The Martial Unity

Ria didn’t mind her father’s suggestion, of course. In truth, even she felt like she would explode if she broke through any time soon. Although she had remarkable control of materia prima, her application of it left much to be desired; she knew that. She would need to get stronger and stronger before she reached her full peak.

”Infected worlds are just the perfect wheatstone.” She directed a deep gaze at her father, her amber eyes flaring with determination.

Her father nodded. ”Speaking of which, your services will be needed much more direly from this point forth.”

His expression grew a bit more regretful. ”I did not anticipate burdening you with this respect this soon, but unfortunately, the events that have since unfolded have made it impossible for me to avoid this.”

”You want me to accelerate with hunting infected worlds, right?” she mused knowingly. ”I get it. With the war impending soon, we will need as many resources as we can get our hands on.”

”Indeed,” Rui nodded appreciatively. ”The more esoteric matter we get. The stronger our war potential becomes. Of course, the conversation pace is slow. Since the raw esoteric ores need to be mined, then purified and refined, and then utilized in the production of our weaponry, munitions, and defensive resources. Initially, it will take a little under a year for that process to occur, but once we transition to a wartime economy, we will be able to produce the needed resources and goods and services.”

”I understand, I will supply humanity with more esoteric resources than it knows what to do with,” her eyes blazed with confidence.

”Attagirl,” Rui smiled with pride, patting her on her head. ”You have truly grown up well.”

Ria found the gesture to be both embarrassing and comforting at the same time. She didn’t like being treated like a child, but she enjoyed her father’s affection. She returned home in their Royal Quarters to sleep for the night, eager to get some rest.

She had much to do tomorrow.

”From tomorrow… my endeavors to aid humanity will commence in earnest.”

It wasn’t too long before the next day arrived.

*****

Miss Mearsheim sat at her table with a severe expression. Her office was silent, save for the sound of the air conditioning carefully regulating the temperature of her room. Before her were many holographic documents scattered about, each detailing reports.

Reports about potentially infected worlds.

”Tsk, all busts.” Her elderly voice was gravelly with frustration. Through her mining company, Terrestrike, she had commissioned many parties, guilds, and even companies to find infected worlds beyond the frontier of human civilization.

She had paid some of the best surveillance-oriented martial artists, the best tracker elves and therianthropes; she had even tried tapping into the formidable esoteric detection meter of giants.

But alas, none of them could provide her with even a remotely decent return on investment. Her company Terrestrike was one of the largest mining companies in all of human civilization, accounting for a whopping forty-percent of all commercial mining. It had existed before the Era of Expansion, and she had been one of the first-generation commercial pioneers to race to the stars to extract it of material resources.

Ordinary mining was profitable, but what was truly lucrative was esoteric mining, which yielded profits that were orders of magnitude above what mining iron or other common elements from the crusts of exoplanets could ever hope to be.

The biggest problem, of course, was finding esoteric matter.

Esoteric matter existed only with infected worlds and the occasional gargantian. It also existed with Gaia offspring, but those weren’t mass-producible for reasons she didn’t understand.

That meant that the primary source of esoteric matter was running into infected worlds. Without them, there was nothing she could do.

The demand for infected worlds was so high that it created a rather substantial niche of specialists who searched exclusively for infected worlds. The fact that this industry was so lucrative despite having an extremely low success rate was a testament to just how desperately sought after esoteric matter was.

”Useless bums preying on my desperation,” she grumbled, waving aside all the report documents from the many entities she had commissioned to find her an infected world. She was sick and tired of reading ’no traces of an infected world detected’ in each and every single one of them.

She thought back to how the Esoterist had found an infected world within human civilization in some isolated star system that nobody bothered to develop. ”That bastard, he must have some new technology that can—”

BZZZT

She paused, turning back to her holographic monitor, putting her spectacles back on. She had gotten an email to her direct business email account.

[From: [email protected]]

She tilted her head with confusion. ”Who?”

It wasn’t easy to get her email address. She didn’t release it publicly to avoid being swarmed with crap. Most of the emails she received were from a curated ecosystem of contacts and mutuals, people above a certain station in life, as well as the emails forwarded to her by her secretary.

[Subject: Confirmed Infected World]

She narrowed her eyes at that, clicking on the email. It led her to an attached document. One that featured data about a geological sample and its corresponding data, and a generated infection hash from the subject.

An infection hash was a unique code associated with geological samples from infected worlds, a hash that came from applying a mathematical function to the data of the distribution of esoteric matter and deep biosphere viruses.

Each was unique and was impossible to fake due to each infected world being unique, while the hash could demonstrate that a certain geological sample came from an infected world through a forensic mathematical verification mechanism. It was the bread and butter of the infected world industry, the proof of work.

Her eyes widened as she realized what she was looking at. ”A new infected world…! This company has found a new infected world.”

Just like that, EsoQuest Solutions made it its first sale.