Revive Rome: Wait! Why not make the empress fall in love with me first?-Chapter 331 - 129 Analysis

The next morning on Fire Island, I recounted the events to everyone, and the girls had varied expressions.

Some were relieved that the battle of Innsbruck was finally over, others regretted not being there last night, and some couldn’t help but worry about the fate of the citizens in the city after its fall.

No matter what, when the Wolf family pulled out their truck-mounted rocket launchers, the war was effectively over. Everyone could take bullets, but taking on rocket launchers was suicide.

Loaded with high-explosive warheads, those rocket launchers were the strongholds of the technological side!

"Aske, what’s wrong?" After the girls had dispersed, Nora, noticing Aske clutching his neck with a pained expression, couldn’t help but ask with concern.

"I didn’t sleep well last night, my neck’s a bit sore," Aske complained.

Nora knew he had slept on the ship’s deck, so she sat down on the sofa and patted her thigh.

"Lie here," she said softly.

Aske hesitated.

"Let me look at your neck," Nora said.

Well, it turned out to be for healing. There was really no need for reservations between doctor and patient, so Aske lay down on the sofa, resting his head on Nora’s thighs.

If he didn’t take into account the psychological entanglements, from a purely physical standpoint, the softness of a girl’s lap was nothing short of heavenly. The delicate touch emanated from underneath his neck, and his nose was filled with the scent of lavender. Probably Nora had just been tending to the flowers, as her hair seemed to have tiny, glistening dewdrops, making her look as if she had just bathed and draped on her clothes.

"Is it here?" Nora pressed carefully at his neck.

"Mhm," Aske didn’t want to elaborate.

"Minor muscle strain," said Nora as she began massaging him. "Caused by maintaining the same sleeping position for a long time."

"Is there any hope for me?" Aske joked.

"Don’t be silly, it’s not a serious illness," Nora scolded him with a playful look, her expression endearing.

Aske realized he had misspoken. If it had been Medea, she would probably have made a joke like "No hope, kneel and worship me," by now, but of course, Nora had a completely different character; joking with her was not quite fitting.

Compared to Medea’s fiery passion, Nora was meek as water. Their appearances hinted at these traits too. Medea’s features were alluring and prominent, full and striking at first glance. Nora’s features were smaller, giving a natural, comfortable impression at first, but spent time to reveal a genuinely refreshing beauty from all angles without a flaw.

Aske suddenly realized that comparing the two felt somewhat disrespectful, so he quickly reined in his thoughts.

Nora, however, just stared at him intently, her hands stopping their motion. Her clear eyes were deep like autumn waters, the thoughts within them inscrutable.

Ah, I forgot, she can read minds...

"Now you remember?" Nora pinched the muscles of his neck a little harder.

It hurt a bit, and Aske silently endured it, acknowledging his own indiscretion.

"Sigh, Aske," Nora sighed deeply. "Why do so many girls like you?"

"I don’t know," Aske mumbled vaguely.

Wait, "so many"? Aren’t there only three?

"You," Nora tapped his forehead, "look pretty sharp, but you’re really slow in some areas."

"Who?" Aske asked.

"I’m not telling," Nora smirked mischievously. "You figure it out yourself."

"How am I supposed to ask?" Aske was speechless. "Do I just go up to someone and ask ’do you like me’? How embarrassing!"

"That’s not my problem," Nora said as she worked on his neck muscles, pursing her lips. "They’re all my rivals, why should I help them?"

"Them? So there’s more than one?"

"Are you happy?" Nora chuckled. "These girls fancy you, and you don’t even realize it. How does it feel to be secretly admired?"

"Feels like a lot of pressure." Aske said.

"You’ve always wanted to recruit male team members, haven’t you?" Nora suggested. "Why not take another look to see if there’s a suitable newcomer to help share some of the burden?"

"Forget it," Aske said. "The incident with Hood has left me a bit wary, and besides, we’ve got enough people now."

"Tsck."

"You just clicked your tongue, didn’t you?"

