Revive Rome: Wait! Why not make the empress fall in love with me first?
Chapter 229 - 27 Heart Stealer

Chapter 229: Chapter 27 Heart Stealer

Martin sheepishly turned and left, returning to the group of Swordsmen. The others immediately crowded around, bombarding him with questions:

"What happened?"

"Did the second seat agree?"

"Should I raise my arm and call out..."

"Get out of here, call out what!" Martin grumbled in discontent, "Hans has become a complete sycophant; he’s now a faithful lapdog to the other side, insisting that everyone listens to that Chief."

Everyone: ......

"That’s impossible, isn’t it?" Everyone was baffled, "Did they give him some sort of advantage? He just had his command stripped away, can Hans really not be angry?"

"Could it be that this Chief has someone backing him?"

"Who could be backing him that’s more significant than our teacher? Our teacher is a Physical Demigod!"

"That’s not necessarily true," someone else chimed in with a disagreeing view, "Does a demigod not need to eat, drink, defecate, or urinate? Our entire group consists of thirty or forty people; where does the money for food, drink, and all our needs come from?"

"It comes from Noble sponsors, doesn’t it? Isn’t Nuremberg responsible for that?"

"That’s why," they concluded, "this Chief must be the child of some Great Noble of the Empire, coming out here to gild and relax. Otherwise, how could they get the teacher to personally arrange an entry into the group, make Nuremberg acknowledge the status of Chief despite holding their nose, and get Hans to play the toady?"

Everyone expressed their shock. While they had basically seen Nobles, Great Nobles were another story... There were only a few Holy Families within the country, Saxony, Wolf, Weisbach, Weiting, Hohenstaufen, you could count them on one hand. Which family did this guy named Aske pop out from?

"Even if he’s from a Great Noble family, that doesn’t give him the right to command blindly!" someone insisted that Swordsmen should not be sycophants, "Raised in luxury from birth, how much combat experience can he have? Carrying a few pretty weapons, flanked by a couple of Transcendent maids, and then coming out to command us to deal with mutants? Do mutants recognize his Noble status?"

"So what do you propose we do?" Martin said impatiently, "Hans has already spoken harshly, telling everyone to give face to this Chief, and he will kill anyone who doesn’t."

So everyone could only let out sighs of resignation. Hans’s face definitely had to be acknowledged; what more was there to say?

Just listen obediently then.

On the other side, Aske gestured grandly, ordering everyone to move forward and explore, and the team reluctantly started to mobilize.

Upon entering the second hall, there were many upright incubation tanks arranged around, most of which appeared still well-sealed, with liquid inside not corrupted or murky, soaking what looked like octopus-like Extraordinary Creatures that sent chills down one’s spine.

The papers and documents on the tables had almost completely decayed, but on a small blackboard lying flat, the writing made with an inert pen was still clearly legible.

After ordering the Swordsmen to keep guard, Aske approached with two girls to see what was written on the blackboard:

"...KETER-O22W73FH, Sealing species ’Heart Stealer.’"

"Appearance similar to an octopus, incapable of free movement, can only parasitize other organisms. Capable of direct Manipulation of both Mind and Spiritual Body, thus controlling the host’s actions, possesses intelligence, thought patterns align with the host. Capable of continuously reading the mental activities of nearby Mind Bodies."

"For the host, being parasitized means Death. Once the Heart Stealer leaves the host’s body, it will cause an immediate cessation of the host’s life signals. Therefore, all regulations concerning the handling of human test subjects do not apply to hosts of Heart Stealers in this project."

"Current ongoing projects include: Mind Body parasitism experiments, controllability brainwashing experiments, and memory add/delete/edit/retrieve experiments."

"Note: Multiple Heart Stealers gathering will form a complex mental network of Mind Bodies, highly dangerous."

"All Heart Stealers must be sealed off separately. Any scientific experiments involving three or more Heart Stealers must obtain the joint approval of Omega-level managerial personnel."

"Heart Stealers, huh." Aske mused. They belonged to the category of Extraordinary Creatures that were tougher for players to handle and were also the source of Spiritual Material for the Mind II Potion.

The main problem with this creature was that it couldn’t act independently; it could only parasitize, so the type of host it parasitized greatly affected its combat power.

If it parasitized a goblin, then everyone encountering it would just kill it outright without breaking a sweat; if it were a giant dragon, then you might as well run away and wait for the demigod bigwigs to handle it.

Of course, considering the clone infiltration incident in this latest mutation, which started with luring various mercenary groups to explore a certain area and then disappearing... Aske had basically guessed their parasitic targets.

It must be those missing mercenaries.

Aske pondered silently and noticed Nora next to him rapidly taking notes, her eyes shining:

"Squad Leader, is this that legendary ancient research material?"

"What use do you have for these notes?" Aske asked.

"To write my thesis." Nora said.

"You haven’t graduated yet?" Aske exclaimed in surprise.

"I’ve already applied for a graduation extension." Nora replied, poking her cheek with her pen, "I think the topics offered by the department for theses are all rather uninteresting."

Oh, right. With this girl’s family background, she probably didn’t need to worry about not getting a degree or anything of that nature. If her family said the word, the school would probably deliver the diploma straight to her.

Aske couldn’t help but smile wryly, then Hans hurried over and said:

"We’ve encountered the enemy down the right passageway, two wounded."

"Let’s go." Aske followed Hans and saw four or five swordsmen hacking away at a person.

That person, dressed like a mercenary with a shield in his left hand and a longsword in his right, wore light leather armor and had an "octopus helmet" (Heart Stealer) on his forehead; he was swiftly defending against the surrounding swordsmen’s assaults.

"This guy has some pretty fierce foresight," Hans commented as he watched, at which point five swordsmen had already been taken down, and the others couldn’t squeeze in, only watching the mercenary barely holding on, seemingly about to be hit by the sword at any second, but always managing to dodge, parry, or block the surrounding attacks at the very last moment.

"It’s not foresight, it’s mind reading," Aske said, then turned to see Nora, in a corner, healing two injured swordsmen. One had a sword wound on his leg, the other had been slashed in the abdomen, but fortunately, it seemed they were not in serious danger.

"Mind reading?" Hans was slightly startled.

"Read what you are going to do from your thoughts, then defend preemptively," Aske replied, squeezing through the crowd of onlookers, "All right, back off. You can’t kill him with this disorderly fighting."

The five swordsmen looked at each other and immediately covered each other as they retreated—onlookers might not know, but only those who had actually fought realized how difficult this enemy was to defeat, with a feeling that he was "impervious to needle pricks and immune to water splashes," seemingly able to fend off any technique you used against him.

The mercenary with the "octopus hat" rasped hoarsely, his pupils scattered as if he was staring at Aske, then... suddenly threw down his shield and turned to flee, only for Aske to run him through with a straight stab of his longsword, pinning him against the wall.

"You can’t be serious? Defeated with a single strike?"

"It’s because the guy had exhausted his own strength attempting to turn and run, revealing a clear opening."

The swordsmen discussed amongst themselves, clearly making excuses for the prior failure of the five swordsmen.

However, the most incredulous expressions were on those five swordsmen. After entangling with the opponent for so long, how could they not feel whether his strength had been exhausted?

It wasn’t a matter of strength, it was more like... he was frightened of the man before him, and that’s why he turned to run.

Aske’s sword strike was perfectly placed; it passed through the man’s abdomen, but didn’t kill him outright. Two of the swordsmen wanted to come forward to collect the head, but Aske stopped them.

He stepped forward, staring at the mercenary for a moment—more precisely, at the "octopus" on his head—then he pulled out the longsword that had pinned through the man’s abdomen.