The Martial Unity

Runark enthusiastically pulled out his projector, activating it to feature the information of the cosmic anomaly that he had found. It featured data from a space telescope that had been studying a distant star system outside the boundary of human-controlled territory, in other words, the ‘wild.’ The data featured a binary star system of two dim, small red dwarf stars that orbited each other, as well as a planet in outer space. A gray planet that didn’t strike anybody out of the ordinary, except for—

“Except for this:” Runark pressed several buttons, zooming into the planet and the moon that revolved around it at a slow speed. “Look.”

He pointed at the moon. “The moon is very close to the planet.”

Ria frowned. “Ok?”

“Not only is it very close to the moon, but it’s also very revolving at a very slow speed,” Runark explained. “And somehow, despite being very close and despite revolving at a very slow speed, it isn’t falling into the planet. Isn’t that odd?”

Ria’s amber eyes lit up with interest as she understood what Runark was hinting at. “You think we might find negatron matter there.”

The very thought of it was exciting, of course. Negatron matter was the most precious resource of human civilization, and only the Gaian Alliance controlled the method and sources of production at industrial scales, although technological breakthroughs had begun to try and develop alternative sources, even if very inefficiently and impractically.

However, the sheer scale at which human civilization produced negatron matter meant that, for all practical purposes, the Gaian Alliance controlled more than ninety percent of all negatron matter. Or more accurately, her father controlled all of that negatron matter. He controlled the tier-one Gaia Seed that was distributed only for planets within the Gaian Alliance system. And only tier-one planets, which were perfect offspring of Gaia, could produce negatron matter and esoteric matter, allowing human civilization to fulfill its voracious appetite for these priceless resources.

She knew that it was one of the measures that her father had taken to ensure that humanity didn’t go too far out of control, even if he kept a low profile for reasons beyond her fathoming.

Her attention returned to the information that Runark had managed to gather on short notice. He was good at this kind of stuff, which is why Ria had known it was a good idea to let him come along when he begged to go with her. The fact that there was a discrepancy in the gravity of a planet was also the classic tell-tale sign of more than just negatron matter.

It was the classic tell-tale sign of an infected world. In the past thirteen years, human civilization had run into more than one infected world in its expansion. These were worlds that were generally larger than normal and had gravity that didn’t match their size.

They were among the most prized treasures ever found in the frontier, for they were sources of great resources and were the only times that one could get their hands on negatron matter and esoteric matter that didn’t come from Gaian offspring. The possibility of running into a potentially infected world was tantalizing. Ria had unfortunately never had the opportunity to explore one or undertake a commission relating to one in the two years that she had been adventuring in the frontier. The fact that she now may have gotten her hand on this opportunity was truly exciting.

“If you’ve gotten this information, that means…” Ria realized. “Others must have gotten it too, right?”

“Yeah, it just became public information, and it looks like there’s going to be a huge rush to get to it.”

“Tsk, if it’s public information just now, then it means that the various interest groups and power blocs have already gotten their hands on a piece of the pie,” she tutted with a hint of disdain. “If only we had some source of information that also had access to classified information.”

Runark tilted his head with a pointed expression, as if trying to hint at the obvious.

“No,” she huffed. “We’re not going to rely on him. We’re going to take this on by ourselves. If it just became public information, then it means that even those with early access haven’t had an opportunity to explore and extract resources extensively. Let’s make sure to depart as soon as we’re ready!”

She was determined to go explore a potentially infected world. If it truly was what she hoped it was, then there was no doubt that this would become a long, drawn-out mission, for these worlds generally had some kind of alien life residing within them and possessed immense destructive power. All of them were formidable, though among them, none of them was quite as large as Gaia Prime was.

The only thing that made her hesitate was that infected worlds were also the only time her father had ever acted in the past thirteen years. Massive wars, crises, and other significant events hadn’t been enough to even get him to budge, but when it came to infected worlds, he became deadly serious and had personally intervened if and when things went out of control.

Of course, even that was not public knowledge, because he made sure to do it discreetly, but she knew that he had taken care of several crises himself. As to what exactly infected worlds were, that was still confidential information. One needed to either have means or possess a certain degree of political power or authority, and while she could easily find out if she used her identity as the heir to the most powerful throne in the stars, she had no intention of doing so.

But whatever it was, her instincts told her it was extremely bad, which made her wary about taking the risk. But ultimately, she pushed through. It wasn’t long before the two of them were prepared, heading out to the Adventurer’s Guild in the city, eager to explore the unknown and to have a good adventure if nothing else.