Revive Rome: Wait! Why not make the empress fall in love with me first?
Chapter 233 - 31: Business Cooperation

Chapter 233: Chapter 31: Business Cooperation

"Then how do you want to prove it?" Thira asked with folded arms.

"Show me the process you use for cipher creation," the Squad Leader said. "I will make my own judgment."

The girls then began to discuss softly among themselves.

"To sell or not to sell?"

"I think they’re not showing any sincerity. How can they ask us to reveal the entire solution without paying a single penny?"

"Besides, what if they don’t make a purchase after seeing the plan, and then go on to imitate our method? We’d be at a major loss, wouldn’t we?"

"The main issue is that our method is too simple. It lacks technical complexity and is easily replicated."

"Wait a minute!" Thira suddenly had a flash of inspiration. "I have an idea..."

After the girls had whispered among themselves and reached an agreement, they returned to the negotiation table, each with a smile on their faces:

"We can show you the plan."

The Squad Leader breathed a sigh of relief and smiled as well, "Then please, go ahead with the demonstration."

Mia moved the materials out of the church: small slips of paper, potato stamps, carbon paper... as well as matches and wax.

"Our method is quite straightforward," Thira began to explain. "Blindfolded, we imprint the pattern from the potato stamp onto the paper and use carbon paper to create multiple copies of the slip with the identical pattern."

"Since the creator cannot see during the process, Mutants cannot decipher the arrangements and rotation angles of the patterns on the slips through the creator’s memory."

"However, all the slips have the identical pattern, so each person carries one, and we check the slips against each other to verify identities."

"If the person is genuine, then the patterns on the slips should match. If the person is a duplicate, then there will be discrepancies in the patterns."

"After each verification, the cipher becomes invalid, which is why we recommend purchasing multiple sets of ciphers. Once one set is used, you can move on to the next."

"Hmm..." The Squad Leader stroked his chin thoughtfully. This method, although simple, had a clever aspect to it. The key was that it could be easily replicated.

For instance, the potato stamp could be replaced with a mud clay block, small slips of paper could be substituted with cloth strips, and carbon paper was the trickiest part. However, if the creator arranged all the strips in advance and stamped them with closed eyes without rotating the hand, the patterns produced would be rather similar.

We could do this ourselves, there’s no need to buy theirs... Just as the Squad Leader started to have these sly thoughts, Thira across the table suddenly spoke with a smile:

"Of course, this method isn’t perfect—it does have one fatal flaw."

"A flaw?" the Squad Leader asked, puzzled.

"Yes," Thira said with a playful smile. "Let’s just assume, before you’ve obtained the cipher, that your team does not yet have a method to identify duplicates."

That’s stating the obvious. If I had a method to recognize duplicates, why would I bother buying your ciphers? The Squad Leader thought.

"So," Thira’s gaze swept over the mercenary behind him, "if there happened to already be a duplicate among your team..."

"...as soon as they get their hands on a slip with the cipher, all they need to do is take a secret look, and your cipher becomes useless."

Squad Leader: .........

Damn it!

"Since you’ve brought it up, there must be a solution, right?" the Squad Leader showed an expression of doubt.

"Exactly," Thira took the matches and a block of wax, "have you ever heard of the Eastern wax pill books?"

"Light the match, heat the wax block, and then insert the kneaded paper ball. Once the wax block solidifies into a wax pill, the book is perfectly sealed inside."

"If one wants to see the paper inside, they have to cut open the wax pill with a weapon, which will undoubtedly destroy the pill."

"Therefore, all secret codes are put inside wax pills, and then the mercenaries wear the pills in conspicuous places, such as hanging from their necks with a string. That way, once you see someone’s wax pill on their neck has been damaged, you can assume that the set of codes is voided, preventing the codes from leaking to the Mutant without your knowledge."

"Hmm," thought the Squad Leader, finding this method to be getting quite complicated. After pondering for a long time, he asked, "But what if we encounter a fierce battle and don’t have time to keep an eye on everyone?"

