Leveling Up Wives In The Apocalypse

"I've lost vision!" Norbert reported in an alert voice. "It's only two streets further!" he then shouted, giving the last known location of the huge monster they were hunting.

"Let's go!" Mathew cheered.

Save for some remaining groups of wanderers, defeating that huge monster would put an end to this nerve-wracking event.

It was the last obstacle that separated Mathew from establishing the next level of the fortress, something that he had on his mind for quite a while.

The last obstacle, save for the insufficient amount of cores they had for establishing the settlement.

'Worst case scenario, we could sell most of the weapons, buy a set of brand new ones and make up the lacking number like that,' Mathew thought, sparing a bit of his mind to plan for the future.

But soon, all his thoughts ceased to wander when he faced the true scale of the enemy they hoped to hunt.

"Oh damn…" Mathew released a short sight while his head moved up so that his eyes could catch the whole thing.

It was a crayfish spanning three stories high and tens of meters long.

By stacking regular-sized buses, one would need four rows and two layers of four buses standing one behind the other. Only then, the total size of this massive beast could come to scale.

'There is no way I will be able to kill it with just a spell or two,' Mathew thought, freezing on the spot.

There was something in the raw presence of this crustacean that made him tremble. And for the briefest of moments, Mathew couldn't tell why.

And then, it struck him.

"Everyone, get fucking down!" Mathew screamed out from the bottom of his lungs.

The monster raised both its tail and its front claws before freezing in this weird, stretched-out position.

Mathew hugged the ground before shooting his head up to look around.

The girls all fell down, quickly reacting to Mathew's desperate command.

Norbert was halfway done dropping down… when the crayfish body suddenly tensed up, only for a concentrated stream of solidified steam to strike his arm.

'Shit!' Mathew cursed in his thoughts when he saw a gaping hole left in the officer's shoulder.

It wasn't like a wound Mathew was used to. No gun could create such a clean and wide opening in one's body.

'I could fit my fist in there,' Mathew thought, frozen at the moment.

"MAT!" Nadia shouted, forcing the young man out of his daze.

"Pull him away!" Mathew shouted right away. "Get him back to the base while we can still save him!"

Everything went to shit the second anything started.

The crayfish relaxed for but a second before raising up, ready to repeat its shot again.

'I remember now,' Mathew thought, watching powerlessly how Nadia rose up from the ground with her eyes fixed on the monster's tensing body.

'She should be able to take one shot…' Mathew thought, gritting his teeth.

And then the time around him froze over.

'Wait, she could take one hit because of that protective spell I cast upon her,' he thought, only for his attention to return right back to Norbert. 'But he had one too!'

Mathew's eyeballs moved as slowly as if they were submerged in some sort of slime.

He turned his face just enough to cast a glance at Norbert's body.

The blood that Mathew saw splurging out of his wound was now breaking apart like some sort of graphical artifact.

The officer lay down on the ground, desperately clutching at the wound that wasn't there in the first place.

'This isn't right,' Mathew thought, recalling the terror-struck face Norbert made when he got hit. 'Well, I don't have the time to think about it too much,' Mathew decided, turning his attention back to the monster.

"Don't get up!" Mathew shouted right as the began to flow again. "Stay down, Norbert's okay!"

The fight didn't start well. But at least, it didn't turn into a disaster right away.

Poof!

A rapid, snappy sound filled the open area of the street when the monster sent its second surge of solidified steam.

Now that everyone was hugging the ground, the shot went right above everyone's heads.

"Jump the bastard!" Mathew shouted, sensing the right moment for the counter-attack.

'As terrifying as it is, we need to get it killed!' Mathew thought, focusing on his own part of the battle.

The young man closed his eyes and invoked all the relevant windows of his system.

'My mana fully regenerated,' Mathew observed, suddenly glad that he held back on using any of his abilities up to this point.

Because now, he was going to make the best possible use of it.

'At the current rate, I should be able to shoot four…' Mathew did a quick count. 'No, three…' he hesitated for a second. 'Wait, no. It's four after all.'

The stats that Mathew recalled from the last time he checked the system didn't match up with the stats he could see right now.

'It seems all the fighting from when the night started brought my wives' levels quite a bit,' Mathew thought, taking the raise in his mind stat into account.

'Now, then,' Mathew finally directed his attention back to the objectives at hand. 'First, let's recast the protection on Norbert,' he thought, pulling out one of the cores he picked up from one of the few zombies that still roamed around Peter's base.

'Anchorable, protective veil!' Mathew invoked, watching how twenty-five points of his mana vanished into nothingness.

"Here, catch!" Mathew shouted as he threw the infused stone back to where Norbert was gathering himself up from the ground.

'Now then,' Mathew thought, turning his eyes back towards the monster.

Leila was busy slashing at its right leg, hoping to quickly reduce their level from four to zero.

Daria was already in her shadowy self, engaging in a contest of strength with the lobster-like monster's left claw. Carol didn't allow others to overshadow her, currently conjuring several chunks of the earth only to slam them right between the joints of the monster's left legs.

And in the meantime… Nadia simply stood down in front of Mathew, keeping herself low while watching out for any potential threat to the young man.

'I can't let such a dedication go to waste, can I?' Mathew thought, pushing all the stray thoughts aside before focusing mana between his hands.

'Piercing bolt!' he then shouted in his thoughts.

The mana in his hands jerked up, sucked away from his hands, and towards a vortex that appeared between them.

The spell botted up for only two seconds before the last strand of mana filled the vortex, redirecting all of its energy towards the target.

A solidified mass of magic energy shot forth, lodging itself right into the crayfish shell, on two-thirds of the height of its tail.

'Shit…' Mathew cursed, nearly falling to his knees upon the casting of the spell.

It was one wild ride to control a spell that sapped more than half of the total mana he could control at once.

But thanks to the buggy nature of his system, Mathew wasn't done yet.

"It's one hell of a beast to control," he muttered as he gathered mana in his hands yet again. "But it will have to work!" he then shouted, releasing his second shot.

And this time… the bolt of energy struck the monster right in the head!