Leveling Up Wives In The Apocalypse

\'Let\'s start the fun, I guess,\' Mathew thought, pulling his hand out from between Leila\'s legs and pushing her off his lap before standing up.

He wasn\'t rough with the girl at all, but it would be wrong to call his actions gentle either. Just what one would expect from a man who didn\'t really care for the girls he was doing.

"It\'s nice to see you in good health," Mathew said while throwing a long look at the doors Peter just crossed. He allowed his look to linger for a short while before finally pulling his eyes and directing them toward the content of the cart.

It was an average pushcart, something Mathew saw many times on many different sites of construction or renovation. As such, it wasn\'t the pushcart itself that got his attention but its content.

"That\'s quite a… lot of the cores," Mathew said in a slightly dissatisfied voice. \'But there isn\'t anywhere near enough of them. Not when taking into account how long they had to collect them.\'

"That\'s just the first batch," Peter reported happily. "More of them are coming soon."

"Good," Mathew said while his expression mellowed down. "That\'s good indeed."

The tension in the room was so thick one could nearly cut it into chunks. It came from Mathew\'s wariness of the potential ploys that Marcus could employ. It also came from all of the members of Mathew\'s team, waiting with anticipation for what sort of moves he would employ himself.

There was no sign of doubt on their faces. Even though Mathew didn\'t bother to explain what he had on mind, not only they were already used to this state of things, but they also knew he didn\'t want to speak too much in fear of Marcus eavesdropping and later employing some sort of countermeasures to the moves Mathew would reveal prematurely.

"First thing first, though," Mathew muttered while raising his eyes to Peter\'s face. "I was lead to believe your companion would be coming with you," he said.

In theory, there was no reason for Mathew to care about someone he knew for only a few short hours. In this apocalyptic world, lives were extremely cheap after all.

The only reason why Mathew could be bothered to ask about the other of the middle-aged men that he met in the shopping mall was to check one thing.

It was to check how hasty Marcus was with turning his followers into zombie repellents once even a hint of doubt regarding their loyalty were to appear.

"Ah, Tommy?" Peter asked while raising his eyebrows. His lips twitched only to form a small smile as he looked behind his back, towards the open doors. "He will be coming as soon as they finish loading his cart with the cores," he revealed.

\'So he is still alive,\' Mathew took notice. \'That bodes well for my plans.\'

"That\'s a good thing to hear," Mathew replied out loud while revealing a small, lenient smile. "In the meantime, though, how many cores do you think you have in your cart?" he asked.

"Ugh, I don\'t know the precise number," Peter hesitated. "But if I were to eyeball it…" he took a moment to think.

Peter leaned his head over his shoulder and raised his hand to rub his chin while he looked down at the cores and calculated something in his mind.

"I guess around two hundred?" he guessed while pulling his eyebrows together to show just how much of a guess this number was. "Tommy\'s cart should have just as many," he then added, bringing the total guess of his to four hundred. "There would be more coming, but I heard the workers got ordered to stop extracting the cores and leave all the corpses be."

"Good," Mathew said while rubbing his own chin and with a small, mysterious smile on his lips. Yet, as he took a glance at the content of the cart…

His expression quickly twisted into an ugly grimace.

Because while the pushcart was filled with cores, no one paid any attention to cleaning them from all the residual flesh, blood, and brain matter extracted along with the cores!

"It\'s a pity you guys didn\'t use all this time you had to clean them up properly," Mathew commented while ignoring the amused expressions of his teammates in the back of the room.

There were many occasions where they ended up fully cowered in zombie\'s blood due to how much of a meatgrinder parts of their battles were. Not a single one of them complained about dirtying their hands while extracting the cores either.

And here Mathew was, complaining about some strangers not going the extra mile to clean all those cores from the stuff they were more than accustomed to playing around with!

"If you want me to do it, I could…" Peter muttered, averting his eyes as hesitation showed all over his face. "But the water…" he hesitated again.

"Speak up," Mathew requested while a small glint appeared in his eyes.

"Water supply has been a huge problem since two days ago when the utilities turned off," Peter admitted a massive flaw of his survivor\'s camp.

\'No, that\'s not a flaw,\' Mathew thought, doing his best to hold back a smile that nearly forced its way on his lips. \'That\'s a huge strategic liability for me to exploit!\'

"I see," Mathew said out loud only to raise his hand and then wave it away. "Forget about it, then. I\'m not some kind of a monster to use the spare water reserves you guys have just to make myself more COMFORTABLE," Mathew intentionally raised his voice to cover up the small noise of giggles that came from behind his back.

\'Yeah, yeah,\' he thought. \'I know how funny it is to pretend we care about water when we have no qualms about our entire camp showering on a regular basis,\' he thought.

"Still, lacking water can be a huge problem," Mathew picked up where he left once the noises from behind ended. "But as too-good-to-be-true, as it might sound, I might have a solution to it," he added with a smile.

"Yeah, yeah," Peter smiled amicably and nodded his head. "That\'s a nice joke, but you don\'t need to try so hard to lift my spirits," he said, clearly misunderstanding Mathew\'s intentions.

"I\'m not joking, Peter," Mathew said, using the other party\'s name to add weight to his sentence. "It\'s extremely labor intensive and might be pretty costly…" Mathew pretended to hesitate, "but it\'s a problem we\'ve already solved."

The tension in the room went to the sky.

\'What, are they thinking I\'m going to reveal the existence of merchants?\' Mathew thought with a small smile dancing at the corner of his lips. \'Well, that\'s exactly what I\'m going to do, but for a whole different purpose.\'

If there was a moment when Mathew regretted being unable to share his plans… it was right now.

"Anyway, there is no use talking about it just between the two of us. So, rather than lingering here, could you go to the camp\'s leader and ask him to gather everyone somewhere safe for me to address them?" Mathew requested.

"I can do it but… what for?" Peter asked, confused about Mathew\'s intentions.

"It\'s simple," Mathew smiled in response. "If the suggestion comes out from Marcus, the people of this camp are bound to turn their hate and resentment towards him," Mathew pointed out while spreading his arms and then shrugging his shoulders. "But if an outsider like me were to do so, their hate will be directed to someone who will soon leave this place."

"I…. I see," Peter muttered. His face showed that he still didn\'t completely buy Mathew\'s idea. Yet, as he didn\'t even know what it entailed, he ditched all his doubts and stood up at attention. "Well, what I think or understand doesn\'t matter," he said with a slightly sour smile. "You just need me to go and report this to Marcus, right?"

Mathew put a genuine smile on his face for the first time since the man entered the room.

\'It\'s a good thing for people to know their place and role,\' he thought.

"I better get going, then," Peter replied upon noticing Mathew\'s smile. "This matter is way too important to stall it."

Peter did just as he said, leaving the pushcart in the room and speeding off down the corridor of the building.

"Now then, shall we begin?" Mathew muttered, kicking the doors to close them before standing over the blood-covered crystals in the cart.

He reached out with his hands and kept them above the crystals before closing his eyes.

\'With a hundred zombie cores…\' Mathew\'s lips curved up. \'I wish to summon a merchant!\'