Leveling Up Wives In The Apocalypse

Daria's attack missed.

Not because the girl was slow. She was far faster than Mathew ever expected her to be, especially with how little time she had to get used to this new ability of hers.

Daria's attack missed because the zombie leader somehow could predict that it would come and it implemented proper countermeasures in advance.

'Well, it's better not to waste time right now,' Mathew thought, shaking his head to purify his mind from all the useless thoughts before he charged forward, ready to pit himself against the ultimate enemy of today.

'Will you please... die?' Mathew thought, sending a horizontal slash with his saber while simultaneously creating two mana blades in his spare hand and sneakily sending them in as well.

The zombie leader deflected Mathew's blade with ease, sacrificing its wrist to redirect the strike to his side. Yet, when the two half-circles of Mathew's mana blades finished their long detour, both of them struck the zombie squarely in the back.

"REEEE!"

The outcry that followed almost made Mathew drop down to the ground. This sound penetrated through every layer of one's defense, carrying all the pain and all the emotions of the injured zombies with it.

'What the fuck is this?!' Mathew screamed out through the blurry cover of the weird, foreign emotions that filled his mind.

He couldn't get rid of them. He couldn't isolate them. It was as if the zombie's leader etched a part of its conscious self on those who dared to challenge it.

"Huff..." Mathew released a deep breath when the influence of the zombie's attack finally faded away. "I guess it was some sort of a mental attack," he summed the situation up before raising his eyes on the group's opponent.

The zombie leader was now back to their perfect prime. There was no sign of the wounds that Mathew's dealt to its back with the manablades, there wasn't even a single scar left over where his saber cut the zombie's wrists cleanly off.

If someone were to look at the situation from the outside, it would be perfectly reasonable for them to assume that the fight has yet to actually start!

"Guys, don't let this temporary defeat get to your heads!" Mathew shouted, taking a step forward to force the girls to look at him instead of thinking about what happened just now. "It surprised us with a strange attack," Mathew explained, only to turn around and glance over at his small harem. "But don't we have abilities of our own?"

Mathew didn't wait for the girls to reply to his question. Instead, he turned his head back towards the zombie's leader before rushing in, ready to finish the nightly adventure as soon as possible.

Mathew swung his saber way before he would get the zombie within his range. Yet, once the forward momentum of his dash, the sideways momentum of his slash, and all the other small details that Mathew made use for combined, his saber proved to be just long enough to etch its tip into the zombie's neck.

'Too shallow,' Mathew thought, pulling his hand far to the left to finish the strike, only to release two straightforward bolts of mana. With his blade carried all the way to Mathew's left side, it would take the young man a while to pull it back to his right from where he could properly execute further attacks.

"My turn!" Daria shouted, sliding behind the zombie only to force her legs into the ground and then use her foothold as a springboard that then sent her right towards the enemy.

This time, the zombie's leader failed to react in time, swaying back and forth when Daria's shadowy limbs carved out a huge chunk of meat from the zombie's side.

'isn't his eyes shining a bit brighter than before?' Mathew thought, observing the situation and watching how Daria retreated, only to make space for Leila and Nadia to join in on the fray.

Yet, rather than watching how the girls grew used to their new abilities and made proper use of them... Mathew directed his eyes back to the detail he noticed before.

'Its eyes...' the young man thought, only to see how a strange thing happened.

The zombie's eyes were already shining with a light on their own when he first noticed it. And yet, right now, Mathew could see the shine behind his eyes suddenly exploding in intensity with every passing fraction of a second.

"GET DOWN!" Mathew shouted, following his own order as he brought his hands to his ears.

And sure enough, before his body could even hit the bloodied courtyard yet after his hands properly sealed his ears, another scream followed.

"reeee" Mathew didn't dare to look at the zombie when it unleashed its ability. The young man didn't know how did its ability work. Sure, he could guess that it was connected to the sound of the shout it would utter whenever activating it... But he couldn't say that for sure. And between the right to watch what was going on as it was changing and the possibility of avoiding the attack fully...

Mathew wasn't the kind of curious person that would allow his self-interest to win over the cold logic. As such, he continued to keep both his eyes and ears shut for a good while, allowing the sound of the attack to die off completely before daring to raise his eyes.

Maybe it was the distance that prevented the zombie from attacking. Maybe it simply never treated Mathew's as a source of any real danger, making it ignore his movements, even while he was supposed to be under the force of a crowd control ability.

One could spend an entire day trying to guess what was the reason that made the zombie ignore Mathew. But Mathew was a pretty simple person. And in a situation like this, he wouldn't be himself if he decided against exploiting it!

'Now is the time,' Mathew thought, pushing his upper body off the grounds as he looked down at the zombie just a few meters away.

It appears to be perfectly confident in the effects of its ability. And rather than paying attention to Mathew's slow movements, the zombie approached the nearest corpse of its undead soldiers only to tear a piece of it away before pressing it against its own wounds.

'It's healing!' Mathew discovered the truth behind the insane regenerative abilities of the zombie just like that, by avoiding its attack and sneaking a peek at what it was doing while it assumed others were out of commission.

The zombie leader finished healing the wound that Daria inflicted on its sides. It then bent over to pick up another bloody scrap of meat from one of its fallen zombies.

'Once it heals the other wound, it will be all back to square one,' Mathew thought, gritting his teeth in mute frustration.

Yet, rather than rushing at the monster, Mathew simply laid down on the ground and continued to amass the greatest amount of energy he ever dared to wield.

Sure, it was still a far cry from the energy contained within a single zombie's core, yet Mathew had no other choice but to make do with what he had on hand.

After all, it would be hard to call this situation a victory if he unleashed his power of core crushing only to end up decimating everyone in the building and flattening the building itself in the attack designed to finish the boss of the zombies off.

'I guess I can only hope it will work,' Mathew thought, waiting for the opportune moment.

Then, right as the zombie was about to press the next scrap of bloody meat to its other wound on its sides. One of the girls started to writhe on the ground, fighting a desperate battle to recover her ability to move and act.

The zombie's leader turned its eyes away from the direction where Mathew was hiding by not moving at all. And for the faintest moment, its entire focus ended up directed at the place where Nadia struggled to throw off the ability that stopped her.

Yet, this faint moment was all that Mathew ever needed.

The second the young man saw the opening, he released his intent from his left hand.

The passage of the seemingly enormous amount of energy that he gathered was enough to make his left hand feel like it was shoved into a crucible full of melted metal. Yet, rather than lamenting over the aftereffects of releasing such a massive amount of mana from his body, Mathew rushed ahead instead.

'This cut will reach you!' he thought, sending his saber flying on an arc from his far-right over to the zombie's leader located in the dead center of Mathew's vision and the path he took. Yet, for every step that Mathew made towards the zombies, the two bolts of energy that he ended up releasing would gain an inch of distance advantage.

The bolts struck the zombie, cutting both of its arms off with ease. And before the zombie could even recover enough to realize what just had happened...

Mathew saber reached its throat, cleanly cleaving through half of it... Only to stop in place when the zombie's eyes shone again and then exploded with light so potent it blinded the young man before he could even lower his eyelids.