Leveling Up Wives In The Apocalypse

"Is this some sort of bug?" Mathew whispered under his nose, staring down at the cores left in his possession. 'Woops,' he then thought, raising his eyes to look around.

Thankfully, save for the members of his group, no one appeared to pay him enough attention to listen in on those words.

'Still, I'm quite sure I did the math right,' the young man thought, turning his eyes back towards the cores now that he managed to calm down a little.

After all, even if he was willing to slowly share his information with the members of his group, the same couldn't be said about the random survivors that Mathew already depicted as working their asses for his own sake!

'Well, that's more buying power for us,' he finally decided to ignore the situation before turning his attention to what was supposed to be the second most important element of tonight.

And so, Mathew reached out before grasping at the darkness coiling underneath the merchant's robe.

The shadows surged and washed away the reality, replacing it with the subspace where the trades could happen. Yet, contrary to all the times when the young man entered this kind of realm... There was absolutely nothing of interest in it!

"Where are your wares?" Mathew asked out loud, hoping that speaking out would somehow activate the merchant.

"The products of this merchant will only get unlocked upon establishing a settlement," the robotic voice announced in response to Mathew's inquiry.

"Settlement?" the young man repeated a single word that the merchant said. "Not a fortress?"

This time, however, the robotic voice didn't appear to confirm Mathew's doubts.

'What a bummer,' the young man thought. Even though he was eager to let his emotions out by actually using his voice to produce those words... The few encounters he had with the merchants so far taught him to do better than to express any sign of dissatisfaction with how they operated.

"In that case, there is nothing for me to do here," Mathew announced before raising his eyes to the same spot as usual. "I want to go back, then."

Once again, the shadows surged. And after just a short moment of time within the subspace, Mathew returned back to the real world.

"How did it go?" Nadia took a step forward and asked. She first looked towards Mathew's hands, quickly confirming that he held just as many cores as he brought with himself into the merchant in the first place. Then, she scanned Mathew's entire body, confirming a lack of any new features.

"I think you know the answer already," Mathew released a deep sigh as he looked at Nadia's face to let her beauty relieve some of his mental stress.

'This isn't how I expected it to go,' he thought, gritting his teeth and turning around with the intention of putting all the cores back in a single place.

Yet, as Mathew turned around, he couldn't help but notice a small window floating right by the side of the merchant's shadowy head.

'Oh,' he thought, stopping in his tracks before approaching the merchant again and opening the window up. Then, with a single shove, he forced all the cores in his hands into the window, safekeeping them all within his storage.

"Can you girls bring me the rest of the cores?" Mathew then requested, right as an idea popped up in his head.

"Sure thing," Nadia replied, turning around on her spot and beckoning Leila to follow them.

Daria's shadowy presence on the battlefield of the recent past led to her consuming quite a few cores as she fought. Yet, even when accounting for this decrease, the number of zombies in the army they defeated was still quite high, resulting in a considerable yield of the cores.

"And in the meantime, just to confirm my guess..." Mathew muttered to himself as he reached out and entered the merchant's subspace again.

"How many cores did I just leave in my storage?" he asked.

"You have deposited four hundred cores to your storage," the robotic voice of the merchant replied.

'Thank God it worked,' Mathew thought, heaving a sigh of relief. "Thanks," he then said. "I want to go back now."

Mathew's consciousness returned to reality right at the same second as he squeezed the merchant's shadows.

'So those cores are somehow five times as valuable as the ones we were getting before,' he put his observations into a sentence in his mind. 'Doesn't that mean we can nearly afford not only a fortress here but also an entirely new one somewhere else?'

"Here you go," Nadia called out right as Mathew sank deep into his thoughts. "That should make all of them," she added before handing Mathew a makeshift back ripe from all the cores stored inside.

"Great, thanks," Mathew said. He then grabbed the bag before wasting some time putting the cores, one by one, into the storage. And to not waste all this time on just moving the valuables around, he made sure to count them all.

'Assuming all of them were worth more, I should have around a thousand and nine hundred cores right now,' Mathew finished up the calculation the moment he threw the last core into the window of the storage.

"We need a hundred more," he then spoke, dropping the bag on the ground as he turned back towards the girls.

"Are you going to get them now?" Leila asked as she threw a quick glance towards the outside.

Right where they stood, they were well within the lights coming from the media building.

'How this place retained electricity despite the entire grid failing is a question for later, I guess,' Mathew thought, gritting his teeth as he opted to ignore this topic for now.

"No way in hell," he then shook his head, replying to Leila's question. "Right now, we are going to turn this place into another fortress and spend the night here. Only once the night passes and the sunlight return we will venture out to find the right location for the third fortress," he explained his plans.

"Wait, the third fortress?" Daria asked, finally regaining enough of her strength after the run towards the shed to join in the discussion. "And what happened to that merchant?" she then added another question as she turned her eyes towards the shadowy figure standing silently right where it was summoned.

"Oh, it's just the extension of my observation from before," Mathew explained his thoughts right away. "Just like we need three merchants to establish a fortress in a place, I believe we need three fortresses like that to establish something of a higher tier."

"That's good to know," Daria smiled as she admitted with a nod of her head. Yet, rather than keeping her smile, her lips turned into a thin, straight line. She then leaned her head to the side while keeping her eyes on Mathew's face at all times.

"What wrong?" Mathew asked. 'I might not be the expert when it comes to how women think, but even I can tell there is something on her mind.'

"I only have a single question, now," Daria stated only to rest herself against the wall of the building before staring down Mathew's eyes. "Why am I learning about this only now?"