LEVELING UP WIVES IN THE APOCALYPSE

Mathew took a deep breath and held it in his lungs for as long as he could. Only when his heart started to protest and fill his mind with pain and desperation did the young man dare to release his breath.

“I never knew a small quarrel between lovers could hurt so much,” he muttered to himself, only to then shake his head. “The worst thing is, I don’t even understand what did we argue about!”

Mathew wanted to take as long as necessary to calm his thoughts and emotions down. Yet, for every second that he wasted on himself, he could feel the growing pressure of the situation his group was in.

‘I never really tested out how the time passes between the realms,’ Mathew noticed, pursing his lips as he felt his own mind blaming himself for the stupid mistake.

‘Testing it would only take a second so I never felt pressure to do it, always pushing it for later,’ he figured out how his mind worked in regards to this particular topic.

And with a heavy sigh, Mathew stood up. He then raised his hands and violently slapped both sides of his head.

“There is no time to waste. Even if it will only take a second, I need to make the most out of it!”

Mathew shook his head, allowing the pain of his self-slap to dissipate. And once he managed to clear his head to some degree, he moved forward, approaching the same pedestals that caught his interest before.

“What’s the cost of buying an upgrade to the touch-grass feature?” Mathew asked, raising his eyes to the area where the presence of the merchant was most dense.

“Two hundred and fifty cores.”

“You guys could at least stop pretending by now,” Mathew muttered as he pulled out his crystal before placing it on top of his pedestal of choice.

Then, everything went as usual. The crystal lit up. The light-flooded Mathew’s eyes, turning him blind for a moment. And once Mathew’s eyes recovered from the flash, the size of the crystal decreased.

“Is it done?” Mathew asked, raising his eyes to the usual point.

“It is.”

The cold, metallic voice of the merchant was quickly starting to annoy the young man.

“If you are humans then speak normally. If you are not, then why do you pretend you are in the first place?” Mathew asked as he waved his head and turned around.

He didn’t ask for the merchant to free him from the subspace. He simply walked in the opposite direction to the pedestals. And once his body reached the boundary of the realm, the shadows around him started to collapse, forcing him back into the real world.

“We need to talk,” Nadia’s voice reached Mathew’s ears again, only serving to make him even more confused than he already was.

“Not now,” Mathew replied, pulling his hand away from the coiling darkness hidden under the merchant’s hood. Instead, he turned it to the side, to a small, silvery light that floated roughly at Mathew’s hip level.

‘I have the quarrel, Nadia’s wish to talk, the danger Daniel is in, and now the question of how time passes between the realms. Not to speak about what those sub realms even are in the first place!’ Mathew complained in his thoughts, right as he grasped at the silvery light.

Contrary to entering the merchant’s subspace, using the touching grass feature of the merchant was something that the young man was still not really accustomed to.

​ And yet, even though Mathew seemingly upgraded it, the process didn’t change at all.

As soon as Mathew grasped at the light, it seemingly immersed itself into his flesh only to explode with warm energy that then surged through every cell of his flesh and bones.

‘Aaaah…’ Mathew released a small moan of excitement, unable to stop the massive feeling of relief that filled his soul.

Even though he wasn’t injured, this light somehow healed the microscopic wounds and tears on his muscles, restoring them to their perfect state.

‘Right, touching grass would fully recover every single resource of the character,’ Mathew thought, recalling how the feature worked in the games he enjoyed.

The warm energy that infused itself into Mathew’s flesh finally completed its task of fully enveloping the young man. Then and only then, did the process that Mathew went through before, change.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Mathew complained when he saw a huge panel made out of the same color of silvery light as the access point to this feature.

Yet, it wasn’t the color of the window that appeared that startled Mathew, it was its content.

And it didn’t display his statistics or levels. No, that would be too easy. It displayed the options of character creation instead, allowing Mathew to freely change his own damn appearance!

