Leveling Up Wives In The Apocalypse

'I'm going to abuse this bullshit to the limits,' Mathew thought when a second shockwave for the day turned the crowd of the zombies into a splatter.

The zombies behind and to Mathew's sides had it the easiest. The moment the wave of compressed air struck them at a great speed, some would be simply knocked away. A lot of the zombies that already bore the injuries from the earlier fights or even from when the original owners of the bodies died would fall apart under the condensed gust of wind.

The zombies that had it the worst, were those that were within a certain range and at a certain angle towards Mathew.

Tsssz!

At least a hundred zombies happened to stand in the kill zone. It was marked by painting a huge circle on the ground with Mathew in the middle and designed by a radius of how far his skill could push the zombies away.

Mathew stood near enough to the wall of his fortress for such a circle to intrude upon the protected land. And whenever a zombie would end up attempting to force its way through the barrier, it would simply light up a little before consuming the zombie-like some sort of godly acid.

'Wha...' Mathew opened his eyes wide, a mere fraction of a second after casting his skill. Because in this precise yet extremely tiny fraction of a second, the barrier of the fortress started to pulsate.

Normally, the barrier appeared like a see-through veil of a gentle, aqua hue. But as more and more zombies struck the barrier only to instantly dissolve in it, the color of the barrier would suddenly spike in intensity.

'Heads!' A single thought passed through Mathew's mind.

FLASH!

A sudden explosion of light somehow caused Mathew's ears to ring so loudly that it became painful.

'What the hell?!' Mathew freaked out.

He could handle standing in the middle of a zombie horde. He could manage the idea of using some sort of energy contained in their cores to invoke powerful spells.

But how could a mere wave of light leave him stunned?

'It's not a fucking flashbang!' Mathew protested in his mind once he realized just how this weird feeling could be familiar.

As the true gamer of his years, he went through this experience over and over again in the past, albeit from the safety of his chair and while only controlling the character appearing on his screen!

Mathew could accept all the things that would freak out any normal person because of a simple, singular reason.

He could somehow improvise an explanation that connected all the dots and, to a degree, could make sense. As long as his assumptions and guesses were correct, Mathew could find the rule behind everything that went on.

But this particular, relatively small event?

The bright light disappeared. In fact, it was long gone, Mathew's eyes simply took several seconds to heal the damage caused by the flash.

And then and only then, Mathew could even analyze the stray thought that appeared in his mind when the flash happened.

'Heads?' Mathew thought, blinking his eyes to speed up the process of their healing. He then raised them at the barrier, only to turn his head around as he scouted his immediate surroundings.

His brain desperately needed its feed. Mathew's synapses demanded information that they could process to let him make sense of what was going on.

The barrier still stood, now back to its usual, semi-transparent state.

And there were no zombies between Mathew and the relatively low wall that served as the support for the magical part of the barrier.

"Gulp," Mathew swallowed his saliva as he raised his eyes towards the top of the walls.

Following his earlier accord, he opted not to think about everything too much. There would be a suitable time for him to sort through his observations and experiences. And standing several meters away from the horde that started to regain their mobility didn't encourage stalling for time.

'I can only hope it won't work the same way on me,' Mathew raised his prayer before moving ahead.

The zombies that managed to survive Mathew's accidental culling just by an inch gave chase. They were the closest and marked the time limit that Mathew had to organize his escape.

And yet, the young man walked at a slow pace, as if not bothered by the danger at all.

"Run!" Nadia shouted from the top of the wall once she regained her sight.

Mathew raised his eyes only to see fright written all over the girl's face.

"I know you are resilient, but if they catch you, they will keep you down!"

Mathew shook his head to the sides just as he took one more step before fully stopping.

He waited for a second to take a healthy breath and close his eyes.

The young man then allowed his body to lean forward. And it continued to do so even after reaching the point where he could no longer move it back upright. Yet, even then, Mathew's continued to fall forward without a single attempt to save his face from a painful lesson.

