Herald of Steel

In a weird twist of events, it was the nobles' lust for beautiful girls that somehow made their lives better.

The pimps learned it the hard way that if they did not have the proper 'papers' for their girls, any powerful lord could snatch their exquisite wares using the excuse of implementing the law.

'I am buying her to give her freedom,' He could claim and the slavers would have to just nod and agree.

So frustrated by this 'injustice' the various slavers got clever and began to make these entertaining girls sign a slave contract when they came of age.

The core point perhaps remained the same- the brothels still owned them, and perhaps it was a bit more expensive initially than simple kidnapping, but these small inconvieneces were more than offset by the fact that it was much easier to do business now.

In fact, as the pimps started to do this, they soon found to their surprise that in the long run, it was more profitable this way because now they could charge the nobles and rich merchants far more if one of them tried to buy their girls.

Previously the nobles could perhaps strong arm the slavers into taking only a token sum for their wares, using the excuse they also did not pay anything for the girl in the first place.

But now… with the contracts and payment receipts as proof, these brothels had far more bargaining power.

Whereas previously a beautiful girl might only fetch 10,000 ropals, now the owners could demand as much as 100,000.

"We bought her for this much, my lord. How can I live if I sell her for any less?"

And the men still bought them because cost was not the determining factor here.

They were in love!

Furthermore, the girls' high prices also let the brothel owners 'milk' them for far longer.

Because it would now take the interested men far more time to earn the required amount of money to free the girls.

And while he was trying to do this, he would have to also constantly visit his woman, paying for her service, new clothes and ever gifting her jewelry.

This was the social norm and courting ritual of the time, so the man had to do this both show his love as well as to reassure his woman he was still interested.

Because otherwise, there was the always the possibility that she might just run away with another similarly interested man.

And many brothels even encouraged such competition, asking the girls to keep multiple men with arm's reach, giving all of them some hints that she might be interested but never committing to any of them.

They had to give just enough hope to keep the men believing they had a chance, but never actually taking that last step, letting the man have just enough rope to tie himself to the girl, but never enough to 'hang himself', so that he does not feel frustrated and takes his business elsewhere.

Yes, a girl stringing multiple boyfriends was not a modern invention, it was almost as old as time.

How shocking!

Also, as one could guess, this 'edging' was a very, very delicate art. It required a lot of brains to string multiple men along without tipping off the other.

After all, these men were not stupid.

Lovestruck…. Certainly. But still, they would be aware of the play.

This was also one of the reasons brothels did not like stupid girls. In fact, the high end ones did not even like regular smart girls- because they simply did not have the talent to play these types of games.

Only the most skilled and smart courtesans had the talent to do this as they had to be really tactful in what they said, even having to consider that their clients might meet and discuss what she had said to them in private.

Although this was very rare and socially extremely frowned upon, it did happen.

And what happened if a courtesean said 'I love you' to ten different men and then got found out…. well a large part of noble lady's gossip in the capital was actually filled discussing such things.

Which lord was seeing which high level courtesan but was actually being cheated out of all his money?

The ones who got to rise to the very top were the ones who truly mastered this art.n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

These top courtesans usually lived in the capital and would play the gullible men like a fiddle, sometimes even having multiple noble young masters in their palms.

Everyday they would come up with a mountain of excuses for each of them why she was not yet ready to settle down yet and demand more proofs of his love.

Yes, it was not only the men who asked the women to prove themselves. The girls did it too and many times, it was even more than the men.

For their case, there would usually be demands of increasing amounts of money- in terms of exotic food, drinks, cosmetics, clothes, jewelry, etc.

Something that many of the fools were more than happy to fulfill, all in the hopes of one day being lucky enough to be the one to have her hand.

Despite suspecting they were being played, few were ever deterred.

Wearing rose tinted glasses, most of these love struck fools simply gave the woman the benefit of the doubt, letting them squeeze every bit of 'blood' out of him like a vampire.

Thus some of the top popular girls in the capital became almost like money printing machines for their owners, helping them rack in tens, if not hundreds of thousands ropals by the end. Read latest chapters at empire

This even caused some greedy pimps to forge fake contracts and receipts to inflate the price of his girls, so that he could keep them longer in his house while stringing the love-struck fools along.

After all, every single visit from every single one of those men entitled to an injection of money.

Although in reality, this type of fraud was a rarity in most high class establishments because nobles were smart people.

And all commoners knew not to mess with them, especially when it came to things like love.

Perhaps they could get away with it once or twice, but if one wanted repeat business, honesty was still the best policy.

Besides, the high level girls made them so much anyway that such tricks were simply not worth the hassle.

There was even one estimate that said even if the pimps bought a high class girl for her maximum price- 100,000 ropals, over her lifetime, she could make them anywhere from five to even ten times the amount once her sale price was taken into account.

Such huge profit margins were also easily enough to offset the cost of even a hundred failed 'ugly' girls and the paltry amount of food they were originally bought with at the age of seven.

So over time, the slavers started to prefer buying over kidnapping.

Aside from the economic benefit, these pimps also noticed their girls tended to be happier and live longer when they did this.

This was of course because by beginning to work a bit late, their bodies and minds got more time to mature and develop, making them more… for lack of a better word… resistant to the hazards of the profession.

And due to the same reason, the quality of their service also improved as these more mature girls actually understood what they were doing.

So they had various ways to charm the men, not just by using exotic techniques in bed, but also singing, dancing, and even flattery.

All these things took time to learn and it would have been impossible for a girl to do or ever understand if she was too young.

This also inadvertently let brothel owners find out that this was the best way to raise prostitutes- to simply train them from childhood.

It gave them the maximum time to train and then employ them.

While in the case of slavery or forced coersion these girls would not be that skilled.

This was of course easily understandable- for one, their training times were much lower, depending on the age they were captured. Because no matter the age these girls started work, their expiration date was the same- twenty to at best thirty years.

These captured girls also might not be that enthusiastic in bed.

After all, it was hard to entertain clients properly if one had to constantly fear the stick hanging over the head.

And lastly, these girls might have hidden bitterness inside them.

And when you had them rubbing shoulders with the nobility and tempting them to fall in love, this had too much potential to cause fires.

For example- an aggrieved working lady might incite a love smitten lord to take actions against her owner, complaining about all the abuses she had suffered.

Such statements would usually be true because which self respecting slaver did not beat his slave once or twice?

Then when these charges were indeed proven true, the slavers had to worry about being made slaves themselves by a furious lord.

Because nobles in Adhania held almost god like powers in front of commoners,

So considering all things, most slavers chose a much softer approach.

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