply dead asleep.
More gentle moles were scattered nearby. At least five of them in this space alone. Their fur was all soft and clean, as if someone had washed them.
Come to think of it, this wasn't an ordinary sewer. No water flowed, and there was no smell. Looking around, he saw it had been converted into a hideout that almost looked like a private home. The space was broad and high like a large room of unclear purpose; soft matting covered the floor, and along the walls sat a chair, a wardrobe, and everyday items like a small refrigerator—though whether the electricity actually worked was another question.
Gentle moles were sprawled asleep across the floor of this home-or-hideout, and the woman had claimed one of them as a cushion, stretched out as if she owned the world.
"Magical★ Magical Chivalry♬… Hmm?"
Sensing a presence, she looked toward Gong Ryun.
"Oh! The mercenary I commissioned!"
With the pure delight of someone receiving a long-awaited package, she beamed, scrambled to her feet, and toddled over. Then she struck a pose straight out of an opera singer's aria and introduced herself.
"Welcome to this lady's little kingdom! This lady is Queen Medilla, sovereign of the western underground! Also known as the Queen of the Sewers! At present this lady rules only the western sewers, but before long every underground waterway in this city shall become my domain!"
Surprisingly, her voice was excellent. Was she a former singer?
"You are the first vassal of this kingdom! Know the glory of it!"
…
Looking closer, her eyes were slightly unhinged. The pupils of a madwoman staring at something beyond mere people.
This… was the person in charge here?
Gong Ryun was thoroughly confused.
But he grasped the situation soon enough. This woman was, in fact, the one in charge. Navigation didn't lie.
And for double the daily rate, she was most definitely Her Majesty.
"Uh… I came for the mole-hunting commission. I was told I should meet you first and hear the briefing before starting work."
"To seek work the moment you arrive—truly a model vassal!!!"
With that voice it felt like listening to a musical.
Gong Ryun thought so privately.
"Your mission is to hunt the vicious moles—vicious moles for short! You shall patrol the places I have marked on the map!"
Queen Medilla transmitted the map via Bluetooth as she spoke.
"…? That's it? Same as a normal mole-hunting job?"
"Indeed! Only you must focus on the marked zones! Make full use of the map this lady has sent you! A high-performance map this lady crafted with her own hands, no less! Kishishishi!"
"Hmm…? You made the map yourself?"
"But of course! The west here is far more complex than elsewhere! Moreover the official maps have a great many omissions!"
"Why is that?"
"Because of this!!! Listen well!!!"
She pointed upward as she spoke.
Rumble-rumble-rumble.
The sound of flowing water came from the space beyond the ceiling.
"The waterworks!"
"Ah…"
"A sewer carrying filthy water can be dug roughly through the earth and left to flow—like these underground channels! We call that an 'open-channel' structure with a free surface! It moves water by height difference of the fluid. But the waterworks are entirely different! Clean water must be carried through pipes thoroughly sealed from the outside! We call that a 'closed' structure driven by water pressure! Should those pipes burst or be damaged or contaminated—the entire city would become a complete mess!"
Suddenly technical jargon…? Gong Ryun was a little taken aback by the unexpected expertise.
"Um… don't other underground channels have waterworks?"
"They do! But this place is overwhelmingly large and important! The city's only water source lies to the west! Every water-supply line begins from here!"
"Ah."
The vast terrain of Morlaren Canyon on the city's west side. Beside it, Morlaren Lake. The artificial lake made by dropping an ice asteroid. Gong Ryun knew that much.
"Precisely so! The purified water that has passed through the Morlaren Lake purification facilities flows right overhead! This city is a closed terrain sealed inside a transparent dome, and so is all the more sensitive about its water supply! If some strange fellows did anything to the waterworks it would lead straight to urban terrorism!"
"And the omissions on the map…"
"Because critical water-supply pipes must not be exposed! That is not information one hands to mere mercenary trash."
"Then what did I receive?"
"This lady reduced the omissions as far as possible! The truly classified sections remain omitted, but it should at least be enough for wandering about catching moles!"
"Ah. So that's why you hand over the map in person."
"A face-to-face Bluetooth transfer was necessary. Security locks on the map completely block remote transmission. And this lady gets to see your face while she's at it."
After that she kept pointing at the map on her device, launching into lectures about secret zones where entry meant arrest, shortcuts she had personally explored, the ecology of moles, and the principles and structure of modern urban water and sewage systems.
"Being the person in charge of such an important facility means…"
"Kishishishi! Correct—this lady is a government official!!!"
Well now.
Every remaining question resolved itself at once.
In other words, however strange this woman might look, she was someone the planetary government trusted enough to entrust with work. Just look at the exhaustive knowledge of water and sewage systems she rattled off.
Not just anyone became a civil servant. Planetary governments were notoriously picky. Of course they seemed to value ability—raw physical ability—more than personality, but the principle of rural-planet administration was that if you handled the work well they didn't meddle with the rest.
In the first place, on a rural planet that was practically the front yard of the unorthodox factions where schemes and intrigue ran rampant, her level of eccentricity barely even counted as mental abnormality.
"But you haven't used mercenaries until now?"
"This lady has not been settled here long! About half a year?"
"Then for that half year…"
"This lady simply ran around catching them herself!"
"…The entire western sector?"
"Treating it as lightness-technique training made it doable enough, you know?"
Whoa.
She was a considerable expert.
Planetary government, you made no mistake.
Judging by the energy he could sense, she wasn't a true high master who could leave craters on a planet, but she was far stronger than a truckload of unorthodox mercenary dregs.
"But now this lady would like a little more personal time. So she put up a mercenary notice. For some reason no one came…"
And then, through an introduction from a friend she knew—the tteokbokki shop ahjumma—Gong Ryun had arrived.
"If it was that unnie, she would certainly have sent someone trustworthy. Kishishi. Connections truly are a wonderful thing."
Gong Ryun agreed with all his heart.
"Starting with you, this lady shall gather more vassals and complete her underground kingdom! A kingdom of gentle moles and true workers! Super-villain Queen Medilla shall watch over it as queen!!! Kishishishi!"
Hmm. A thoroughly diligent super-villain who contributed to society, if ever there was one.
