Leveling Up Wives In The Apocalypse

"Are you going to do it?" Nadia asked.

The two of them stood right within the hands reach of the third merchant. And yet, Mathew didn't reach out to establish the fortress.

"I..." Mathew hesitated.

He brought his arm up, aiming his hand at the bundle of shadows hidden underneath the merchant's robe. But he didn't grasp at it.

"It just feels slightly overwhelming," Mathew muttered, closing his fist. "Like, this moment marks the end of my knowledge," he added and gulped his saliva down.

"Isn't it a good thing?" Nadia asked, turning her face away from the merchant and towards Mathew. She then locked her arms on her chest and looked at her partner. "I know you might feel uncertain about what will come next," she said, only to shake her head and move it back towards the merchant. "Ultimately, though, waiting won't change a thing, would it?"

Mathew allowed Nadia's words to sound out in the air.

Maybe it was the enclosure of the office area. Maybe it was the feeling of uncertainty regarding the future.

'Or maybe I'm scared of the future where I won't know anything more than others,' Mathew thought, gulping his saliva down again.

The young man stared at the shadows of the merchant for the next few moments.

'Pam,' a soft sound filled Mathew's ears when Naida suddenly hugged herself to his side.

"I understand that you are worried," she said in a seemingly casual tone. She then locked her hands on the other side of Mathew's waist and pulled herself even tighter to his side.

'I can feel them,' Mathew thought, gulping his saliva down for the third time, although this time due to another reason.

"And I'm here to support you through it," Nadia stated, raising her eyes and locking them on Mathew's face.

The young man sank into Nadia's pupils. Her earnest look, endless faith, and wholesome support all struck Mathew's soul to its core.

"Thanks," the young man uttered while allowing the corner of his mouth to quiver up a little.

Mathew then opened his hand and reached out just a little bit further, grasping at the merchant's core.

'The shadows will surge, then the space will form,' Mathew thought as he observed the usual process all around him. Yet, before he could observe any details, the phenomena would always end up eluding his eyes.

'What?' Mathew thought, his eyes widening while he attempted to make sense of the small detail he had just noticed. 'What was that feeling?' he thought, raising his hands to his eyes, analyzing the memory of what happened.

The young man then shook his head and looked up, right at the interface he had seen back when he last visited this merchant.

"Outside of the number of zombies falling within quota, nothing appears to have changed," Mathew muttered, raising a hand to rub his chin.

His eyes then moved down, scanning every last detail of the screens that formed along with the shadowy world around them.

"The question now is, which option should I choose?" Mathew muttered while moving his eyes between the three windows outlining his picks.

'Better scouting area, easier merchants or general benefits,' Mathew thought, turning the sizeable windows of text into the generalized benefits each of them provided.

'I can cut the merchant-related merchant option right away. Increasing the spending of the stones would be counterproductive in the long term,' Mathew thought, mentally erasing one of the options.

"Now, should I go with the first or with the last one?" Mathew muttered, unable to decide.

He then turned on his feet and started to pace around the shadowy realm, hoping that this movement would refresh his mind.

This stalemate lasted for what seemed like an hour yet could very well be a minute or even a handful of seconds.

"Let's go with the first option," Mathew said, raising his head when he finally made his decision.

'Assuming that the merchants will work relatively the same way one step above as they do right now, I will have to establish a few more fortresses anyway.' Mathew raised his hand to make his choice.

'This place is too damn fragile to make it the main base. And in order to expand, we need to be aware of what's around us first and foremost,' Mathew thought right as his hand pressed against the shadow that formed the very first option.

[First merchant]

[Effect: Due to its high elevation, the core set in the first location of choice will give a bonus to detection and system alert for major events in the vincity. Increases the area of influence of the fortress.]

The second Mathew touched the semi-existing panel, it lit up a little at the expense of the brightness of the two other options. Yet, besides this small change, nothing else happened.

"Ah, my bad," Mathew muttered, only to bring his hand to the bottom of all the screens that he could see before slowly scrolling it up.

'Set the range to the maximum, the details to the maximum,' Mathew thought as he played around with some of the settings of the fortress that he found interesting.

