Published at 20th of July 2026 6:21 am

Chapter 4326: Prepared Personnel

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"What do you think, Captain Sohhn?" Ria asked with a curious tone, turning towards the man standing beside her.

She stood at the helm of the Stellarch, overseeing the command room. This time, the entire room was filled with a crew that occupied each and every seat. The men and women occupying the various terminals in the command center wore a naval uniform with the logo of EsoQuest Solutions embroidered on it, which was that of a magnifying glass overlapping that of an exo-planet.

It was a very suggestive logo that made gestured to the notion that the secret sauce of the company’s soon to be rocketing success with finding infected worlds had something to do with detection and surveying sensory technology. All part of the elaborate red herring to hide the true source of their capability to find infected worlds.

VMMM...

A series of vibrations spread across the ground of the command room as the ship came to life.

"Surveillance systems active."

"Gravitational and electromagnetic stealth systems active."

"Dark energy generator within expected parameters."

While they didn’t say it out loud, the operators sent out frequent reports on the systems that they operated while the crew collectively woke the Stellarch up from slumber. In addition to the thirty-six crew members, there were additional analysts and technicians monitoring data surrounding the ships, providing supplementary reports to the captain who stood beside Ria.

"Maintain systems, remain on standby," the captain commanded, turning back to Ria with a confident expression of certainty.

"Miss Ria, over the past week, we have familiarized ourselves with the protocols of the ship in practice. We have conducted operational tests and exams and have achieved results on par with the standards with the standards for operating military-grade stealth surveillance frigates of the Gaian Alliance. I’m confident that we can handle the ship in virtually all situations."

"In just a week?"

"We have been conducting virtual training programs that are able to simulate the ship’s functionality at nearly ninety-nine percent over a variety of environments, including dense asteroid fields, nebulae, stellar and planetary gravitational fields, high-radiation zones and others of the like," Captain Sohhn spoke with certainty. "We would be able to get commercial accreditation for this specific design if you allowed us to undertake that licensing test."

Ria shook her head. "No, I don’t want this vessel entering the system."

Because the Stellarch was one of a kind and was designed for very special circumstances, it diverged from industry norms, requiring the crew that they had hired to get some training to handle the ship.

"Really, the only anomaly with this ship is the fact that it has a strange sensory technology that I have never heard of before, the proprietary sensory technology of your company," the captain remarked with an intrigued tone. "The rest isn’t unheard of, although two high-grade superluminal warp drives are very extravagant, as is a dark energy reactor for a frigate. But these are all manageable, and it didn’t take us very long to become proficient with his ship."

Ria was pleased to hear that. "How soon can we depart for a mission?"

The man shrugged. "Right away if you want. The dark energy reactor makes refueling unnecessary. We have everything we need right here on this ship. We are on standby, and this ship, small as it is, is comfortable enough for us to remain here as opposed to our docking cabins at space harbors."

"Great," she nodded at him. "I’ll let you know when the first mission is soon enough."

"Very well, Miss Ria."

As sad as she was to depart from the Stellarch, there was no point in spending most of her time there.

Especially when she was going to see Runark for the first time in two months. The young man had finally completed his training regime of three and a half years within the manifold while EsoQuest Solutions prepared itself for its first operation, delegating everything else to his friends while he focused on growing stronger.

Ria knew that he had chosen to undergo training because he was troubled by his combat prowess. She knew that it had always bugged him, which was why she had purposely held back on the missions that she could have taken in order to ensure that they could undertake them together.

And also to hide that she was the highly prodigious Princess of the Kandrian Empire.

But she couldn’t afford to do that anymore. She would soon be undertaking operations that were so tough and risky, that even she would surely be pushed to her limit and her wit’s end. She couldn’t afford to choose a path where he could participate and remain as he was.

STEP

They arrived at the secret region where the Kandrian Manifold was in the Kandrian Empire.

They simply stood in an open clearing in a dark and deep evergreen forest in South Kandria. The air was fresh and smelled of vegetation and greenery, while the bright light of Sol shone upon them in the morning sky. The sound of critters and birds hung in the air.

While they waited for the manifold to open, Ria closed her eyes. She expanded her senses around in the environment.

She had practiced with the Kandrian Manifold several times before, of course.

Finding the entropy vents.

And, finding the flows of causality that served as the sole channels in and out of manifolds while they were folded.

Entropy to her was like noisy causality. It didn’t have reason or rhyme, and while it adhered to the laws of the universe, it wasn’t as clean or orderly as the rest of causality was.

And it was constantly flowing.

Heat was constantly being released into the atmosphere, making energy less and less ordered. Spotting entropy was easy, but identifying which flows of entropy appeared to violate the law of causality was what was tricky.

This was where her system of thought came into action.

"Omnivoyance."

It allowed her to evaluate causality, though she normally used it for specific targets or zones, she could leverage its protocols to allow her to sense smaller phenomenons, even if it was more tiring and reduced her range.

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