“And now I can’t show it to the girls anymore,” Mathew muttered under his nose only to take a step back and wave his hands in the air, dispelling the light-made window that hung right on the level of his eyes.

The silvery energy receded from Mathew’s body as soon as it was struck with his wish to get out of this yet another subspace. And before the young man could as much as blink, he was forced back into the confines of the real world.

“Did it work?” Daria asked, somehow far closer to Mathew than she was when he touched the grass before.

“Unless you hoped for me to get a bigger dick, it didn’t,” Mathew replied coldly. “Ah, sorry,” he quickly apologized upon realizing that his own sense of disappointment seeped into the tone of his voice.

“What are you going to do, then?” the girl asked, leaning her head to the side.

‘Thank God she doesn’t seem to be upset,’ Mathew thought, breathing a small sigh of relief.

Even though his heart was dedicated to Nadia and Nadia alone, he wasn’t going to ignore the help of the other members of his system-bound marriage. And Mathew wasn’t the ungrateful piece of shit who would accept the help without returning the favor in kind.

“Well then, good luck?” Daria replied, leaning her head over her other shoulder while encouraging Mathew with a small smile.

Yet, as the young man’s eyes wandered to the side in a small glance, he could see a complicated yet definitely sad look growing on Nadia’s face.

‘No, I can’t afford to get distracted now,’ Mathew thought, gritting his teeth as he turned around and grabbed at the entry to the merchant’s space again.

The shadows surged and took the young man back to the realm that he was so curious about.

“How much for another upgrade of the grass?” Mathew asked as soon as the realm around him stabilized.

“Two thousand cores.”

Mathew took a deep breath. And then another. And then yet another one.

“You sure know how to ramp up the prices,” Mathew muttered as he squinted his eyes. Yet, despite how money-grubbing this price felt, he needed to recall the terror he felt when noticing those strange zombies outside to make his decision.

“Let’s do this,” Mathew encouraged himself as he repeated the same motions as before.

A blinding flash of light later, the crystal in Mathew’s hand now became less than half of its initial size.

‘I spent over three thousand, nearly three and a half thousand cores today,’ Mathew realized when he picked the crystal back.

He then took another short moment to calm himself down. This time, whoever, it wasn’t the problems with Nadia that plagued his mind, but the worry that he just wasted two damned thousand cores for nothing.

“Well then, no good will come from just hoping for the best or worrying about the worst,” Mathew muttered to himself before waving his hand to signal the merchant that he was now ready to go back.

And a moment of extremely strange feeling of having the reality around him collapse, Mathew surfaced back in the real world.

“Please, don’t disappoint me this t,” Mathew muttered as he brought his hand to the side in an attempt to reach for the feature’s silvery light…

Only to realize that the light disappeared, now replaced by a patch of golden grass that somehow grew out directly from the concrete floor of the building!

‘I really hope this is a good sign…’ Mathew thought, kneeling down on one knee before pressing his hand against the golden grass.

It was soft, extremely soft. So soft that Mathew’s entire self seemingly melted into the sensation. And as soon as it happened, the familiar energy surged forth, filling every last one of Mathew’s cells.

The light projected by the energy enveloped the young man whole, cutting him away from the real world. Then, a panel of light appeared, almost exactly the same as the one Mathew saw just a moment earlier.

Only, this time, there was another tab listed at its very top.

Filled with hope, Mathew raised his hand and pressed his fingers against the tab.

The light that made up the panel swirled, turning into a whirlpool of energy for a moment. And once it stopped moving in circles and turned into a panel with words on it again, Mathew’s lips finally turned into a smile.

“Jackpot,” he muttered, watching at all his statistics displayed on the light-made screen. Yet, as if it wasn’t good enough already, Mathew could see a separate window for every member of his harem.

And to the side of every statistic of every person, there were two small characters of plus and minus.

“Now that it works, let’s check how much of a help this feature is going to be,” Mathew whispered to himself, unable to produce any louder voice with how much excitement filled his soul.

And then, he pressed the plus to the side of his vitality statistic.