"So that's how it works," the young man whispered under his nose once he concluded all the minute changes to the fortress settings.

Mathew could manipulate only a few aspects. Each of them was somehow related to the main nature of the fortress, allowing him to balance its potential in one or the other way.

'I guess I will be able to play around with other elements once I set up the two others kind of fortress,' Mathew concluded right as his hand scrolled the list of the system windows all the way to the bottom, where a 'confirm' button was hidden.

And right now, it was flashing in rhythmic intervals, edging Mathew to just press it.

"I should look forward to the times when I'm not the smartest person in the room, huh?" Mathew spoke to himself, reiterating the words that Nadia offered him.

"I'm jumping into unknown waters," Mathew then said in a determined tone before bringing his finger down over the flashing button and confirming all the details of the sect. "But I will never grow if I remain stuck in place!"

All the shadows around Mathew suddenly started to recede, all gathering up in the central point of the shadowy domain. Yet, rather than disappearing into thin air, they congregated into a single entity that then formed itself into a whirlpool of shadows.

The whirlpool then started to spin around at an ever-increasing rate. Soon, the fabric of the shadowy domain started to bend, relenting under the pressure of the whirlpool's momentum.

"Huh?" Mathew only managed to utter a small moan of shock when he was suddenly kicked out of the shadowy domain.

"What the hell did just happen?" he asked in a shocked voice while his eyes widened up to their physical limits.

"Matt..." Nadia attempted to call the young man out, only for Mathew to shoot his outer arm around the girl's shoulders before dropping himself to the ground and pinning the girl below his own body.

BOOM!

The merchant exploded... or it didn't.

A surge of strange power filled the entire area with force easily capable of toppling the entire building that Mathew worked so hard to preserve.

And yet, not a single speck of dust changed its place.

'What the...' Mathew couldn't even form a proper sentence in his mind to express his shock caused by the dissonance.

From one side, he could feel his body being torn apart by the powerful, spinning current... Yet, there wasn't any wind in the area nor any other force capable of influencing the physical world at all.

And so it ended.

"Mathew, what happened?!" Nadia slammed her hands against Mathew's cheeks without any mercy. She didn't bother trying to stand up or push the young man of her, opting to focus on his mental state instead. "TALK TO ME!" she shouted as worry exploded in her eyes.

"It's over..." Mathew whispered in a weak voice.

"..." Nadia was at a loss for words. Whatever she wanted to say ended up stuck in her throat, unable to reach her lips. "Hug me," she then quickly ordered, fixing her grasp over Mathew's waist only to pull him deeper into her embrace.

"Ah, that's not it," Mathew shook his head, realizing the mistake he had made. "The formation of the fortress is over," he quickly explained. The young man then lowered his head, resting it against Nadia's soft bosom. "But before we talk about the obvious, tell me," he muttered, his voice muffled by Nadia's flesh blocking his mouth. "You didn't feel it?"

Nadia's questions and misunderstanding made complete sense... Only within the frame of an assumption that she didn't go through the experience that shook Mathew to the core.

"Feel what?" the girl asked, moving her hands up to rustle Mathew's hair while taking a deep breath to calm herself down.

Whether the misunderstanding was Mathew's fault or not didn't matter. The scare that the girl went through was real.

"So you didn't..." Mathew muttered. He then took a few moments to relax while resting atop Nadia's breast, his head lulled within the most divine pillow a man could ask for. "Well, let's stop just lying around," he then suddenly announced, pushing his hands to the side and resting them against the floor.

With a single push, Mathew forced his upper body up, pulling the girl wrapped around his chest along. He then forced his legs to move, quickly standing back up... with Nadia still hanging from his neck and glued to his torso.

"Why did you move?" Nadia protested, only to move her lips towards Mathew's earlobe and enclose them around it. "Didn't we fight through the entire day just so we could relax a bit?" she asked, clearly hinting at the specific way of celebrating the long-awaited success.

"We did," Mathew nodded his head while helping the girl get down on her own two feet. "But there is still one more thing left for us to do," he claimed before moving his eyes up to the ceiling. "And now that we established the fortress, it's one last thing we need to do before we can finally go and get some well-deserved rest!"

[End of the arc]