The World Dragon's Heir-Chapter 157: Papers Graded

As it turned out, the Baroness was not interested in questions. She simply read the document, took out a fountain pen with red ink, and began to make corrections to his grammar instead.

Dominic hadn’t thought that there were any major issues with his writing, but there was a surprising amount of red ink on each page by the time that she was finished.

When she got to the end of the report, she waited for the last of her red ink to dry, then carefully closed the folder and finally looked up at Dominic.

"Solid effort. The educational plan is sound, with the assumption that your children would be heavily influenced by Dragonkin lineage. There were no missed essential topics, and an acceptable balance between education and physical training.

Your verbiage is middling, and your grammar is barely acceptable for an Advisor. But again, passable.

How much of this was based on your own training?" She asked.

"About three quarters. The rest was brought from what I learned of Cygnia childhood education, or adapted to replace portions I found less effective." Dominic replied.

The Tutor nodded once, then took a final sip of her tea and left with the graded report in her hands.

With the Tutor gone, Dominic didn’t have anything to do for a few minutes. He took the chance to see how the others were doing, and saw many stressed faces. Thorvald looked like he might cry as Lady Camilla criticized the details of his plan.

Whoever had written it for him had forgotten that Cygnia was much more magitech focused, and hadn’t put anything on the topic into the childhood learning plan. Nor had they put any magical training into the plan, only swordsmanship was only listed for the boys.

Half a century ago, it would have been a flawless plan.

But now, with every nation and every Noble Family struggling to get ahead in the race to remain relevant as Magitech began to become part of daily life? It was hopelessly outdated.

Slowly, all the Royal Tutors left, and Crown Prince Claudius tapped the table to gather everyone’s attention.

"Good work on your first trial, everyone. Before the Princess arrives, we will be introducing the second trial. This is one that none of you should have any particular issues with, but the results will be critically important to His Majesty the King’s opinion of your marriage prospects."

The King’s opinion rested on the next result? That was troubling.

And an excellent opportunity.

The Crown Prince’s smile was not a friendly one as he continued.

"Each of you will be given documents on a hypothetical land holding. You will have three days to complete a staffing, budget and operational plan for the estate. Be thorough, be detailed. Though the plan is hypothetical, the chances that the King will grant a peerage to the husband of the Princess are very real." Claudius insisted.

That got the attention of all of the men present. A second holding for the Marquis would be a huge inheritance for his future second child. But for the rest, it would be the nearly mythical chance to earn a newly created title for themselves. freewebnσvel.cѳm

And likely a higher title than a mere Baron.

The staff came around and handed out document folders, each around fifty pages long.

Prince Claudius motioned to the table. "Now, take your seats, the Princess is about to arrive."

Which meant that she was waiting outside the room the whole time.

Princess Alexis walked in as they were all moving to the table, and all the suitors stopped to give her a polite bow, along with the staff.

"Everyone looks pleased with the day’s news. But that’s a matter for the King. Instead of that, I would rather discuss simpler matters.

I have been encouraged to take each of you on separate outings to get to know you better than a public situation would allow. So, I will be calling on each of you over the next few days.

I trust that you all can manage a suitable date, which will only be chaperoned by the Royal Guards. The time limit will only be a few hours, so nothing too grand.

The Palace Staff assigned to you may assist as needed." She explained.

The lunch was served, but everyone was so lost in thought that the conversation didn’t really get any deeper than simple questions about everyone’s day, how they enjoyed the Capital, and any plans they had while visiting the city.

But as a luncheon meeting, the Royals were only in attendance for most of an hour, and then everyone was ready to split off and go find just the right spot to take the Princess.

Dominic had a plan in mind, as long as the Royal Guards didn’t complain.

You could only try for something minimally romantic if you were going to be called on with short notice, and possibly in the middle of the day.

Dominic returned to the room and began to read through the packet that he had been given with the details of the challenge. He had been properly schooled in all of this as a child, and briefly covered it during etiquette lessons here.

Hopefully, he remembered it all correctly. The proper operation of a household and land holding had been one of the most boring and seemingly irrelevant topics to him, raised outside of town as an only child on a plot too small to need hired hands.

But it was the details themselves that had Dominic the most concerned.

They weren’t giving him anything to work with, in the way of existing structure.

There was a Manor House, farms in need of renovation, land that hadn’t been worked in a decade, and the residents would be recruited from nearby cities with the promise of two years tax and crop share free living.

That would get at least a few of the residents of the city to move.

Normally, the sharecroppers would give roughly a quarter of their crop to the Lord in exchange for the land rent. So, two years without was a great boon to them.

The issue was that Dominic could tell that this was intended to be a Wavemates village that had been abandoned since the invasion.

There would be more wrong with the village than simply being abandoned.

So, he started to make notes of all the abandoned villages he had passed through, and what he had noticed, then added the necessary work to the essential staffing that would be needed to run the territory.

How they were going to actually make that a viable property within the two-year grace period was the part which would have to impress the King, he assumed.

And this plan was set up for failure.

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