The Debate at the Meeting

Within Snow Bear City, far from the lord's castle, stands a large house constructed of fine stone.

This house originally belonged to a lord's confidant. Because he had gained the lord's trust, his house was built to be even more magnificent than the houses of the Territory Knight.

However, precisely because it was built so grandly, both Mercenary and followers of the Church of the Goddess of Ocean Currents immediately took a liking to the house. Naturally, the lord's confidants could not disobey the requests of these two parties, and even if they refused, it would be of no use.

Now, this house serves as the venue for tripartite meetings.

The orcs sent an orc named Benedict as their representative for the negotiations. He had a patch of brown hair on his arm, but his neck was no different from that of an ordinary human.

On the Goddess of Ocean Currents's Goddess of Ocean Currents followers have arrived in the past few days, the quality of Profession among them is far inferior to that of the groups that arrived earlier, so Bishop Gillian is still in charge.

Finally, there's the Mercenary group. Despite the best efforts of both Pakrick and Liam, Mercenary are simply too used to freedom.

That's how Mercenary are. Although you can spend a sum of money to hire a team that seems very powerful on paper, don't count on Mercenary when it comes to carrying out some critical missions.

Their reputation for defensive warfare is not even as high as that of a group of farmers.

Every Mercenary knows they're there to make money, not to risk their lives. So even though the lord hires them hoping they'll fight, they often end up betraying the lord at crucial moments.

Every lord knows this, but there's nothing they can do about it. It's in the nature of these Mercenary. The Mercenary you can find who aren't afraid of death have probably already died in some mission.

Mercenary are inherently too free-spirited; none of Mercenary want to put their fate in the hands of others. That's why five Mercenary representatives came this time.

Among them, the Mercenary group represented by Pakrik and Liam is the largest, while the remaining three Mercenary representatives represent three different Mercenary.

The group represented by Pakrick and Liam did not make up half of all Mercenary.

The orc Benedict and the Goddess of Ocean Currents Bishop Gillian glanced at the Mercenary group, both displaying expressions of disdain.

They both knew that the Mercenary class currently had the largest number of First Order Profession among all forces, perhaps even accounting for about 70% of the total number of the other two combined.

However, both of them knew that if a conflict were to break out between the three parties, the Mercenary would be the first to die, because their organization was too weak.

They don't even need to resort to bribery, which could be a very effective method; simply throwing all their forces at it could potentially rout these Mercenary.

However, under these circumstances, they also had to value these Mercenary and let Mercenary express their opinions.

They all knew that whoever won over these Mercenary had a greater chance of victory.

The most powerful force on the field is actually the Church of the Goddess of Ocean Currents, represented by Gillian. Don't be fooled by the fact that they only have a small number of followers around Snow Bear Territory.

As a religion based on the Ocean, the Church of the Goddess of Ocean Currents's power is not to be underestimated in this era where the power of the Ocean is becoming increasingly important.

Both the orcs and the Mercenary knew that time was on the side of the Church of the Goddess of Ocean Currents. If they lingered here for more than a month, the Goddess of Ocean Currents believers who came to Snow Bear Territory would exceed the total number of both sides.

Benedict orc is one of the few intelligent people in the Orc Tribe. It seems that his parents were not pure orcs, but orcs with strong human blood.

However, despite their rare bloodlines, these orcs do not rely on such objective bloodlines to identify their companions; they rely on distinctive characteristics.

Benedict never saw his parents growing up. In any case, he had been living among the orc tribes since he could remember, and he gained their acceptance by using the hair on his hands.

In the Orc Tribe, he also showed a side that was different from other orcs, namely, a slight intelligence.

Thanks to his efforts, his Orc Tribe avoided a direct confrontation with these people and instead sent him in for negotiations.

Benedict looked in the direction of the Mercenary. Strictly speaking, they were standing with the Mercenary, but Benedict knew very well, and the Mercenary knew very well, that they could never be standing together.

Although they were nominally all here to find the azure box according to the mission of the Lord of White Dragon Port, from this perspective, they and the White Dragon Port City Lord were 'allies'.

However, the saying "an ally's ally is not my ally" is quite true here as well.

Only one of them can take the azure box to the city lord of White Dragon Port and exchange it for what they want according to the contract.

Even if the two of them joined forces, why would the city lord of White Dragon Port pay the other party an extra reward? Did he have too much money?

Therefore, orcs and Mercenary not only have no 'alliance' relationship, but are actually in a life-or-death competitive relationship.

Furthermore, even within the Mercenary, opinions are not unified, making it impossible for them to unite.

In reality, nothing could be accomplished at this meeting. Everyone present was determined to get that item, and their irreconcilable differences made negotiation impossible.

Their meeting here isn't about deciding who gets the last box; that's pointless. Everyone knows that once it's found, a major battle is inevitable.

What they wanted to discuss was how to improve the security of the Snow Bear Territory so that the object wouldn't slip away right under their noses.

However, they argued over the specific deployment and search arrangements, and could not reach a consensus for a long time.

Benedict, representing the orcs, wanted all roads to be permanently guarded, with personnel from all three sides stationed together. This way, once discovered, the orcs could immediately mobilize their army via message and crush the other two sides.

Meanwhile, the Mercenary, Pakrik and Liam, hoped to conduct a comprehensive search operation, moving along the border towards Snow Bear City. This way, they could surround the thieves and perhaps even capture them directly...

Gillian, the Goddess of Ocean Currents, directly divided the Snow Bear Territory into three parts, saying that all forces present should search according to the designated areas, and whoever found the item would own it.

She deliberately divided her territory and the Mercenary ' territory into very small areas, while the orcs' territory was divided into very large areas, which caused the three parties to quarrel fiercely.

The fact that the other three Mercenary representatives even supported one of the three ideas each made the situation even more chaotic.

In the end, it was the orc Benedict who suggested temporarily setting aside the issue, and instead said:

"When I entered the city, I heard that the Snow Bear Territory Lord was still in his castle. Are you just wild dogs who only know how to eat meat? Why didn't you deal with that troublesome lord first, instead of letting him send people to capture those Magic Creature in Snow Bear Territory..."