And then, Mathew raised his right leg, climbing the floor as he would climb a steep side of a mountain.

Mathew kicked the ground. The strength of his leap ahead and the speed he would achieve were all calculated.

Obviously, the young man didn't do any calculations. He simply acted on his instincts.

Mathew made a second step. The tough mass of the air hit him in the chest, fighting off the gravity trying to smash his head into the sidewalk on the outer side of the school's wall.

The young man's body reached as low as thirty degrees in relation to the ground before his jump stabilized his weird position.

Mathew then kicked the ground again. A fresh wave of squeezed air pushed against Mathew's chest with increased strength, bringing him back to roughly forty-five degrees over the ground.

His third step raised Mathew's chest for his body to make a whooping seventy-five degrees, only fifteen away from a perfectly straight position.

And then, Mathew made his last, fourth step.

Following the pattern of the air pushing against Mathew's upper body harder with every step he made, his body now started to lean to the back.

And using the kick from his fourth leap, Mathew allowed his momentum to carry him up as he raised and then placed his foot on the wall for one last step.

In this single moment, three forces acted on Mathew's body.

His forward momentum tried to squeeze him against the wall. The spinning move introduced by the air resistance made his body bend backward, making his body perpendicular to the wall he stepped on.

And the momentum from his last step allowed Mathew to momentarily oppose gravity.

Without the force pressing him towards the wall, he wouldn't get the friction necessary to walk up on it. The spinning momentum of his body pressed to turn into simpler linear force with only the forward momentum allowing Mathew to counteract it.

So he took a step off the wall...

And then, the one force that balanced all the others and allowed Mathew to walk upright on the wall... Disappeared.

The combined vector of strength affecting Mathew's flesh suddenly rearranged, sending his body forward despite the young man somersaulting backward.

'Wha...?' Mathew's moan of shock never left his lips.

Paff!

If anything, the young man was lucky. After making one and a half of a roll in the air more, he fell down right on the upper part of his neck.

Several degrees of mid-air turn more and he would likely snap his own neck off.

"Haaaaa...." Mathew exhaled all the air from his lungs. Once his body laid flat on the ground and absorbed the kinetic energy of this unfortunate yet lucky landing, it squeezed his lungs so hard, that there was no space left for a single molecule of air in it.

"Mat!" Nadia shouted, gracefully jumping down from the wall and rushing to her temporary motionless partner of hers.

"I'm alive!" Mathew slowly raised his hand and waved it to save the girl some unnecessary worries. "Pretty damned pained and struggling to breathe, but alive," he added as his hand fell down and rested on the grassy ground.

"What the hell was that?!" Nadia screamed out in Mathew's face as soon as she confirmed that he didn't appear to be in immediate danger. "Why did you waste so much time only to then compensate by taking such a huge risk?!"

Mathew pursed his lips together, slightly annoyed by the girl's nagging.

'Stop it, man, she only says that because she is worried,' Mathew thought to himself, taking a moment to stabilize his breathing. Only once he made sure he wasn't going to get any worse, did Mathew open his mouth.

"It was really weird," he admitted. "It felt like if I calculated everything. I knew I couldn't make it over the wall in the normal way. But I'm sure I didn't figure it out myself," Mathew attempted to explain the weird state he was in just a moment earlier.

"The hell are you talking about?" Nadia asked, her tone tuning down as her wrath and dissatisfaction turned into surprise and fledgling curiosity.

"I don't know myself," Mathew added before shaking his head. "You saw that jump," he then pointed out. "If anything were to go wrong, if I made even the slightest miscalculation, it was bound to end up as a complete fail!"

Mathew got so passionate that he even powered up, sitting on the ground.

He would stand up if not for Nadia instantly putting her hands on his shoulders and keeping him at least sitting.

"And I hope you don't expect me to have experience in this sort of acrobatics," Mathew muttered, unable to get the topic out of his head.

'And then there is that thought. Heads...' Mathew turned silent as he remembered his earlier observation that he opted to leave for later.

'How did I do and observe all of that?'