Leveling Up Wives In The Apocalypse

"Finally home," Daria muttered, holding her hands as far away as she could from her body.

She was still covered in the lobster's guts, trying her hardest with every step to ignore the disgusting matter all over her clothes.

"Go get yourself cleaned up," Mathew muttered, before reaching out and patting Daria's shoulder. "You did well," he added before gently pushing the girl forward, through the current entrance to the school's base.

"You don't need to wait for the next step," Daria said as she went on ahead, raising her hand as she left, "I'm going to take a long while to clean it all off."

"Sure thing," Mathew replied, waving his hand at the girl before proceeding into the school.

'I'm not clean myself,' he thought, looking down at the state of his clothes, 'but I should manage, for now at least," he thought.

It felt disgusting to rub his flesh about the parts of his clothes that soaked into the monster's blue blood. And yet, with the perspective of finally taking the next step that he envisioned for so long, Mathew couldn't care less about small details like that.

"I'm going to look into establishing the settlement right away," Mathew announced once Daria disappeared from their view as she was heading off towards a different part of the compound than the rest of the group.

"I will go with you," Nadia decided right away.

"So will I," Leila joined in as well, taking a step closer to Mathew's side.

"Oh right, I'm sorry," Mathew turned towards his left, casting a quick look at Leila's face. "We were supposed to spend the night," the young man brought up the topic when he felt the warm rays of sun shining upon his back.

The light penetrated through various gaps in the building, filling the insides with a warm aura.

'We sure are lucky it's not winter,' Mathew suddenly thought, startled by the suddenness of this realization.

"It's okay," Leila muttered silently while hanging her face a little bit. "It's not like you can choose when a horde will attack," she added, trying to play the question off with a carefree attitude.

"I will be sure to make it up to you, I promise," Mathew then said while resting his hand on the girl's shoulder.

"Thanks," Leila sighed. Then, she brought her hand up and removed Mathew's fingers from her shoulder. "But let's leave that for later," she decided, focusing her eyes on the entrance to the detached office by the school.

Just like Mathew established the school fortress at the administrative merchant, he was now hoping to repeat the process but this time, with a settlement instead.

"First, let's gather our cores," Mathew muttered once his group reached the merchant's location.

"We will go look for all the stashed cores," Carol reported, grabbing Norbert's arm and pulling him away.

"Much appreciated," Mathew thanked the two before turning his attention and hand towards the merchant.

After the usual scene of the shadows taking over reality, Mathew found himself within the merchant's subspace yet again.

'I wonder how it will change after the level-up,' Mathew thought as he stepped between the shelves, heading straight for the central point of the subspace.

Mathew wasted no time checking the wares on the shelves. He didn't come to the merchants to shop around, after all.

'First, the cores from the storage,' Mathew thought, reaching out for the window and pulling out a massive crystal shining with a vibrant light.

The crystal was the size of four Mathew's heads stacked on top of each other and its shine alone threatened to disperse the shadows of the merchant's realm.

'Roughly thirteen thousand,' Mathew thought, taking a glance at his system to check for the exact number.

Mathew placed the massive crystal back into the storage before pulling out the sack with the core of the lobster-like monster his group defeated.

'I wonder how much is it worth,' Mathew thought, passing the crystal into his storage as well.

The number displayed by his system jumped up by over two thousand.

'We are still ways off,' Mathew thought, biting down at his lip.

Farming more cores didn't pose that much of a problem. As long as they intercepted a few hordes on the bigger end, Mathew's group could easily reach the number of cores necessary to establish the settlement.

But Mathew wanted to do it now. Not sometime in the future, not in a week. Now.

And he still had quite a lot of room to maneuver.

First, Mathew brought up the sack with all the other cores his group gathered during the hunt. He then added up the cores he left in the storage at Daniel's fortress.

Then, Theo quickly checked the value of his saber.

As expected, its prize went up by a huge margin, courtesy of extensively using it on a high-level horde.

Sadly, even with its increased price, Theo couldn't count on selling his weapons alone.

'My saber went up to two thousand,' Mathew quickly did the math. 'Adding all the others and deducting the cost of buying a new set…'

Mathew closed his eyes as he quickly ran the numbers.

'Now, add the spread from the potentially different value for each weapon…' the young man did the last adjustments…

Only to find out, that between every last core that he could come up with, he would still be four hundred cores worth.

Thirteen thousand cores in the bank. Two more for the monster's core. Then seven more for exchanging the weapons. Then came nine thousand from the cores Mathew cashed out and a further twelve thousand from what Daniel entrusted him with. Adding the last six and a half thousand worth of cores that they gathered from the battle at Peter's base…

And no matter how hard and creatively Mathew counted, they still came half a thousand short!

'Shit…' Mathew cursed under his breath before throwing all of the cores he had on himself into the storage. 'I need to exchange weapons…' he thought as he emerged back into reality, instantly falling into a daze. 'And then come up with a few hundred cores more…'

Mathew's wait and distress didn't last for long, though. Before he could fully even fathom the difficulty of the problem given how there were no zombies to be found anywhere near, Carol returned with a happy look on her face.

"I've found two thousand cores more," she announced while raising and shaking a huge pouch in her hand. "Will that be of any help?"