Leveling Up Wives In The Apocalypse

Mathew took his sweet time walking around the perimeter of Peter\'s base.

\'Now that I have his approval, there is no need for us to rush into picking the place for the last merchant,\' he thought, passing by the empty buffer zone of the residential building to the north of the area.

This was the spot that bore the marks of the activity that initially made Mathew quite against any sort of relationship with Peter. This was the place where the man-made zombies resided, acting as a warning to all the free-roaming zombies nearby.

\'Now that I think about it, I wonder how he figured it out,\' Mathew thought, taking a short stop by one of the rooms.

The only reason why he picked this room, in particular, was the slight damage to its doors that allowed the young man to peer inside.

And just as expected, there was a bunch of three zombies, all consisting of nothing more but their heads and torso.

All of their limbs were amputated, making it nigh impossible for them to be a threat to a sane person, even assuming they could somehow free themselves from the restraints.

\'How he figured out that zombies can communicate in some way or form that we do not understand?\'

It was in humanity\'s nature to ignore the things they couldn\'t perceive. There was a need for hundreds of years and countless geniuses to live their lives and leave their heritage to turn into a fertile ground for those who came after them for humans to start figuring out what was beyond the level of a simple observation.

To a degree, things that were beyond human understanding were a step up from the things they couldn\'t experience. It was their brains that humans used to peer through the veil of the unseen.

But how they were supposed to figure out something that was beyond what they could understand?

\'Well,\' Mathew heaved a short sigh before moving on. \'It doesn\'t matter,\' he thought as he reached the end of the corridor.

The young man then turned around on his feet and moved back towards the building\'s main hall.

"Another dud?" Nadia asked, glancing over at the entrance when Mathew came out of it.

"Yeah," the young man nodded his head, "it\'s like this place was designed around just a single area," he stated, turning his eyes to the very place they call came from. "And I don\'t really like the idea of placing the third merchant in that damn workshop!"

There had to be a total of three merchants in order for the summoning of the fortress to become possible.

The first one was a merchant that Peter summoned himself, located right by the side of his private quarters at the very back of the mechanical workshop. Yet, despite how near the front line of the entire base that place was, due to the destruction of some of the walls, one had to go around the entire place in order to reach it.

The second merchant was the one that Mathew summoned himself, located in what could only be said as the most random place. It used to be the area where Peter would keep his potentially troublesome guests, just like it was the case with Mathew during their first meeting.

As such, that place wasn\'t all that great of a merchant location, which resulted in his wares being fully generic, without any twist.

"Maybe it\'s not that bad of an idea?" Nadia suggested once she saw Mathew\'s face twisting. "It\'s not like we have much choice regarding that either," she then added with a shrug of her shoulders.

"To be honest, that\'s what I was thinking myself," Mathew admitted. He then hung his head to the back as he stared up at the dark sky of the night. "But I was worried that it\'s just me wishing to get this over with."

Mathew pulled his head back to its normal level. He cast a long glance at his first wife before taking a deep breath.

"Well, nothing good will come from waiting around and getting annoyed," he said, coming to terms with the reality. "No matter how much I brood over it, the outline of this base won\'t change, so let\'s just go and summon the third one."

Mathew was perfectly aware that he was someone who liked to overthink things. And so, in his desire to fix that annoying part of himself, he instantly followed his words with actions, heading right back to the place where tonight\'s drama took place.

The situation at the workshop was more or less the same as it was when Mathew left it to look for the place to summon the merchant. The only difference was that Peter was busy applying the zombie cure to the last two of his injured men rather than the first two.

"You are back already?" Peter asked, raising his head over his current patient. "Is it done?" he then changed his question while his face tensed up a little.

There was no denying that Mathew was quite forceful when negotiating the deal. As such, there was no surprise in how Peter still wasn\'t all that happy with the idea.

"Yes and no," Mathew announced, moving right past his local counterpart before reaching the very middle of the workshop. "That will do I guess," he then muttered upon reaching a part of the room that couldn\'t be more ordinary.

\'And now, for the first climax of the night,\' Mathew thought, pulling out one of the cores that he dug out from the high-evolved zombie.

The young man saved it on himself rather than stashing it away in his storage simply for convenience\'s sake. And now, he tightened his fingers around it.

"I wish to summon a merchant," he spoke out, closing his eyes right as the core in his hand suddenly exploded in light.

Mathew kept his eyes closed for a second. And by the time he opened them back up, the entire room turned into a mess.

Most of the people who just happened to be there were now wiggling on the floor, desperate to regain their sight. Some were screaming, others were covering their eyes with their hands.

And to top it all off, Mathew\'s hand was hidden within the hood of the merchant, as if he was about to enter his subspace right away.

"The first part is done," Mathew muttered, pulling his hand back and looking towards the garage door leading outside. "Now I can only hope Daria gathered enough cores for the next step."