Revive Rome: Wait! Why not make the empress fall in love with me first?
Chapter 196 - 100 We Are Just Pirates

Chapter 196: Chapter 100 We Are Just Pirates

Sigrdrifa walked the streets of Helensing.

After docking, the captain and first officer went off to sell their stolen goods, and the rest of the pirates set off for some boisterous revelry.

Only Sigrdrifa made her way toward the Municipal Library.

She always felt an unreal sense of detachment from her surroundings, unsure why. A voice in her head kept reminding her—pushing her to remember—but she just couldn’t recall.

"Follow your heart..." the voice said.

Follow my heart, Sigrdrifa told herself.

To explore like a Viking, to conquer, to become a noble lord with my own army.

Only then would she have the power to find and take revenge on the lord who destroyed her village and killed her mother.

It was distressing to realize she didn’t even know who her enemy was; Old Wild hadn’t been in the village at the time and thus lacked any clues to their identity.

By the time he and Sigrdrifa returned to the village, it had been burned to the ground.

After burying her mother, Sigrdrifa naturally became a pirate.

Her explosive power and physical strength were startling, possessing none of the weaknesses typically attributed to a woman’s body. She could match the strongest sailors on board sword for sword in combat and laugh heartily after throwing overboard any pirate who dared to make crude remarks at her.

What’s more, the pirates couldn’t be sure whether or not Sigrdrifa was their daughter, even though Old Wild, based on her date of birth, ruled out most men as potential fathers; however, most pirates claimed this was Old Wild’s lie.

His goal was to have everyone’s daughter treated as his own.

The profession of piracy was, in truth, rather dull; most of the time was spent staring out at the unchanging sea, devoid of any amusement.

Thus, the pirates were quite fond of the idea of having daughters on board, to the extent that any greenhorn who tried to lay hands on Sigrdrifa ended up with broken limbs, tied to the mast by the other pirates.

After spending six years aboard a pirate ship, Sigrdrifa had grown into a beautiful young woman with golden hair down to her waist, yet, she was moving farther and farther away from her mother Lisa’s initial dream of "marrying into nobility."

Sigrdrifa entered the Municipal Library, and the guard couldn’t help but give her an extra glance, for her waist-length golden hair was dazzling; heaven knows how many years it took to maintain it.

The library was built with donations from the newly settled Solomon Sect in Helensing, with the goal of spreading the knowledge and glory of God.

Although access wasn’t limited to anyone, considering that most Normans of the era were illiterate, there were very few who cared to visit this library to read.

Sigrdrifa stepped into the library and, confronted with the clean wooden floors and orderly bookshelves, felt an unaccountable sense of intimidation.

Then, she faced another problem: she was illiterate and didn’t know which book to start with.

After standing in front of the bookshelves for half an hour, a clear voice sounded beside her:

"May I ask, do you have a problem?"

Sigrdrifa turned to look; it was a handsome, blond young man, wearing clothes that Sigrdrifa didn’t recognize but appeared quite proper and luxurious, his expression gentle.

"Um, I’m looking for some elementary books," Sigrdrifa said.

"You can’t read?" The young man seemed surprised.

He was drawn by her extraordinary beauty and guessed she must be the daughter of some local noble and so had come over to talk.

Even though her clothes were very plain, what this youth did not expect was that the girl would actually admit to her illiteracy, which surely meant she was not of noble birth.

What a shame for that beautiful, waterfall-like pale golden hair.

Even though his initial interest waned considerably, the young man still patiently selected several books and handed them to her:

"Here, these are for the children of nobles to read. They teach the basic alphabet, pronunciation, as well as the meanings of 1,000 common words, and some simple grammar."

"Thank you." Sigrdrifa took the books, found a spot to sit down, and started reading attentively.

"You’re holding it upside down," the young man couldn’t help but point out.

"Oh." Sigrdrifa turned the book right side up.

"You can’t read. Do you understand it?" the young man asked, driven by curiosity.

"Of course I can’t!" Sigrdrifa glanced at him and said with a tone that implied the question was needless.

"Let me teach you," the blond young man’s eyes twinkled as he said with a smile, and he began to teach her a few simple letter sounds.

The two sat in the library for an afternoon, and Sigrdrifa learned that this noble young man was named Leotis, the youngest son of the Great Noble Claudius from the city, who had recently converted to the Solomon Sect.

The Solomon Church was spreading very rapidly in the north of the continent recently, with large numbers of Normans choosing to convert.

The first thing the Church Court’s missionaries did when they came to the North was to build electric churches. They erected large wind power stations near the coastline and networked them with the hydroelectric sets on the opposite shore of the Scandinavian Peninsula.

Norman civilian believers only needed to declare their conversion, and then they could get a power line installed from the church with a few free light bulbs, so even the coldest polar nights could be illuminated.

As for the nobles, as long as they could afford to pay, they could enjoy much more.

For instance, high-quality wines and cuisines, refined art in the form of movies and games, etc., all made these barbarically accustomed northern nobles feel as if they had suddenly entered a high-tech civilized society, with a qualitative leap in their quality of life.

The blond noble youth Leotis was a new convert to the Solomon Church. While teaching Sigrdrifa to read, he was also very enthusiastic about persuading her to convert to God.

However, as Sigrdrifa yawned several times in a row, Leotis stopped talking awkwardly, feeling embarrassed and irritated inside.

After learning a few Chapters of lessons for the day and seeing that it was getting dark outside, Sigrdrifa bid Leotis farewell and happily walked towards the harbor.

At the harbor tavern, Sigrdrifa found the pirates drunk as lords, rented several rooms from the proprietor, and dumped all the pirates inside.

——————

About half a month passed like this.

Sigrdrifa had learned all the spelling of the alphabet, as well as some simple vocabulary and grammar, from Leotis.

Although Leotis was still trying to guide her to convert to the Solomon Sect and even showed signs of pursuing her, Sigrdrifa remained unresponsive.

She always had a strange intuition about Leotis, unable to pinpoint the specifics, but it didn’t feel right.

Finally, the day arrived when most of the illicit goods on the ship had been offloaded, and the money the pirates earned was all spent in the tavern.

It was time to leave the city.

Sigrdrifa headed to the Municipal Library; she intended to say a proper goodbye to Leotis and to thank him.

If Leotis was willing to accept it, she could also pay him the tuition for the time spent, as compensation for rejecting his courtship.

Upon reaching the Municipal Library, Sigrdrifa was shocked to discover it was deserted.

She waited confusedly for a morning but still didn’t see Leotis.

Wanting to leave a note for him, Sigrdrifa wrote a few words then realized she couldn’t write the rest.

It would have been nice to learn for a bit longer.

She sighed, crumpled the paper, and tossed it into the trashcan nearby.

Sigrdrifa walked out the library’s main gate. Unseen by her, several figures stealthily followed her.