323 Not enough cores to afford it all
“Nearly thirteen thousand cores?” Mathew muttered when he finally saw the price for the service he was looking for.
This amount of cores was worth just a tad less than two of the sabers Mathew sold. Or, in simpler words, it wasn’t small at all.
‘I still can afford everything that I picked so far with some leftovers,’ Mathew thought as he ran the numbers in his mind a few times. ‘I will even have enough left to get three merchants and then upgrade them to a fortress at the castle we are going to,’ he thought, trying to predict the necessary spending he would face in the near future.
‘So, in other words, I can actually fix this place?’ Mathew thought, closing his eyes and imagining all the kinds of damage done to the school’s building.
The first and main one was the school’s southern wing. Or rather, a pile of ruins that it turned into, exposing the entire center of the school to the outside elements and thus making any sort of heating near impossible.
‘The problem of keeping everyone warm and dry might not be a lot now, but it surely is bound to grow into a huge headache in the future,’ Mathew realized.
It was nothing more but mere dumb luck that the weather up until now was relatively nice. Sure, it was still the latter part of the summer. Both the scale and the periodicity of the rains were currently at their all-time low.
But…
It was only a matter of two weeks before the calendar fall would begin!
‘Then comes the destroyed staircases,’ Mathew thought, bringing his arms up and crossing them over his chest. ‘Without it, it’s a massive pain to get to the top floor. It sure is safer in case of a zombie breaking through the barrier… But on the other hand, for a zombie capable of breaking the fence, jumping over from floor to floor wouldn’t be a problem either.’
Mathew pulled his eyes open. The selection window for the service returned along with his vision, still waiting for Mathew’s decision.
‘In theory, it could wait,’ Mathew thought, staring at the description of the service. ‘But what if it isn’t instantaneous? What if I put it off for later, wait for the rain or even a storm to come, and then learn it takes an hour to complete? Or a day? Or any amount of time during which everyone would have to stay outside?’
Mathew allowed his thoughts to wander as he pondered over the possible consequences of such an event.
‘No, I can’t allow that,’ he thought. ‘There are no medics in this world so even a simple cold might turn into a disaster.’ Mathew realized. And yet, he didn’t arrive at the final stage of said realization.
‘Our generation is born in the times of extremely efficient health care. We lost all the advantages of natural selection that would otherwise pull apart those with great fortitude and those prone to get sick. As such,’ Mathew’s face tensed up, ‘things that even our ancestors could just ignore or wave their hands about, might be pretty much lethal for us.’
It would be foolish to believe that this kind of downsides of great medical care outweighed all the benefits it provided. Yet, in this extremely unusual time that humans could never predict… This downside was what Mathew had to seriously take into account.
“Either way, I need to empty the entire building before I will be able to activate this service, right?” Mathew asked out loud, turning his eyes away from the pop-up window about the service and looking towards the opening of the alley.
“If the service overhauls the structure of the building, all animated beings need to vacate the premises for the time the service procedure will take place,” the merchant replied in its usual voice.
“I guess I need to get one of the systems and then go and push everyone out,” Mathew muttered in response before walking all the way back to the system seed alley.
This time, however, moving around the alley was far easier than before. Not because its structure changed or anything like that.
It was all because after reading through roughly half of all the system descriptions, Mathew generally knew what to expect.
‘Dud, dud, dud, oh,’ he stopped for a moment, ‘that’s interesting,’ he thought when he noticed a system that eluded him in the higher grades.
Yet, it wasn’t what he was looking for anyway. And so…
Mathew continued to search.
“There is no way there is no production-oriented system!” he then exclaimed to himself while lowkey hoping his words would somehow influence the merchant to sneak one or two systems that he desires into the further part of the alley.
As his task went on, Mathew only needed a single glance to see whether he already knew the system displayed on the pedestal or if it was something that he has yet to see.
It was only when he nearly reached the point where he stopped during his former attempt at reading through all the systems that Mathew’s eyes flashed with excitement.
“There it is,” he muttered, reaching out and opening the system’s window.
[Array System Seed]
[Allows its host to create arrays capable of producing certain phenomena. From defensive arrays that bar the passage through a certain path, through offensive arrays that can be imprinted upon an object to cause a damaging effect upon activation, all the way to economic arrays that can produce certain items all on their own.]
[Limitations: Besides the set of starting arrays, the host needs to purchase schematics for any further arrays they want to create]
[Limitations: Each array has a base cost of zombie cores to create.]
[Limitations: Host needs to achieve a certain level of his system in order to use more complex arrays]
[Caveat: Producing and keeping up arrays leads to leveling up]
[Cost: 1500 cores]
‘Buying this will bring me pretty damn close to what I can actually afford,’ Mathew thought, gritting his teeth as he moved his eyes towards an extendable part of the window, right at the very bottom.
[Prepurchased schematics:
– Basic offensive arrays (500 cores)
– Basic defensive arrays (800 cores)
– Basic auxiliary arrays (1200 cores)(can affect host’ allies)
pAn,Da n<0,>v,e1 – Basic production arrays (2000 cores)
]
‘Oh…’ Mathew muttered. ‘Getting the production arrays as well will mean cutting it pretty damn close to what I can actually afford,’ Mathew thought, gritting his teeth.
Even though he knew that all he needed to obtain means of production within the apocalypse world was to push beyond the level of fortresses… That task had an unknown level of difficulty.
And what he had right at his hand’s reach right now was the solution to this problem.
‘Adding the cost of setting up those arrays, whatever it might be, and it will be pretty damn hard to…’
Mathew’s thoughts suddenly calmed down.
‘Wait a second,’ he thought, forcing himself to slow down. ‘Now that I think about it, do I really need to get this building repaired right away?’ Mathew asked himself, looking for ways to save on the cores.
‘It’s great to know that I can do it… But in case of rain or cold weather… Can’t I just get everyone to sit on their ass in the few classrooms that are left in a good state?’