"You heard wrong," Nora said with a radiant smile. "So, how do you feel now?"

"Much better," Aske said, moving his neck.

"Then how about you lie down for a bit longer..." Nora hadn’t finished speaking when Aske already stood up.

Sigh, Nora sighed imperceptibly.

"Your massage technique is really quite good, Nora," Aske complimented her. "I’ll be leaving first."

"Okay," Nora nodded.

It seems I really need to study how to induce the secretion of male hormones... Watching Aske’s retreating back, an unstoppable thought rose in her mind.

——————

Church Court.

The report from His Excellency, the Valian Bishop, had already been delivered to the desks of the Cardinal Council.

The Red Cardinals silently flipped through the documents, the files on The Azure Longsword Mercenary Corps.

Ordinarily, even the most famous Iron Cross Mercenary Corps on the continent wouldn’t deserve the Red Cardinals’ attention. However, The Azure Longsword was too enigmatic, with a mere nine members, the highest among them only Lv.8, yet Raphael had rated them as a threat level R4. It was truly puzzling.

Raphael’s algorithm was a strictly encrypted Chaos algorithm, a convolutional neural network constructed from pure mathematical functions. It was incomprehensible to humans; all they could do was let it naturally evolve and self-correct. If Raphael designated The Azure Longsword as R4, then their threat level couldn’t possibly be lower than R3. At the very least, it would be around R3.5 — definitely something the Church Court needed to be wary of.

Continuing to look through the member list, the bishops were immediately stunned. Aske’s background was nothing to speak of - a local commoner from Constantinople, and even though the Achilles family was once distinguished, it was no more than a country squire in the eyes of the Church.

However, the other members’ identities were not so simple.

Medea, the third princess of the Emperor of the Seljuk Empire, confirmed to have defected and left the country.

Eleanor, from the Divine Luo Weisbach family, certainly came from a Great Noble background.

Nora, of course, came from the most ancient Lixini Family of Solomon City. It was said her ancestors were contemporaries with Emperor Caesar at the end of the Third Epoch, one of the triumvirate alongside Marcus Lysine Crassus, the real estate tycoon of the Ancient Solomon Republic, and founder of the Lixini financial empire.

And then there was Thira. Her real name should be Theodora, a daughter of the late Eastern Luo Emperor, Constantine VIII.

Four young ladies - an Empress, Princesses, a Great Noble, and a Business Second Generation - had somehow all ended up in the same mercenary group, a mystery so bizarre it was almost like a plot from a soap opera.

The other four girls, Peggy and Miel, could be confirmed as ordinary citizens of Constantinople, Sigrdrifa and Mia were undocumented; their statuses in stark contrast to the aforementioned four.

Thus, the Red Cardinals were faced once again with a long-standing conundrum, one that had equally puzzled the Ilanian Assassins:

Why did Aske gather together all these girls of different ages, races, backgrounds, and personalities?

Was it a fetish? Unlikely, since these girls’ characteristics varied so widely that apart from "beautiful," they had almost nothing in common.

But if it was merely a penchant for collecting beautiful girls, how then could one explain the identities of these girls? An Empress, Princesses, heiresses of financial empires - were these the kind of individuals one could simply collect?

The Red Cardinals even entertained a ridiculous notion for a moment: Could Aske’s Sequential Ability possibly be "Harem"?

The more diverse the harem, the stronger the ability?

Of course, this was a fleeting thought because Raphael had already analyzed Aske’s bloodline:

Sharp Weapons, Evasion, Tactics, Intuition... most likely the ancestral bloodline of the Achilles family, Weapon Master.

The characteristic of this bloodline was the need to carry many weapons to exert its full power, not to carry many beauties. What was odd, according to Raphael’s record, was that in most instances, it was the girls who were fighting.

And in the few battles where Aske personally took part, it appeared he possessed some form of Extraordinary Swordsmanship.

A form of Extraordinary Swordsmanship that had never been seen before.

New novel 𝓬hapters are published on (f)re𝒆web(n)ovel.com