"If there were a clone in my team, all it would need to do is quickly take down and cut open a wax pill when the battle is at its fiercest and nobody is paying attention to it, and then the Mutant rapidly creates another clone, carrying an intact wax pill, and blends in..."

"Then it would be your own lack of skill that gives the Mutant the opportunity," Thira said bluntly. "To put it plainly, if you’re really that weak, even if we gave you the codes, and then your members were captured and killed by the monsters who then open the codes to look, wouldn’t all encryption measures be useless?"

"We can give you the codes. Designing them in the form of wax pills is also to increase the time required to read the codes, thus raising the difficulty for the Mutants to probe for codes. However, if you are truly so weak on the battlefield that certain members can be out of sight for several minutes, then it just means you are not fit to handle this Mutant threat, and you’d better quickly leave this town."

Squad Leader: ......

For some reason, being insulted in a disdainful tone by this girl wearing a mask, he felt an inexplicably refreshing sensation.

As if something strange had awoken within him.

On consideration, what she said was not wrong. A fail-safe code scheme is probably non-existent, but as long as this code scheme was perfected enough to raise the probability of identifying clones to an acceptable level, then it didn’t have to be 100% effective – it still held enough commercial value...

Commercial value?

"We can buy this code," said the Squad Leader with a beaming smile. "However, I wonder if you all are interested in a partnership?"

"Partnership?" Thira was puzzled.

"You provide the materials, we provide the manpower," the Squad Leader rubbed his hands together with a gleeful grin. "We sell the codes you have designed to the various Mercenary Groups in town that have been terribly devastated by the clones."

The girls were shocked at hearing this.

Wow, we never thought of that, to actually make money selling this? You have quite the business acumen! Why would someone like you become a mercenary? What a waste of talent!

"Actually, our Iron Ship Mercenary Group occasionally engages in some smuggling in our spare time," the Squad Leader laughed heartily as he explained to the astonished girls. "We have some confidence in negotiating and finding ways."

"Think about it. You invented this method, but you lack the manpower to sell these resources. We can provide the manpower and channels, but we need you to supply the materials, so a partnership between us is mutually beneficial," said the Squad Leader. "I just don’t know about your supply abilities..."

"Supply abilities aren’t a problem," Thira said. Other Mercenary Groups wouldn’t carry miscellaneous items due to weight constraints.

However, the girls were from a Fire Island team after all; not to mention wax blocks and matches, they had all kinds of living supplies like toothbrushes, toothpaste, towels, toilet paper, napkins, ceramic bowls, and they had even stockpiled quite a lot on the island.

"That’s good. So, you’ll mass produce the codes in the church, we’ll come to pick up the goods periodically, and then we’ll sell these codes to other Mercenary Groups..."

"Hold on," Thira corrected him. "You can’t sell the codes directly, because the other Mercenary Groups can’t confirm whether you’re Mutant clones or not, so they won’t trust the codes from you."

"Right, exactly, you’re correct," the Iron Ship Mercenary Group’s Squad Leader immediately realized. "Then we should..."

"You buy materials from us!" Thira said. "Then you bring the materials to the other Mercenary Groups, give an on-site explanation, make them on-site, and sell them on-site!"

"Exactly!" the Squad Leader slapped his thigh in agreement with Thira’s suggestion, then suddenly realized another issue.

If they bought the codes directly to sell, they would most likely settle accounts by the actual number of codes sold. And how many were sold? Wasn’t that for the Iron Ship Mercenary Group, who managed the channels, to decide? If I buy 100 sets of materials and sell 90, but I insist I only sold 40 and ask to settle for 40, the girls would have no way to verify.

But if they were to buy the materials directly, then it’s a transaction of cash on delivery – whatever price was agreed upon would be final, with the Iron Ship Mercenary Group having no room to falsify or inflate sales figures...

Had he really thought so deeply about these detailed issues without even discussing the business model yet?!

The Squad Leader of the Iron Ship Mercenary Group stared in amazement at the masked girl opposite him, completely unable to see the expression beneath her mask.