Er.
Quick crash course on the current theories of entropic decay, which PMMM universe seems to work on, more or less.
The universe expands at an accelerated rate. That means that the clusters of matter we call celestial bodies have a prevailing tendency to come apart at a constantly increasing rate.
Any new matter or energy introduced to such a system will always require a corresponding increase in quantity with time to counteract the constant acceleration of expansion of the system.
In other words the matter remains, yes, but in a lower energy state useless in terms of anything related to energy consumption. And as it does so at an accelerated rate, currently explained by dark energy theory, there never will be enough energy introduced to the universe to sustain it.
As an attendum, some Questers raised a possibility that, due to Incubators constantly combating entropy, as they claim to, at least, the observable acceleration of expansion of the universe doesn't reflect the actual physical constants of entropic decay. As it is, heat death of the universe is scheduled to start sometime in a thousand billion years, more or less. Depending on how much effort and energy the incubators spend on fighting entropy, the life in the universe became sustainable only because of their efforts in the dark-energy-dominated era of the universe.
Well, of course they also could use Magical Girls as their energy industry, which is also fighting entropy, lol.
It basically depends on how you want to combat entropy, if you want provide energy for the universes constant expansion, then the energy cost is ever increasing, if you simply decide that you only want to support a set number of systems, then the cost is fixed.
...Um. Sir, when the entire problem is that energy becomes progressively unusable and everything atomically deteriorates, and the Incubators are (allegedly) trying to maintain interstellar civilization, which by the nature of civilization will always need more energy as it does more things, the rate at which the Incubators need to collect energy will only ever ascend, which means the need to circumvent entropy will only exponentially increase as a priority and need.
Like holy shit just compare humanity's energy consumption today to what it was even just 30 years ago.
Well yeah if they want to support expansion they will always need more energy, but that's not just counteracting entropy, that's straight-up reversing entropy, so the rule is changed to the universe gaining more useable energy all the time.
If the Incubators merely want to preserve a status quo, where things neither grow nor shrink, then they only need so much energy.
If QB has a way to remove grief from Soul Gems/Grief Seeds, why would he not set up Soul Gem farms instead? PM can generate grief much faster than witches in seeds, and by farming the Soul Gems there's no need to have someone defeat a witch and retrieve the seed.
Personally my guess is that he's only able to siphon grief from Grief Seeds, and it's an involved process that require specialized equipment, Grief Seeds overflow with Grief, whereas in Soul gems the Grief is deep down, in Grief Seeds the grief is on the surface, and QB is only capable of skimming Grief off the top, not reach deep down inside and extract the Grief.
I also suspect the equipment they use to extract the Grief, inflict additional suffering on the Grief Seed, increasing the rate at which Grief Seeds generate Grief, to be equal or greater to the rate at which a PM can generate Grief, because if that wasn't the case, I think QB would be way more interested in our power than he is, as if Soul Gems produce more Grief per day, than Grief Seeds the Incubators are draining, they would want to figure out a way to duplicate our power, because while Witchouts stopping being a thing, would cost them a huge one time payout, if it would increase their sustained income, it would eventually be more efficient, to have a PM stay a PM instead of becoming a Witch, and for immortal beings like QB, there's no functional difference between eventually and right now.
If the Incubators actually didn't have the ability to extract Grief without destroying the Grief Seed, then we should have had QB offering us just about anything, up to and including the Incubator's permanent withdrawal from Earth, in return for our help figuring out how to duplicate our powers, because our power would in such a scenario, be the key to the Incubators going from finite one time profits, to eternally renewing profit sources, which for a specie that fully expect to exist forever, is infinitely greater than any finite amount of profits, as to them it don't matter if it take a billion years, to produce as much power as the finite on time profit did, they have an infinite amount of billion years to extract energy in, so they will still eventually get infinitely more energy.
So I'm almost sure the Incubators have some mean of non-destructively extracting Grief, although it's likely to be inferior to our own, from the simple fact, that if they had no such thing, they should be offering us nearly anything, for the opportunity to duplicate our mean of doing so, or be trying to kidnap us for experimentation at all costs, as they aren't doing either of those things, they clearly already have some form of means, to turn a Grief Seed into an eternal source of energy.
