Becoming a real wife?

"Are you sure that you want to live like this for the rest of your life?"`, she asked her friend.

Tanya laughed helplessly, "Do you think I have a choice? You know that my father can't reject the Protector after he saved his life."

"But is becoming a concubine really the only way?"

"If you have any other idea I would gladly hear it."

Lara thought about it but sadly she didn't come up with anything. Leaving the empire and hiding somewhere was no option either because it was way to hard to try one's signature inside the safe zone. Sure if she lived in the wilderness, nobody would be able to find her but she might as well not live at all. There was no civilization there and living like this for a long time would really mess with one's head.

Leaving the realm was no option either because in the upper realm nobody nothing would keep her safe from Lord Keith who was stronger than her.

"Then how about becoming a real wife? Wouldn't that be better?", although there wasn't any difference between being a wife and concubine according to the System and the law, besides being lower in the hierarchy, for aristocrats, there was a big difference. For them, the wife had to be from a similar standing and had an official position while a concubine was more of a lover and had no social standing.

There was silence on the other end of the call until finally, she could hear Tanya take a deep breath as if she had made a decision. "Alright, but first I have to tell you something."

"Shoot."

"No, not over the phone. Let's meet and then we can talk about it and if you are alright with it we can then sign the contract."

Lara was wondering why her friend would only tell it to her in person, but she easily accepted it.

"Alright. Then come over whenever you want."

After that, they chatted a bit more, mainly about how Lara was living ever since she had met her husband.

After finishing the call Lara leaned back in her chair and fell into deep thoughts. Although she too hadn't had a choice with her husband, it was more or less her own fault. Back then they really shouldn't have taken the mission, but she had insisted since she thought that they could manage it. So it was her own decision which had led to her being raped, which then triggered her family rule. If not for this, she would have had free choice of who to marry. This was the way of the Berg family. They won't force their members to marry someone they don't want, but after they had chosen they had to live with their choice.

Many other daughters of nobility envied the freedom of the commoners to chose their own husbands, while they had to marry the ones arranged by their family.

Lara couldn't help but think about her little sister who had married the owner of a small business. When they had married, their family, together with her husband, had decided to hide the fact that their family was an aristocratic family. But that had been a decision made freely and easily reversible. This led to her sister living a happy life without anyone trying to get close to her because of her status. *I really should invite them over sometimes.*

Collecting her thoughts she then opened the last application. When she saw the picture she was shocked. Although she hadn't specified anything about the physical appearance, it was highly unusual that someone, who was not at least better looking than average, would apply for the position of a concubine. As such seeing, the image of an old woman, sitting in a wheelchair came as a shock to her.

If her goal was to only find a concubine for the satisfaction of her husband, then she surely would have ignored the application but since the System accepted the application, the woman should fulfill the requirements. Therefore she would help with completing the quest 'Stabilizing the Bloodline', if not with the quest 'Curbing the flareups'. The first quest would only require them to marry and not have intercourse so the physical capabilities didn't matter. The second on the other hand would most likely be impossible.

Thinking this way she continued reading through the application until she came to the one sentence the old woman had written. "I can help with the unstable bloodline."

When she read that sentence, she couldn't help but take a deep breath. Just from reading the job offer, this woman had understood their reason for searching for concubines. "Can she really?", she asked herself. "She should since she knew what happened."

Thinking this far, she once again made a call.

To her surprise, a young voice answered, "Hello, this is Lucia Lefair."

Hearing her name, Lara was sure that she was somehow related to the one who applied. "Hello, this is Lara Hope. Could I please speak with Celine Lefair?" She had used the family name Hope since her name Van Berg was too well-known and after all, she had posted the job offer in her capacity as the first wife of Ivan and as such as a member of the Hope family.

"Ah, you have to call because of the job application.", Lucia instantly understood the reason for the call, since she knew the name, "Please wait for a bit, I will give the phone to my mother."

After that Lara could hear her hurried steps. "Here mom, a call for you."

"Hello, I'm Celine.", the woman introduced herself.

"Hello. I hope I don't interrupt anything but I wanted to talk to you about what you have written in your application. Are you serious?"

Hearing her straightforward question the woman laughed lightly, "Of course. But I don't know if you want to use the way I know."

"What do you mean?"

"Although I know a way of stabilizing bloodlines, or to be exact to strengthen an aspect of a bloodline, it is of the evil path."

Lara knew about the evil path. While it was rare to see anything of that path in this realm, in the upper realm it wasn't all that uncommon. Training by doing evil deeds could increase the speed of advancement and as such was of fatal attraction for many. But as always there was a tradeoff. The more one went down the evil path, the more one lost one's feelings until only negative feelings, as well as apathy, was left. Most of those that had trained on the evil path for longer would become psychopaths.

"How bad?"

Seeing that Lara didn't instantly reject it, Celine let out a breath of relief. If she had been rejected, then there was no way for her to ever get her revenge.

"Not that bad, it is just that the guy who developed it was a sadistic pervert and as such anyone who uses the ritual would be influenced to have similar tendencies. But because of the structure of the ritual, these tendencies would only be directed towards the ritual partner."

Hearing this Lara felt relieved. This didn't sound bad at all, at least for a technique of the evil path.

"Ritual Partner?"

"Yes. The ritual consists of two people. For once the person whose bloodline is supposed to be strengthened and who takes the position of master and the person who will sacrifice his or her Bloodline Power."

"Sacrifice his or her bloodline power? Does that mean that someone gives up his or her bloodline, so the other person bloodline can be strengthened?", Lara focused on the main point.

"Not at all. I guess you don't know the difference between Bloodline Power and Bloodline Aspects and their strength.", she then explained without waiting for Lara's reply, "Bloodline Aspects determine the bloodline and can be seen as innate traits of the bloodline, while Bloodline Power is what we call the power capacity we have in our bloodline, after reaching Earth Realm. From this point, the term is a bit misleading since it is used for two things at the same time. The capacity of our bloodline, as well as the power we inject into our bloodline skills."

"Then for the ritual, doesn't the partner have to have Bloodline Power, which means that she has to be at least Earth Rank?", Lara asked. If this was really the case, then the ritual would be useless. There is no way that someone above Earth Rank would sacrifice her power just to help Ivan.

"Mmm, this is one of the requirements. You didn't think that it would be easy did you?"

"No, but isn't the ritual useless this way?"

"Normally it would be but since I have brought it up, I too have a way to get it to work.", Celine paused. After this, there would be no way for her to go back. It was either risk everything now or slowly die in the near future. She could only hope that this bet would work out.