The Martial Unity

Her words almost got Rui's facade to crack. He knew about the two anomalies, but he had no idea that the arakai were able to decode a part of the message that his Tide of Samsara had garbled.

That was the most crucial part.

The word key was arguably the worst part of the message that could have survived.

'Dammit, the arakai and potentially other advanced civilizations very familiar with virus SOSes also have access to this information. Ria is in much more danger than I realized.'

He had thought that she had managed to extricate herself from her true identity being revealed quite well, but there had been a mistake. An unusually powerful virus managed to strain his poison more than it should have. He would need to improve the Tide of Samsara to ensure such a thing would never occur again.

"What does that mean?" Rui asked with a puzzled tone, not revealing his internal turmoil. "Key to what?"

She stared at him with six eyes for a few moments before shaking his head. "I'm afraid that information is confidential, although we're not even sure it means what we suspect it might. It could mean anything, really. But the Virus Faction is particularly hyped by this revelation and believes that they have found something that has been hypothesized to be possible but never actually proven to exist."

"That's rather cryptic." Rui raised an eyebrow.

"It will have to remain that way for now, although you could purchase that information once you establish a trade pact," she told him with a pointed tone. "For example, if you share with me how you overcome the consequences of using your Verse."

She clearly hadn't forgotten about that. There was no question that she desperately wanted to gain access to this power as well.

"No chance," Rui scoffed. "It's nowhere near a fair trade. Some random message about a key is meaningless to me."

He didn't want to signal any interest that could potentially tip her off that he knew more than he was letting on. He also felt the urge to immediately get home so that he could warn Ria of this and tell her to be more careful.

"Suit yourself," she shrugged. "Well, that brings us to an end to our meeting. It has been interesting, Emperor Rui. I hope we get along."

"So do I," Rui got up. "I'll be heading back to my civilization. I have a lot of work to do."

He departed from the Strehegeld Star System while the Arakaian frigate simply opened a wormhole and returned to Arakaian territory. His expression grew serious as he rushed back towards Gaia Prime.

*****

Humanity stirred as EsoQuest Solutions sold an infected world to nearly a dozen large clients. The moment the information had been transacted, the various companies and nations immediately deployed surveyor ships that were to be deployed to the star system. Initially, there was a fear they had been duped, since Planet Pinky, as EsoQuest Solutions playfully named it, was a documented planet with active surveillance probes in it.

Had the company duped them? If they had, there would be hell to pay. But they nonetheless went to the star system in question, only to find the ruins of the quasi-gas giant.

The esoteric ruins, as they soon confirmed.

Of course, in this case, that was a benefit to them, since it made their jobs easier. Terrestrike, Esocline Federation, Kandria, the Blood Humanist Society, and several other mining giants immediately deployed fleets of harvester ships; ships that were specialized to collect matter, often gas, dust, and asteroids, that floated in space.

Thousands of harvester ships were mobilized from hundreds of astro-docks, each with energy independence, allowing them to take long trips to distant star systems without needing to refuel frequently. Refiners were freed up from less important projects while other extractors that were reserved exclusively for esoteric matter and had been sitting collecting dust were immediately prepared for a whole boat-load of work.

Of course, such movements could not be hidden, and pretty soon, the truth began rolling across human civilization.

The truth that another infected world had been discovered. Some companies managed to put two and two together and looked closer at the email that they had dismissed, immediately trying to purchase the information only to find that the link had expired. They bombarded EsoQuest Solutions with emails, even sending its executives to the headquarters of the company to try and sign the deal.

"We got a huge windfall from this deal," Ria pored over the balance sheets of her firm. Although she wasn't in it for the money, it did feel satisfying to see her hard work yield fruit. Somehow, this money that she had earned was much sweeter than the endless wealth she could tap into as a royal princess of the Kandrian Empire.

And on top of that, she was helping human civilization get stronger by ensuring it had access to esoteric substances. She knew that the mining industry was increasingly being alerted to the presence of EsoQuest Solutions.

Although for now, they had yet to truly understand the significance of her company. After all, most of them didn't realize that she could deliver infected worlds to them on a silver platter over and over.

After all, once was a coincidence.

But two? Three?

A smile emerged on her face as she found herself developing anticipation for the eventuality that all of human civilization realized that her firm could find infected worlds on demand. She hadn't expected that this would be so thrilling, but it certainly was.

WHOOSH

She felt a presence teleporting into her room all of a sudden.

"Ria, we need to talk." Her father's voice was much more serious than she was used to, but she turned around towards him with a glare. "You can't just teleport into my room without my permission, Dad. Boundaries are a thing you know?"

"Listen to me, Ria," her father's expression was dead-serious. "They know. The arakai know that a key to the Universalis Mensis was involved in the recent anomalies that your Planet Pinky raid created. The danger of them finding out about you is much greater than before."

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