Revive Rome: Wait! Why not make the empress fall in love with me first?
Chapter 184 - 88: Buying Materials

Chapter 184: Chapter 88: Buying Materials

The battle had ended.

Most of the Snow Monsters were killed, their bodies littering the ground; only a few had managed to escape, but the mercenaries had no time to pursue them.

They were busy harvesting the Spiritual Materials belonging to their side to prevent the other side from taking advantage.

Andrea waved to call over a mercenary and asked,

"Which items are our spoils, and which are theirs? Can you distinguish them clearly?"

"We can distinguish them clearly." The mercenary, obviously relieved that the battle was over, replied casually, "The Snow Monsters they killed have neat, red linear wounds on their bodies (caused by the Hot Melt Blade), which are easy to recognize."

"Alright, what’s the approximate ratio of the spoils between the two sides?" Andrea furrowed his brow.

"3 to 7," the mercenary responded.

It went without saying who got three and who got seven.

Andrea dismissed the mercenary and sighed with concern.

Herman remained silent by his side; he knew Andrea wasn’t asking out of fear that the spoils would get mixed up, but rather to see if there was a chance to take advantage of the confusion.

Discovering there wasn’t, and that the others would take 70% of the spoils—how could he not be worried?

After all the Spiritual Materials were gathered, the group continued onward.

Herman fell quietly to the back of the line, approaching the people of The Azure Longsword.

After he made his intentions clear, the girls were quite surprised. Buying materials?

It wasn’t entirely out of the question... Aske pondered for a moment before signaling Nora and Medea to negotiate with him.

Too harsh! Nora thought to herself.

The so-called business negotiation was a process of continually testing the other party’s offers and bottom lines. Sending Medea, a Mind Reading specialist, to negotiate—how could that possibly be fair?

It was as if they were planning to take everything but the other side’s underwear.

With this thought, she couldn’t help but show a look of pity.

Herman: ...

Clearly, this blond noble too had realized this, as his gloomy face began to show an ugly expression.

"Alright, since everyone knows, let’s not waste time," Medea sneered, narrowing her eyes at Herman. "I know your psychological bottom line, 340 silver marks for each portion of Snow Monster fat; I also know you are desperately in need of our materials to make corresponding cold-resistant Extraordinary Items."

"And from the beginning, your squad leader’s malicious intentions toward us—I’m entirely aware of them," she crossed her arms, showing a cold smile like a cat that had caught a mouse, "So our asking price is firm."

"340 silver marks, not a mark less."

Herman’s expression shifted several times, and he said with difficulty,

"I need to discuss this with Andrea."

"Medea..." After Herman left, Nora tugged on her arm worriedly, "Isn’t this pushing them too hard?"

"Their enemies include a large number of Frost Sequence Transcendents, so they urgently need Frost Sequence Spiritual Materials recently to manufacture cold-resistant Extraordinary Items," Medea chuckled, "If we don’t seize this opportunity to make some money from them, I don’t deserve to be called a Mind Ability User."

Nora was speechless.

On the other side, Herman found Andrea and relayed the situation, causing Andrea nearly to jump:

"340 marks?! Why don’t they just rob us?"

"The Mind Witch," Herman said.

Andrea quickly understood, his face drooping like a frost-stricken eggplant.

Negotiating a deal when the other party can read minds meant that any bargaining tricks were meaningless—your highest price tolerance and the determination to buy were all exposed to the other’s abilities, leaving nothing hidden.

How could one describe the situation other than tragic?

"What if we don’t buy?" Andrea’s eyes twitched.

"They know we’ll definitely buy," Herman reminded him that the other side could read minds.

"You shouldn’t have gone," Andrea said worriedly, "We should have sent a mercenary who knew nothing, just responsible for sending messages from a distance, to avoid face-to-face negotiations where the other party could read minds."

"Just like what the Normans did with the Hansa Alliance," Herman said.

"Is there any extraordinary ability that can erase memories from the other side?" Andrea fancifully asked.

"Yes," Herman replied, "Kill them; dead people don’t have memories."

"Are you serious?" Andrea was shocked.

"Of course not," Herman said, "to be honest, we probably can’t beat them."

"No way," Andrea laughed incredulously, "Wanting to and being able to are two different things. Our mercenary group outnumbers them ten to one, and they’re all carefully selected elites. You say my command ability is inferior to theirs, I believe that, but my men can’t beat them?"

Herman did not reply, he indeed had no solid evidence, just some intuition.

Anyway, setting aside that matter for now... Although the Steel Cross Mercenaries had almost definitely decided to spend the money, Andrea still harbored some unrealistic hopes, planning to stall a bit longer for a possible opportunity.

For instance, if the Azure Longsword encountered danger later on, then Steel Cross Mercenaries could come to the rescue, earning a big favor.

Or, they might encounter some other extraordinary creature later, and its spiritual material happened to be what the Azure Longsword wanted.

In short, find a reason to ask the Azure Longsword to lower the price.

The group continued forward, the path was rather safe; it seemed all the Snow Monsters nearby had been cleared out in the recent fight.

Andrea used the great sword as a walking stick, forging ahead in the snow while muttering something under his breath.

Herman clearly heard him grumbling, "Why aren’t there any more monsters?"

Herman: ......

You better stop dreaming and just prepare the money.

"Sigrdrifa?" Aske asked Sigrdrifa from the Azure Longsword group behind him, "How’s your digestion of the Magic Potion going?"

"About one-sixth left," Sigrdrifa responded.

"One-sixth left?" Aske was astonished. "Wasn’t it a quarter last time? How long do you plan to take to digest a mere Frost I? At this level of Magic Potion, if this were a player, they’d have fully digested it by staying up and grinding for two nights!"

Seeing Aske’s grim expression, Sigrdrifa shrank back and tried to sneak away quietly.

"Stop," Aske said.

Sigrdrifa obediently halted.

"Do you know why you need to work hard on digesting the Magic Potion?" Aske asked.

Sigrdrifa shook her head repeatedly.

"There’s a weapon in these mountains we must get our hands on," Aske said.

"What weapon?" Sigrdrifa immediately perked up.

"Biril’s Axe, you’ve heard of it, right?" Aske said, "Also known as the North Wind Axe."

"Is this North Wind Axe strong?" Sigrdrifa inquired.

"Strong," Aske replied.

"That’s great!" the simple-minded Sigrdrifa immediately brightened up.

"The condition to obtain that battle axe is that you must have the ’Frost’ and ’Giant’ Magic Potion Sequences," Aske explained. "The North Wind Axe is extremely cold and heavy; only those with Frost Abilities can endure its low temperature, and only those with Giant Bloodline Abilities can lift it."

"Then I’ll quickly focus on my exercises and strive to take the Giant I Potion as soon as possible!" Sigrdrifa quickly resolved.

Watching Sigrdrifa’s renewed enthusiasm, Aske finally breathed a sigh of relief.

In fact, besides the necessary two sequences, to pull out the North Wind Axe, one also needed to pass its test of spirit, which was the so-called compatibility judgment between the weapon and its wielder.

This was why Aske had not yet told Sigrdrifa—going for the test of spirit with a strong purpose might backfire.

However, given Sigrdrifa’s simple and straightforward thinking, she probably would suit the axe just fine.