The Martial Unity

”Are you sure about this, Ria?” Arastia spoke with a stunned tone of voice. ”You want to sell this priceless information to the Blood Humanist Sect?”

”Of course,” Ria replied with a smile. ”You’re my aunt, so I want to support you.”

”I’m your aunt too, Ria,” Ru remarked, sitting next to Arastia on the couch in the Vargard Royal Palace.

”That’s why you’re here, Aunt Ru,” Ria turned towards her less-likeable aunt with furrowed eyebrows.

”Yes, but I’m here representing the Kandrian Empire, not myself,” Ru put on an expression of sadness. ”I feel so bad that my niece doesn’t want to support me personally.”

”You’re a member of the royal family. What benefits the Kandrian Empire benefits you too, Aunty.”

”But it still lacks the personal touch that it does with my runaway half-sister here,” Ru huffed a sigh.

Arastia turned to glare at her half-sister. ”I’m not a runaway, ’sister.’”

”You ran away from your family, the Royal Family,” Ru turned towards Arastia with a calm but pointed stare. ”You could have used your tremendous power to benefit the Kandrian Family and the Kandrian Empire, but you did not.”

”I did help my family,” Arastia sternly replied. ”Millions of my half-siblings from my mother’s side- I created an organization and a society for them. I didn’t join the Royal Family properly because the Kandrian Empire doesn’t need me. It’s the most powerful polity in the world. Not to mention, my true family, the family that I grew up with, is in the Quarrier Orphanage, not in the ivory towers that the Royal Family likes to live in.”

Despite both being former princesses of the Kandrian Empire, the two of them had had extremely different life experiences from each other, causing them to develop worldviews that were rather incompatible.

Ru had been born in the Royal Palace, having been born and brought up as a princess of the Royal Family from the day she was born. On top of that, she was extremely gifted, possessing talents of the same caliber as her father. She also bore his resemblance more than any of his other children, making her feel even more attached to him and to the Royal Family.

Arastia, on the other hand, had discovered she was a princess later in her life. And even then, she hadn’t moved to the Vargard Royal Palace since she was still going through her strength training and socialization process. She simply didn’t develop the kind of bond with the Royal Family ever.

They couldn’t be more different from each other.

”Be that as it may, you were brought to this world by our father, and you ignored his side of the family when we protected you and gave you that family,” Ru replied.

Arastia glared at her half-sister. ”Listen here, you—”

”Ladies, relax. Can we get to signing the deal already?” the Esoterist’s disinterested voice cut through the passionate spiel that the Blood Empress was undoubtedly going to unload on her half-sister. ”This family drama nonsense isn’t really my thing.”

The man had been sitting slouched back on a sofa, bored with the conversation that the two of them had been having. He turned towards Ria with an eager expression. ”Just give me the juicy details already. Where did you find the infected world?”

Ria heaved an exasperated sigh, staring at the three of them seated opposite her on a couch in the Vargard Palace. ”I was getting there. I just transmitted the contracts to you. Peruse them and let me know.”

Despite the informal nature of the conversation between the four of them, the four of them had actually gathered on the account of business. Since all three of them were in the know of Ria’s secret, Ria decided to conduct the deals herself.

The Kandrian Empire was a no-brainer as a customer to sell information regarding the infected world to. It had one of the most developed state mining enterprises as well as many private contractors it could tap into to harvest esoteric matter.

The Esocline Federation was also a no-brainer client, since it probably had the most developed esoteric mining technology in all of human civilization. The Esoterist would probably lose his mind if Ria didn’t sell him the information. They had an agreement where one in ten worlds would be sold to him and only him, but with how greedy he was for esoteric matter, he would not tolerate not taking a piece of the other infected worlds either. Ria had no reason to avoid that either, so she indulged his greed.

The only anomalous client there was the Blood Humanist Society.

”We don’t have the most developed in-house esoteric mining capacity, but we have managed to expand thanks to our ongoing absorption of the Blood Cult,” Arastia remarked with an intrigued tone of voice. ”Still, we’ll be much less efficient compared to specialists in the mining industry. Are you sure you want to sell it to us?”

”Of course, strengthening the Society will improve internal stability,” Ria remarked calmly. ”I know you can’t buy too much information since your mining capacity is more limited, but you should be able to buy a continent’s worth of an infected world with ease on short notice.”

”That we certainly can,” Arastia nodded. ”Alright, I’m on board.”

”How many people are you selling this information to?” the Esoterist raised an eyebrow.

”Ordinarily, the Director of Sales in our company that Neera hired recommends no more than six. But Neera has decided to cast a wider net for our first sale,” Ria remarked. ”Essentially, she wants Planet Pinky to serve as an industry-wide icebreaker.”

”In order to ensure that you won’t have to do the same song and dance of earning credibility with future clients over and over,” Ru quickly understood. ”You have found a good manager indeed.”

”Hey, don’t sell that information like it’s cheap gossip on the street!” the Esoterist barked at Ria with an indignant expression. ”That’s priceless information there. It should be treated with the value that it possesses!”