Leveling Up Wives In The Apocalypse

'Since I can't see any real difference, lest stick with the basic type of weapons for now,' Mathew decided, picking up the right option from the context menu before confirming his choice.

Then, as if to prove that there was even more convenience to this upgraded merchant than there was before, Mathew saw another window pop out. This time, it allowed him to pick the exact quantity of the item he wanted to buy.

'It's not much,' Mathew thought once he brought the number of basic sabers up to four, 'but it does save some time.'

The four sabers that Mathew bought now appeared behind him, floating in an orderly row in a perfect line along Mathew's spine.

'Now, I still need some knife of sorts for Leila,' Mathew quickly realized.

Given her blade-master class, she was easily capable of using more than just a single blade at once. And while it would be for the best to equip her with some spare weapons, Mathew's frugal nature made him decide against spending even more cores on weapons than he felt necessary.

And so, the young man picked up his pace and walked along the alley.

Soon, the weapons turned from late medieval to early modern with muskets, front-loaded carabines, and later breach-loaded ones, all the way to the firearms Mathew could recognize thanks to all the action moves and shooting games he played in the past.

'I don't really need firearms,' Mathew thought, recalling the number of those that he stole from Marcus' camp. 'I need a proper ballistic knife!'

In theory, there was hardly any difference between a medieval type of knife and a modern one. As the purpose of such a weapon remained the same, there was only a limited number of improvements one could make after literally several thousand years worth of development.

No, what Mathew was looking for wasn't an improvement to the design. What he wanted to find, was a knife made with more durable materials.

'Since it pays insanely well to use weapons for long periods of time before selling them, even if it will cost twice or thrice as much as those sabers,' Mathew took a glance behind his back, 'then it should still be worth the initial investment.'

Soon enough, right as personal weapons gave way to weapons that Mathew had no clue how to use and weapons way too big for a single person, he found what he was looking for.

A simple, military-grade knife with a short sheathe and a small belt already attached to it.

He picked it up, only for yet another see-through window to appear before his eyes.

'Just like I thought,' Mathew ran his eyes across the name of the object he picked.

[Military Grade Simple Knife.]

One of the two things that surprised the young man was the title part of the window. He couldn't understand why every word within the object's name was capitalized.

As for the other reason…

'It's five hundred cores as well?!' Mathew opened up his eyes wide, struggling to figure out the reason behind the pricing.

"Does it have something to do with the differences between reach and materials canceling each other out?" he muttered, voicing out his thoughts just in case the merchant would find it suitable to come in handy with an explanation.

But no such thing happened.

'That's worth investigating,' Mathew decided, going through the same steps of purchasing the item as before. And once the military knife appeared floating behind his back, Mathew turned his eyes towards the object just a few steps away.

'Isn't this an AK?' he thought, taking a few steps before stopping right in front of the weapon's rack with all sorts of modern guns displayed on it.

Even though he was initially drawn to the likely most popular gun model in the world, it was a different weapon that ultimately won the battle for Mathew's attention.

'Isn't that MSBS Grot?' Mathew thought, recognizing the weapon of the relatively local produce.

For how little Mathew knew about guns, there was one part of this particular firearm that he learned about before while randomly watching videos on the popular streaming site.

And it was how this weapon was fully modular.

From the size of its mag, through levels of fire rate and precision all the way to various attachments that allowed one to switch a type between automatic, semi-automatic, and even short bursts.

'I wonder how it will work in the shop…' Mathew thought, reaching out for the gun and taking a step back when the semi-transparent window appeared…

And its content instantly poured a bucket of cold water on Mathew's enthusiasm.

He got interested in the weapon because he hoped that all of its different modules would come with it, allowing him to create any type of gun that he would need at a specific moment.

Yet…

Not only the gun boasted a huge price of two and a half thousand cores, it couldn't get any weapon affinities… but Mathew also had to choose a desired modular design before the purchase!

In other words, while it was still true that this weapon could be modified to perfectly suit its users' needs… Mathew could only buy a single type rather than purchasing additional modules, making the entire essence of this weapon basically pointless!

"I guess I was hoping for way too much," Mathew muttered, admitting it out loud just in case the merchant saw through his shrew thoughts of exploiting the possibility.

Disappointed by the guns, Mathew turned his eyes toward the items further down the last part of the alley.

There were no swords, knives, guns, or even rocket launchers there.

No, the last part of the weapon's alley of the shop was filled with armored cars, military half-trucks, tanks, and even choppers and planes!

'Isn't this shop a dream come true for a random dictator?' Mathew thought, squinting his eyes as he ran around for a while, checking out the prices of the modern military equipment.

And so, cars of all sorts were prized between five to ten thousand cores. Armored vehicles upped up the high-end of the prizes to twenty thousand cores. Tanks took at the very least forty thousand and could rise as much as one hundred thousand depending on the model while all sorts of air vehicles ranged between fifty thousand all the way to several million per piece.

'It would be a waste to use the few cores I have on those,' Mathew thought, shaking his head in slight disappointment.

He never hoped to be able to buy any of those. And even if he could comfortably afford them, what would he do with them in the cramped and mostly ruined streets of the city? How would he come up with fuel?

'They might come in handy… but not anytime soon,' Mathew thought, releasing a deep sigh as he threw one last look at his surroundings. Yet, just as he was about to turn back and leave for another alley, one piece that didn't fit the puzzle caught his attention.

Contrary to all the other items, it wasn't displayed on one of the alley's massive shelves. Instead, it stood right at the end of the valley, taking up nearly all of the space between the shelves.

But it wasn't even the most important part about it at all.

First, it was fully greyed out, making it pretty damn obvious that Mathew couldn't buy it even if he could somehow afford it.

And secondly…

It didn't look like any military vehicle that Mathew heard about. In fact, it didn't look like something from this world at all.

And no matter how Mathew looked at it, there was only one name that came to his head when he looked at this small-house-sized piece of the vehicle.

'A starship?!'