Revive Rome: Wait! Why not make the empress fall in love with me first?
Chapter 232 - 30: Buying the Code

Chapter 232: Chapter 30: Buying the Code

"The assaults from these monsters are getting fiercer."

Eleanor pulled the long spear from the monster’s corpse.

The monsters this time had heads of eagles and bodies of horses, with extremely sharp claws and pointed beaks, making them very difficult to deal with.

Peggy used the Undead Illusion Sword to create multiple illusions, compressing the monsters’ movements, then Sigrdrifa threw the North Wind Axe to freeze them, coordinating with Eleanor to focus fire and kill them.

Nevertheless, just seven or eight of such monsters took nearly twenty minutes for the three girls.

It was foreseeable that if the strength of the subsequent monsters increased, the risk of defending the church would increase significantly.

Just as they turned to head back to the church, the trio saw a group of mercenaries running across the street—Eleanor stepped forward with her shield, extended her long spear, and adopted a defensive posture.

"Don’t be nervous!" the mercenaries shouted from afar, "The Azure Longsword! We are Free Wind mercenaries!"

"How do I know if you are real or fake?" Eleanor said coldly, the long spear raised pointing toward the crowd.

"We’ll just stand here then." The mercenaries had to stop in their tracks, showing they were not a threat.

Peggy and Sigrdrifa also stepped forward, scrutinizing the people in front. These guys’ outfits looked familiar, indeed seeming to be members of the Free Wind Mercenary Group, though whether they were truly authentic was another matter.

Although there were only about a dozen of these guys left, and most of them were injured, who knew if that was just an act put on by the mutants to deceive them? Therefore, the three girls still maintained a significant defensive posture, not allowing the mercenaries to approach carelessly but prompting them to state their purpose.

"It’s like this," a leading mercenary from Free Wind (this guy seemed to have been one of Matthews’s confidantes previously) stepped forward and said:

"We want to buy your code scheme."

"Code scheme?" The three girls exchanged glances, "Didn’t Free Wind design a code scheme as well?"

Not mentioning it was better; they brought it up, and the people from Free Wind almost burst into tears.

Whoever thought it was a good idea to let an idiot draw the codes, and then forget them right after he finished!

Indeed, after this fool had drawn about a dozen codes, his memory blurred and the later codes diverged more and more—a nonsensical mess!

After another intense and chaotic battle, the mercenaries of Free Wind pulled out the third set of codes for mutual verification.

Then, some mercenaries had dogs on their bands, others had pigs, and still others had cows... Even the grand artist, Gret himself, couldn’t remember what animal he had drawn for the third plan.

Consequently, mercenaries with dog codes, pig codes, and cow codes immediately split into three factions, each suspecting the other two of being replicas and nearly drawing weapons to slaughter each other.

Matthews’s code was a cow, and the commander remained quite calm, quickly explaining the principle to everyone—it was all a mess created by the doltish Gret, urging everyone not to let such things cause infighting.

That sounded sensible, but who knew if you were really the commander? What if you were a fake, trying to sneak in your replicas marked with cows?

Thus, the division within the Free Wind Mercenary group became inevitable... As the team split, the overall strength of each faction greatly decreased. Coupled with the noticeable increase in the mutants’ monster strength, as sensed by the girls, the mercenaries felt overwhelmed and decided to withdraw from the operation to suppress the mutant uprising.

However, while they were willing to overlook the mutant incident, the mutant incident was not necessarily going to overlook them.

The journey out was not short, and their own sigil paper turned out to be problematic; if a counterfeit entity mixed in on the way out and deployed some kind of divisive strategy to split the already small team, and then a horde of monsters swarmed in for a slaughter, wouldn’t that mean certain annihilation?

Just then, they encountered the girls from The Azure Longsword; these mercenaries thought of spending some collected Wizard Stone Fragments to buy a reliable sigil plan from The Azure Longsword, to ensure everyone could safely leave this damned town.

Eleanor and the other two muttered for a while and felt that regardless of whether the other parties were real or fake, exchanging Wizard Stone Fragments for a few pieces of sigil paper posed no risk to their team.

So, after discussing it with the girls from the church and a democratic vote, they decided to trade with these mercenaries.

Once they shared the sigil plan with the mercenaries, the mercenaries had an epiphany and repeatedly praised its brilliance—using sigils to craft codes naturally avoided any problems with memory blurring, and the error could be controlled to an almost negligible extent—why hadn’t we thought of this before?

The mercenaries then discarded their original sigil banners, and treasured the sigil papers they had bought from the girls, before hastily departing.

About twenty minutes later, another group of mercenaries appeared, but these were not acquaintances the girls recognized; they were from a previously unseen Mercenary Group named Iron Ship. They approached eagerly and immediately asked,

"Have you got sigil papers for sale here?"

The girls learned that this medium-sized Mercenary Group, named Iron Ship, had also suffered greatly from infiltration by the counterfeit entities; they had just encountered the Free Wind Mercenaries who had bought sigil papers nearby.

Both parties were exhausted and neither wanted to initiate conflict, nor did they want to risk that the other party might be a mutant counterfeit entity. Thus, they adopted a stance of mutual caution and nervously tried to intimidate each other.

The Free Wind Mercenaries said, we’ve already bought mature sigil plans from those women. If you are counterfeit entities created by this mutant, you would know your tricks won’t work, so don’t think about infiltrating our team and causing trouble!

The Iron Ship Mercenaries were startled upon hearing this. A mature sigil plan? What’s that?

The Free Wind Mercenaries were eager to return, and having no interest in further discussion, seeing the other party did not seem like counterfeit entities, they gestured vaguely behind them and quickly left.

So the Iron Ship Mercenaries headed in the direction they had pointed to—the church in the Central Square was quite conspicuous, so everyone spotted the girls at the church door immediately.

Buy a sigil? No problem. The girls agreed promptly, money in one hand and goods in the other, insufficient funds could be covered by Wizard Stone Fragments.

"No, no, no." The Mercenary Corps Commander of Iron Ship immediately shook his head, "Before buying the sigil, I want to first confirm your method of making sigils, understand?"

The girls were momentarily stunned, but Thira immediately responded,

"Our method of making sigils is not at all complex, but if you learn it and don’t pay, wouldn’t we be at a loss?"

"What if you are also mutant counterfeits, and we end up being cheated out of our money by buying your sigils?" this commander appeared much more cautious than the previous Free Wind, immediately raising the question.

"If we were mutant counterfeits, what use would we have for money?" Eleanor retorted, "Aren’t the Wizard Stone Fragments in your hands obtained from the mutants?"

"Maybe you want to reclaim these fragments to create more monsters?" The commander suggested doubtfully.

"If that’s the case, then you shouldn’t buy it either, to avoid being cheated!" Peggy slammed the table in frustration and stood up—her emotions were already in turmoil because of the commander’s disappearance,

"Hey! Don’t be hasty!" The commander, who didn’t expect them to flip the table at a word, quickly stood up to calm them, "I’m not saying we won’t buy... I mean, at least you need to confirm to me that your sigils indeed work, right?"