Inheriting a Lost Bloodline, My First Task is to have heirs?!

Chapter 700 - Efficient Information Gathering (Part 2)

The third stop would be the Port City of Hurley which is a bit more fun to handle as the Hurley family holds at least 1 countdom and 2 baronies shared between relatives of different family branches. Xenos’ mother holds one countdom, while the baronies were held by her maternal cousin and the other by an uncle from a branch family. I would have used the word "challenging" but since their family is huge and I believe that families should share the same fate especially if they love colluding in doing bad things, it would be fun to mess up a whole bunch of people in one go.Though Xenos’ paternal family is only of a Baron rank, still being held by my husband’s paternal grandmother, they actually control 1/3 of the port area in the city. As for the old woman, she was good-natured and compassionate to the people in her lands and workers she had at the ports. The only reason why they couldn’t rise against the other families is because they are being bullied by three different ranked officials. As for the duke, he also holds a neutral stance but it seems it is more of not wanting to have any hassles in dealing with three of his lower ranked officials.

It is actually getting on my nerves and I am so excited to see how long these bastards can stay neutral once I make a move. As for the port, I can always improve and add more to their businesses but as for the other ports owned by the Hurleys, I will make sure they would have a taste of their own bullying. And besides, it is not a problem for me if it can be solved using my brain, my mana or my money anyways.

As for the information I got about the Hurley family members, they seemed to have been submitting fraudulent documents for approval through all these years when asking for funding for projects, repars and such from the Dukedom and also when reporting profits of their respective areas. With those documents, there were also signs of evading taxes that supposed to be paid to the central government and embezzlement of funds that were supposed to be used for helping those in need like orphanages, hospitals and such. Their family just gets increasingly interesting and infuriating at the same time the more I read through the information that was gathered about them.

My last stop is the Fortress City of Borg which is more of a military type territory. Yren’s mother worked as a mercenary for a time as part of her training outside of her household. During that few years that she was outside, she met Yren’s father who was also working as a mercenary at that time. She saw his amazing potential as a leader and skilled fighter though young so she purposely hid her family background until their relationship was confirmed and consummated.

After Yren was born, her mother went back to her family and used their connections and wealth to take the child’s custody forcefully while making sure that Yren’s father will not have a means to meet their child. Clearly, she just wanted to keep him for herself out her sick pride but did not want to marry him in since he is just an orphan working as a mercenary. To make sure he can’t do anything to get the child back, they disfigured his face and gravely injured him before exiling him far away.

It took some time for Yren’s father to recover given that he just given birth to a child that was taken from him by force then he was gravely injured and lost a lot of blood. After recovering, he had to go back to mercenary work to earn some money to be able to support himself and pay someone to find any information about his ex-lover who did not even gave him her real name. It took a lot time to get information before finally finding out that she is currently a noble in the Fortress City of Borg. He had to save money again to finally travel to the place, hoping that he can at least see his son even by secret.

By the time he was able to get back to the Fortress City of Borg, Yren was already sent to the capital as an offer in exchange for benefits for his ex-lover’s family. Yren’s father was only a small time mercenary then not the Condottiero of Wrath that he is now so he had no way at that time to find exactly where Yren was or find any means to take his son back.

Out of all the backstories of my four husbands’ origins, I think this is the worst one in terms of betrayal and blood feud levels. If Yren’s father was in any way physically or mentally weak, he would have died with all his injuries and the fact that he was betrayed, heartbroken and even lost his son. He is the strongest man I have known so far. If only this father-in-law’s territory was the nearest, I would have loved to visit him first before anybody else.

I checked on the insider information that the people I paid found out about Yren’s mother’s family and it seems that although they were indeed protectors of the northern territory from the bandits and rebels for generations, recently, there isn’t much to defend for. They feared that they will lose their worth and the favor that the royal family has given them so they started to do shady things to stay needed.

They started paying groups of rogues and people from far away territories to hijack merchant caravans, stage theft of businesses or arson of forests or even reputable establishments that have had issues with them (not paying protection fees). The worst part is, they even started a scheme of kidnapping some small nobles or merchants for ransom here and there to earn extra money on the side.

After making sure that the problem has been widely talked about in their territory and fear has already spread far and wide enough, their family will then miraculously solve the issues each and every time. They would even pretend to apprehend the people who were guilty of the crime and put them in jail but the truth was, these people were then freed once the issue has died down from the public’s attention to do more shady acts for them. After that, the same people will then be sent to create other disturbances or made-up crimes. In this way, their services always seemed to be needed by the people and the empire.

As for the area north of the Fortress City of Borg, they named it as a wasteland. I couldn’t even blame them as the area is said to be filled with refugees from different parts of the empire and even those from other places and territories who had nowhere else to go, remaining rebel forces from fallen kingdoms and territories, exiled criminals and their families as well as escaped slaves. The resources are very scarce in that place but it is also the haven of the mercenary group, WRATH which keeps everything in basic order.

The first time I heard about the existence of this so-called "Wasteland", it immediately piqued my interest. I wanted to see for myself if it was really what they said it was, a hopeless region. I couldn’t help but ask: "Is it really just a useless wasteland or is it actually a sanctuary for totally misunderstood people?"