Leveling Up Wives In The Apocalypse

"Are you really going to stay back and do nothing?" Mathew ignored how the entire group was about to depart, opting to turn toward Marcus instead. "Is that how little you care about the people you left back at your base?"

Marcus couldn't know for sure what was happening. After all, contrary to the rest of Mathew's group, he didn't partake in the meeting where Norbert revealed the details of the situation.

All he could do, so far, was to observe their actions and try to guess the situation from those. And judging how he remained relatively close to the group, that's exactly what he was doing.

"What are you talking about?" Marcus asked while squinting his eyes.

Given how his cover was now blown, he stepped out from behind the bush he was hiding in and stood right before Mathew, ready to confront him.

"It's exactly as I said," Mathew smiled lightly, "there is a small horde coming to your base," he stated.

"If it's small, then there shouldn't be any reason for me to worry about it, would there?" Marcus countered. A confident smile appeared on his lips. "You might not think of them much, but the fighters I left behind…"

"I'm not talking about the kind of horde that attacked you the last time," Mathew interrupted Marcus' words to fix his misunderstanding. "Sure, the number of the group that's heading the way of your camp is smaller this time…"

Mathew averted his eyes. He then took a deep breath and closed his eyes, taking a moment to gather all his boldness.

"Listen, the zombies that are coming your way are the kind that we are used to fighting with. And every last one of them is far stronger than whatever you fought with before."

Marcus squinted his eyes, instantly dropping his confident and borderline arrogant approach.

"How much stronger?" he asked while taking a step forward.

"A tad weaker than the two leaders of the horde we cleaned up for you?" Mathew put forward an educated guess. "Or maybe right on their level?" he then gave another shot at estimating the strength of the higher-leveled mob zombies that were heading towards Marcus' base. "Oh, and there are a few evolved zombies coming with them too," he then added.

"And those are…?" Marcus asked, met with more words that he didn't know the meaning of that he could outright ignore.

"The difference of strength between the horde zombies and the evolved zombies is…" Mathew hesitated for a moment as he looked through his brain to find a proper way to showcase what he meant. "About four times as big as the difference between the mob zombies and the two leaders from the last horde you saw?"

Marcus' face tensed up.

Whatever he was doing in the past somehow conditioned him to be both decisive and more importantly, quick on the uptake. As such, he didn't need to dawdle to figure out just how shitty his current situation was.

"It's only my guess here, but I believe it's all because I summoned a merchant back at your place," Mathew then revealed, taking a step in the direction he didn't plan to do just a moment ago.

'This is too much of an opportunity for me to miss it,' he thought as he stared Marcus right in the eyes.

"The situation is dire, I'm not going to lie. The zombie is hitting every place that I own right now," Mathew explained. "And so, I believe the reason why your place is attacked is due to me summoning a merchant over there."

"You…!" Marcus shouted, his face tensing up as his eyes filled with wrath.

But all of those aggressive emotions dissipated in an instant, replaced by a cold, composed look all over Marcus' face.

'Damn,' Mathew gulped down his saliva, amazed to the end of his wits, 'he calmed down fast!'

"No matter what I say, it won't change the situation, right?" he said, uttering his words one by one as if trying to keep the calm facade he forced on his face. "But you are not telling me all of this for no reason," he then pointed out.

Marcus then brought his arms up and crossed them over his chest. He pulled his chin up and stared down at Mathew's face.

"What do you want me to do, then?"

Mathew… didn't reply.

At least, he didn't do so with his words.

Instead, the young man turned his head around and gave Beatrice a quick, knowing look.

The woman stared back at him for but a second before proving that she reached the level of the police assault force commander for a reason.

"You will go with Leila," Beatrice announced while looking at Marcus' face. Then, as if unable to be bothered anymore with the topic and unwilling to waste any more time, she shook her head and shouted, "Everyone, move out, and good luck!"

This time, there were no further topics that could stall the deployment of Beatrice's formation. And so, one by one, everyone climbed up the makeshift barricade on the inner side of the school's barrier before jumping down to the street on its other side.

The entire group of seven moved down the street, quickly traversing the open and zombie-free area as they rushed deeper into the city.

As they traveled, no one bothered to utter any words, opting to save their strength for their jog and the coming fight.

And soon, the first split came to be.

"We will be going, then," Daria announced while she pulled to the side of the group with Carol.

They reached the point where the two of them had to take a turn in order to reach their deployment zone.

"Good luck and don't overdo it," Mathew replied before pushing the rest of his now smaller group forth.

Then, Marcus and Leila split off as well to head off toward Marcus' base.

And with only Nadia and Norbert by his side, Mathew continued to push forth before reaching the point Beatrice advised.

'So this is where we will be making our stand,' he thought, stopping right in the middle of an unnervingly empty crossroads.

Mathew could see pretty far in every direction of the world by simply looking down the street. And yet, there wasn't a single zombie roaming the near-abandoned city anywhere in sight.

'It's weird,' Mathew thought, squinting his eyes. 'We didn't kill nearly enough of the zombies to clean such a massive chunk of the city,' he thought, looking around in a desperate search for some enemies.

In the current situation, fighting some stray zombies was far better than what it would mean if there weren't any anywhere near!

"How long before they hit us?" Mathew then turned to the side and cast a quick glance at Norbert.

The reason why they brought this non-combatant out to the combat zone was due to the main foundation of Beatrice's plan.

Rather than just splitting their forces and thus dividing their strength, she opted to push Mathew's group outside, putting them in a spot far closer to both the Media building and Marcus' base than the school building.

As such, whoever would finish their part of the fight first, would have an easier time coming to the aid of the other two groups!

"According to their speed so far, it should only take them…" Norbert muttered as he closed his eyes, rushing to confirm his guess.

Yet, when he opened his eyes a moment later, his face turned white.

"What?" Mathew asked, gritting his teeth when he realized something else went wrong.

"I…" Norbert hesitated for a second.

He then shook his head and blinked his eyes a few times before closing them again. Yet, once he returned from his ghostly form back to reality…

His face tensed up to the point Mathew had yet to see.

"I can't find them."