"Damn Rui," the Esoterist muttered as he watched some grainy footage of Planet Amadeus III vaporizing into dust from the sheer side effects of the battle between Transcendents. "Just had to blow up an infected world, why I oughta..."

In a cool, dark laboratory that spanned an entire city by itself, the Esoterist leaned back on a chair, kicking his legs upon a table.

There was no monitor in front of him.

He had gone further than anybody else when it came to the digitization of his brain, completely replacing the sensory cortexes of his brain with organoid biocomputers that could receive and transmit a vast amount of data.

What he did for himself went beyond augmented reality; it was engineered reality, as far as he was concerned. He could alter his phenomenology, to an extent, although that came with extreme consequences even for his sanity, or what was left of it. It was the cutting-edge pinnacle of neural inlay technology, an astronomically and extraordinarily resource and money-intensive process, something that he had only reserved for himself.

He had engineered his perception of the world to be covered in walls of screens that projected the content that he wanted to see, allowing him to observe data itself.

He watched footage and poured over data in carefully curated intelligence reports filed by the mining enterprise of Esocline Federation, which had partaken in the mission to Planet Amadeus III.

When he had heard of a nigh-confirmed infected world in the Strehegeld Star System just ten light-years away from the edge of the frontier, he immediately deployed some missions.

Only for the entire world to be blown up.

"Well, I guess the esoteric matter still exists. As dust in the star system, but..." He accessed a recent top-secret announcement, a prohibitive injunction to all registered polities of the Gaian Alliance, which was basically everybody.

[All state actors are henceforth prohibited from entering the Strehegeld Star System in the interest of civilizational security from external threats.]

The only two areas where the Gaian Alliance possessed the legal mandates to issue direct orders to the members of human civilization were when it came to the matters of civilizational security from external threats and matters surrounding high treason against humanity.

He was bummed that he couldn’t go there to collect esoteric dust, but at the same time, he knew that there was so much at stake that it was too dangerous to return. Human civilization had provoked an unknown enemy in the stars, and while it was unlikely that they would get off scot-free, it was still better to avoid returning to the crime scene.

"I need more esoteric matter, goddammit!" He cursed out loud.

The supply of esoteric matter had certainly increased tenfold in the past thirteen years. But human civilization had increased ten thousandfold in the past thirteen years, making the gains feel negligible. In terms of the proportion of materials composing technology, esoteric matter had increasingly taken on a much smaller portion.

Ordinary matter was everywhere in the cosmos; esoteric matter was not.

At this rate, esoteric technology would become a very small cherry on top of a very large cake.

That was not what he wanted.

He had thought long and hard about how to expand the supply of esoteric substances in the past thirteen years, having attempted many solutions. They fell into four broader categories.

The first was reproducing Gaia more. This was constrained by bizarre informational and esoteric constraints. It turned out that Gargantians, while remarkbly wide spread, were not as fertile as he had hoped.

The second category of attempts was trying to find said Gargantains. To date, they had only ever run into one Gargantian in the Local Bubble that they were in.

The third category of attempts was trying to produce more esoteric matter through the massive particle accelerators that surrounded the Sun. Unfortunately, while they did produce a stable output of esoteric matter, they were highly-intensive on every level, and the stream of supply made minor dents, at most.

The fourth category of attempts was to try and find more infected worlds to mine, like Planet Amadeus III.

This one was the one he had invested the most in, but it had ultimately failed to deliver the results he sought. The rate at which humanity expanded was much, much faster than the rate at which they found infected worlds.

His only hope was to try and make marginal gains in all four categories so that they could cumulatively increase the supply of esoteric matter in human civilization.

PING

His neural organoid sensory cortexes received a notification from the vice president, distracting him from his immersed thoughts, much to his irritation. "What now?"

He opened the message.

[Princess Ria Quarrier Silas Kandria has visited the state. She requests a meeting with you today. Says it is important and significant and is related to ’increasing the supply of esoteric matter.’ Frankly, I think she’s full of shit, but I needed it to convey it to you since she is an important guest.]

His organoid eyes sharpened as he considered the request.

"She’s eighteen, right?" he scratched his head, trying to recall. He didn’t reserve his precious memory for people he considered irrelevant. She was apparently a genius beyond peer, but even if that were the case, he simply didn’t care. "What the hell can she do about this issue? Is she just trying to bait me into a meeting? Tsk..."

He pondered the matter before he heaved a sigh. "Send her up."

He sent the command back to the Vice President.

"Tell her if she’s bullshitting me, I’m going to make her compensate me with some political concessions from the Kandrian Empire," he yawned.

"Oh? Is the princess coming?"

The calm, thoughtful voice of a man in another section of the lab drew the esoterist’s attention.

He turned towards a red-headed, red-eyed man in his thirties, working on a hologram representation of a brain, zooming into the projection, tinkering with the details.

It was none other than the Psyker.

"Yep, she was a little baby last I remembered," the Esoterist muttered. "She says she has something ’important’ to talk about regarding ’increasing the supply of esoteric matter. Tsk, damn brat. I wouldn’t be entertaining her if she wasn’t his daughter."

Those words drew the Psyker’s deep eyes away from his work as a glint of interest emerged in his eyes.

"Let me in on the meeting. I wish to see how she’s coming along."