Leveling Up Wives In The Apocalypse

Mathew woke up to a massive pain in his head.

His ears were ringing while his body refused to move at all.

'Ugh...' the young man whined in his thoughts. He then took a deep breath, trying to use it to ward off the unpleasant experience.

And just like that, everything came to an end.

Mathew opened up his eyes, only to see how cheap were the panels on the floor.

'How long was I out?' the young man asked himself, prompting his chest up on his arms and looking around.

The young man that helped Mathew before has yet to even turn his head around. Mathew's girl's all laid down on the floor with their eyes closed.

'I really overdid it,' Mathew thought, internally admitting the blame. 'I should've raised our strength step by step, not all at once,' he thought, gritting his teeth as he rose up to his feet.

Mathew rose up to his feet... only to end up half a meter up in the air after pushing himself off the ground.

'What the...' Mathew panicked.

Not because he was in any danger, a fall from such a small heigh wouldn't hurt him.

The young man was bewildered by the reason why he suddenly found himself up in the air.

'Is it the increase in my stats?' Mathew thought, his eyes opening wide right as his body plummeted down.

Pat.

Mathew landed like a cat, softly absorbing the impact on his joints. He then turned the momentum into a swing that helped him to rise back to his feet.

"I guess I'm not used to this kind of strength," Mathew muttered as he brought his right hand up and looked at it with awe.

The system was a byproduct of the apocalypse. Something that Mathew hated to the core and with all his might. A way of reusing the resources of the apocalypse into monsters harder and harder to defeat.

'I should hate everything related to the apocalypse, and so do I,' Mathew thought, still staring his hand down. 'And yet, I can't refuse how nice it feels to get stronger.'

'No,' Mathew's thoughts suddenly took a turn. He shook his head and looked to the side. His feet moved as soon as his eyes locked on their target.

"Nadia..." Mathew muttered, falling to his knees by the girl, only to watch her slowly come to her senses on her own.

"What happened...?" the girl asked in a frail voice, failing to focus her eyes on anything. "Did you..." she opened her mouth and let out a few sounds, only to end up pausing her sentence as a wave of weakness took over her flesh.

"It's okay already," Mathew encouraged his girl, grabbing her from the side and helping her to stand up. "And yes, we grew by quite a whole lot," he then added, eager to sweeten the deal for the girl.

"That's good, then," Nadia smiled gently before shaking her head and taking a deep breath.

Just like was the case for Mathew, Nadia managed to fight off her sense of weakness in a single moment. And to be perfectly fair, she did so a lot faster than her man!

"Ugh, that was a weird feeling," Nadia muttered. She then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand before looking around.

"What the hell was that...?" Daria muttered, weakly raising up her arms and lifting her head from the floor. To her side, Leila also started to regain her consciousness.

"This isn't over yet," Mathew finally dared to mention, now that everyone was awake. "But first, I want you all to decide what you want to improve on first," the young man explained. "Oh, but first, try to move around and see how you feel."

'And check if you received some interesting abilities,' Mathew thought, calling forth the system window and glancing at everyone's stats. 'I distributed the points with everyone's potential progress in mind, after all.'

Mathew put a lot of importance into raising each, specific stat towards a certain threshold. It was just another guess of his, yet in a lot of games, reaching a round number of a personal statistic would often come with additional benefits.

"I'm simply stronger, I think," Nadia reported after taking a quick stroll around while waving her hands around. "How about you, guys?" she then asked, turning her eyes towards the rest of the group.

'Now that I think about it, shouldn't I receive some kind of skill myself?'

Not only did Mathew raise his arcane by a whooping ten points, but he also pumped a total of thirty points into his mind. And for as little as he knew about this stat, in particular, bringing it all the way up to fifty points surely would have some meaningful effects!

'Judging by how my vitality improved with just a few points, I really should receive some added benefit,' Mathew thought, gritting his teeth when scouring his mind didn't reveal any new tricks.

The young man then shook his head before glancing at the system sheet again. And to his surprise, he found out that there were two changes that he either missed before or changes that happened only after everyone received their levels.

Nadia's class changed from "First wife - class 1" to "Bloodhound - Class 2" while Daria's class changed from "Seductress - Class 1" to "Shadow Walker - Class 2".

'Is this change associated with their existing skills? Or maybe level alone?' Mathew put his guess forward but decided to stay put and keep his mouth shut.

'It might be just a hunch, but I feel like directing them on a certain path would be detrimental to their growth,' Mathew thought, clenching his fists as he looked at the girls.

"Just a moment, please," Daria asked while raising her hand.

Mathew turned his eyes to the girl only to see her hand shaking and her entire body acting pretty weird.

And then, measly a second after she called out to the others, something suddenly pulled at the girl, instantly dragging her through the floor towards one of the walls.

"Wha..." Mathew released only half of a shout before jumping to his feet and towards the girl.

Yet, whatever pulled on the girl had a headstart advantage. And just as Mathew's fingers were about to grasp at Daria's ankle, she struck the wall...

No.

As soon as she neared the concrete wall of the building, her body entered some sort of a vortex only to merge into shadows. And before Mathew could even blink, a towering figure composed of a dark, swirling mist appeared before him, staring the young man down with its bright, red eyes.

'Huh?' Mathew gulped down his saliva. And as the screen of the system's sheet appeared before his eyes for but a moment, he made an interesting discovery.

All of Daria's stat's now seemingly doubled over. And while their normal values appeared just like usual, beside every stat of her, there was now another number.

It was kept in sharp brackets and represented roughly one and a half of the normal value of Daria's stats.

Then, as rapidly as it began, everything came to an end.

The black, shadowy figure dissipated, leaving Daria's body standing exactly where the misty shadow was just a moment earlier.

And it left her with nothing but a shocked look on her face.