Trying to access the retrieve method from deployed smart contract but not able to

[J4Web]

Above is the the error I'm getting when trying to access the retrieve method from the smart contract I've written although I'm able to get the contract object which means I've connected to the contract successfully using etherjs, node and express

I've also attached my solidity contract here as well below also attached my js code

[r-bytes]

Have you tried making it a public view function ?

It would look something like this:

function retrieve() public view returns (uint256){
    return number;
}

[J4Web]

yep I've tried that before but since I'm calling it externally outside of the contract it made more sense to make it external no?

anyways I tried and this is what I got

[r-bytes]

there are a lot of null values in the console, what happens if you make the number 1?

[J4Web]

I mean number is by default 0 right?
btw ignore the first console error its some extension error so not related to the code