Reborn as the Psycho Villainess Who Ate Her Slave Beasts' Contracts

But handling a company and handling an empire were two completely different things.

Elara looked at the empire’s records—it took her three full days of non-stop examination to completely finish reviewing everything. When she looked at all the receipts, ledgers, tax records, military reports, and administrative documents, she found something that made even her emotionless assessment pause.

The empire was completely ruined from the inside.

From the older records and historical comparisons, it seemed like the Empire was like an old porcelain doll from the outside—it looked beautiful, prosperous, powerful. Gleaming white palaces, well-dressed nobles, impressive military parades.

But inside? Completely hollow. Rotten. Damp with corruption that had seeped into every crack and crevice of the governmental structure.

And with the Emperor’s fall into a coma, the nobles’ minds were drifting toward something else entirely. Everyone now wanted a piece of the empire. Everyone wanted control. Power. Influence. The carefully maintained balance that the Emperor had enforced through fear and blood magic was collapsing.

If not for the official decree they’d managed to produce—sealed with the Emperor’s own seal while he was in his coma, declaring that Elara would be the seat holder and acting regent—it would have caused immediate civil war.

But even that official declaration didn’t completely solve the problem.

Because now that Elara was the seat holder, people developed a different motive.

Marriage.

Elara was a woman. A royal woman. And despite her capabilities, despite everything she’d accomplished, the traditional noble mindset saw that as an opportunity, not a threat.

The marriage prospect letters started arriving.