Capítulo 105: What the hell are you doing?
After having finished her work, Lara took a look at the responses to the job offer she had posted. Because of the stringent requirements, she didn't expect there to be many and the facts proved her right. There were only five applications. She slowly read through each of them in the order they had come in.
The first one was from a single mother who wanted a better chance for her son. One of the offers she had made was that she would help one relative to enter any school. In the empire, the schools were divided into different grades with the free schools, like the one Ivan was going to, being of the lowest grade and the Imperial School at the top. For the schools besides the free schools, not only did they require on to pay a huge amount of fees, but there were also stringent requirements to social status. For her, as a princess, it was easy to get a slot at any school, so she had put the offer in and it seemed like it was a good move.
The woman didn't mention which school she wanted her son to go to, but she was sure that she would want the best possible, so made a remark in her todo list to get a slot for the Imperial School. She then carefully read through the info on the woman. Although the System would only allow applicants who fulfilled the requirements, there were still some things to take note of. When she read the age of the woman and the son she had to smile. Although the woman wasn't that much older than herself, the son was only one year younger than the current Ivan. Thinking about how Ivan would legally have a son only one year younger really amused her.
The next one was quite an unusual case. She was only fifteen at the moment which was less than the required age for marriage, which was sixteen. But because of the duration of the contract, the System had allowed the application to go through. Until she was sixteen the relationship would be different with her being protected by the System from any abuse, but after reaching age sixteen the System would enforce some extra rules. Because of that, there would seldom be girls that wanted to become a concubine before age sixteen.
From the description, this girl wanted to escape her foster parents, who were her aunt and uncle. There wasn't much information but it seemed like after her real parents had died her relatives had taken her in and used as a slave. The only way for her to escape was to find a new guardian but because of her own status, it was hard to find someone. Her father was a duke and she had inherited the title, with her uncle acting in her stead. After that, he had blocked any attempts of her to find new guardians. Besides that, the laws prohibited anyone to be the guardian of someone of a higher status, unless one was family.
The girl had read between the lines and seeing that Lara had been able to offer a slot at any school, which included the Imperial School, she had guessed that her status was high enough to become her guardian.
Lara didn't have any contact with any of the aristocracy, besides her friends, for a long time, so she didn't know anything about what had happened lately, but she remembered the duke. They had once met at a social gathering and had chatted for a bit. Back then he had been accompanied by his beautiful wife who was pregnant at that time. The child should be the girl now applying for the job.
Thinking about it, she felt that the girl was quite pitiful and so decided to check out the situation, to see if she could help her without the girl having to give up so much.
The next person was the most normal case. It was an adventurer who had reached only level 649 and was now planning to settle down. She wanted to take up Laras offer of a permit, to build a farm in one of the special districts.
The special districts were areas inside the safe zone that had E grade soil or better. This better grade soil would have much higher harvests than the other, so it was very popular with farmers. But since there weren't that many such areas they were worth a lot and mostly in the hands of the higher aristocracy. Lara owned such an area, which was sized a few tens of square kilometers, she had been gifted by her mother when she had given birth to Jane. Currently, she had someone manage it for her, but she had planned to get some permanent settlers who would lease a plot of land. This way she would be eligible, to get her own title, which would be of some help in her business. As such, she took the opportunity to offer some plots of lands, which would solve two problems at the same time.
When she read the name of the next one she almost spat out the tree she was drinking. It was someone she knew and whom she never expected to see applying to the position of a concubine. After gulping down the tea she pulled out her phone and made a call.
"Tanya, what the hell are you doing?", she asked as soon as the call went through.
"Huh? Lara, what's the matter? You call after such a long time and don't even greet me?", from the other end, a soft voice answered with questions of its own.
"Your concubine application.", Lara gritted her teeth as she specified.
"How do you know?", Tanya sounded surprised, "Don't tell me you made the offer?"
"Yes, but don't try to evade the question. Why the hell did you apply for such a job?"
But once again Tanya ignored her question, "That's great. It will be so much better with you being the wife. This way, I won't be bullied.", after saying that she giggled.
This time Lara exploded in anger, "Tanya, f*cking tell me why you applied."
"Alright, alright. Calm down.", Tanya hurriedly tried to calm her down. "You know how my old man is right? He is worried because I haven't married yet, so he found me a fiance."
"So? He loves you to death, so the one he found shouldn't be bad."
"Well, it seems like Lord Keith has heard about my father looking for a fiance. I'm sure you can imagine the rest."
Lara could imagine what happened. Lord Keith was a special existence in the Empire of Sun. After his father had done some outstanding deeds for the royal family, he had gotten the title of protector. Due to this title, he was mostly free from the commands of the emperor, which wasn't a big problem, because they had been best friends for a long time.
Lord Keith, on the other hand, was a completely different person. Luckily the title of protector couldn't be inherited, or it would lead to many problems later on. Lord Keith was feared all through the capital because of his style of doing things. He used the status of his father to oppress the common people and there were rumors that he had even caused some of the smaller families to vanish after they refused to offer their daughters to him. Sadly there was no evidence and with his father standing behind him, nobody dared to go against him without any hard evidence.
This guy had been after Tanya for a long time, but with her status, there was no way he could do anything to her. Now with her father looking for a fiance, he had pressured his father to talk to the emperor about making him the fiance and his father, who loved him to a fault, wasn't able to reject him and brought up the topic to his friend.
The emperor too had heard the rumors about Lord Keith, but he was unable to reject his friend. The only thing he could do was to offer his daughter a way out. If she was able to find a marriage partner, he would support her. As such she had looked through the concubine offers at the job portal in search of one with a high enough standing for her to take. As a princess, she couldn't just take any offer. If she loved her partner there would be no problem, but since she didn't have anyone she loved, she would have to select someone who had a high enough standing and the only one she found was Laras offer.
After explaining all that Tanya then asked, "So what do you think? Could you help me with this."
Lara thought about it. Since Tanya was from a royal family her bloodline should be of a higher grade which would be good for the quest. Besides that she was her friend, so helping her was a must. It was just that she didn't want her to have to live the rest of her life as a concubine. Because she didn't think that Lord Keith would let her go if she divorced and as such, she would have to stay as a concubine until either of them died or Lord Keith lost all his power.
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