59 A chord in Mathew's soul
The task that Mathew set for the group was monumental.
But it was definitely possible.
“There are roughly three thousand students and staff within the school,” Mathew lectured as he stepped inside the central area of the school.
From there, he could see one wing of the school fully collapsed. The rubble that this massive building turned into now threatened the integrity of the rest of the compound.
‘I will need to somehow reinforce it,’ Mathew thought.
He had two of his merchants on the upper floors of the school and one at the bottom.
‘I can’t let it crash down,’ the young man thought, the look behind his eyes steeling up.
If the building collapsed, he would lose easy access to the merchants above. And if the worst really came to happen, the third merchant would end up buried by the ruins.
‘Add a place of relative safety and high utility, a huge number of cores we can claim all for ourselves,’ Mathew thought.
He then took a look at the sea of the zombies that still filled the ground floor of the school.
”Even after all the fighting, there are still so many of them,” Mathew muttered, his mood turning grumpy.
“Just give us time,” Nadia proved she could adapt to the new situation quite easily.
“Oh, right,” Mathew shrugged, reaching towards his pants and then patting his hands around the height of his belt. pᴀɴᴅᴀ-ɴᴏᴠᴇʟ.ᴄᴏᴍ
His fingers caught on to something, only for the young man to pull out the spare machete he bought from the merchant.
“Here,” Mat said, turning around as he gently threw the knife up, turning it around.
He then caught the blade itself before passing its handle to his crush.
‘Wait, can I even consider her my crush?’ Mathew suddenly fell into a phase of deep thought.
“Oh?” Nadia shook a little, her eyes widening up. Then, the corners of her lips rose up. “Thank you,” she cooed.
Yet, as the girl pulled on the blade, Mathew failed to relax the grip. And with just two fingers, he easily held the blade that Nadia attempted to free.
“Huh?” Naida yelped a little, perplexed by surprise.
“This looks like a scene from some third-rate chauvinistic movie from the eighties,” Leila commented, still eager to put some pins between the couple.
“Shut it.” Daria was quick to scold her partner. She then rolled her eyes. “Just rub one out to get rid of the itch and wait for your damn turn,” she added. Yet, as the meaning of what she just said reached her own brain, Daria’s voice turned lower and lower.
‘Oh boy,’ Mathew thought, instantly releasing a sigh of exhaustion. ‘This isn’t going to be fun,’ he thought, shaking his head as he pulled his attention away from the girls.
He could easily focus on the talk and start the slaughter of the zombies simultaneously, yet he decided against doing so.
‘No, wasting this opportunity? When it’s such a godsend?’ Mathew thought, his eyes turning lively as he readied himself for the fight. pᴀɴᴅᴀ ɴoᴠᴇʟ
He could stay and hear what Nadia had to say about the words Daria just sputtered. Or he could fight the zombies and actively contribute towards the first step of his plan.
And as great as it could be to have three girls fawning for him at once…
‘No,’ Mathew thought, decisively shaking his head. ‘In real life, foursomes like that do not work,’ he thought, his mood darkening a little.
But only a little.
The two weeks Mathew survived in his former run effectively killed all his naive fantasies.
“Come on,” Mathew called out, not caring about possibly attracting more zombies by using a loud voice. “Don’t be shy!” he urged the girls before waving his hand and rushing right into the fray.
‘Damn,’ Mathew thought, stumped by the sudden change of atmosphere around him.
The air was filled with the stench of sickeningly sweet rot, an odor of urine and excrements, and was slippery from all the blood to boot.
Yet, Mathew somehow found the air to be far more refreshing than the immediate vincity between both Leila and Nadia.
“Right,” Nadia shook her head, clearing the childish rivalry from her mind.
She then turned around and followed after Mathew, long used to protect him from harm.
“Let’s go,” Daria shouted in half-voice, throwing a quick look at her partner before following after the couple. ρꪖꪕᦔꪖꪕꪫꪣꫀꪶ
“Dang it,” Leila bit her lip, watching the backs of the rest of her group. “This isn’t how I wanted it all to go,” she muttered to herself, a sour smile of self-loathing filling her face.
And then, just two seconds later, Leila rolled her machete in her hand before joining the fight.
But Mathew’s group right now was vastly different to how they were before.
They fought the evolved monsters. They even fought something likely even above that rank. Everyone in the group raised their levels quite a lot.
Right now, clearing out a huge mass of zombies was a tiresome task, sure, but not one that could prove to bear any hardships.
‘Damn,’ Mathew shook his head, a dissatisfied, wry smile growing on his lips. ‘This is too damn easy,’ he thought, swinging his ax as if he was dancing.
His somewhat graceful leap ended accompanied by the staccato of falling zombies’ heads. Each swing of his weapon would claim at least one or two heads more, leaving them to the couple in the back to clean from the cores.
“This is more exhausting than it is challenging,” Nadia commented, fending off a group of seven zombies with ease.
She danced around their arms, using her extreme agility to simply avoid their reach.
Now that she wasn’t using the full output of her newfound potential, she turned into a shockingly efficient fighter.
Her strikes were only as fast as they needed to be to hold enough momentum for the cut. And yet, her pace of claiming zombies’ heads exceeded even Mathew’s!
“Don’t get too cocky!” Leila shouted, dropping down right in front of Nadia.
She held a zombie’s head in her hand while crushing another one with her fist, right where she landed.
She stared Nadia in the face for a second before turning her head around and hurrying off to fight more zombies.
“I’m sorry for that,” Daria kicked a zombie’s corpse away before slamming her machete right down at the skull of another one.
“Please, don’t mind her when she is tsun,” she requested, only for a weird smile to appear on her lips. “Just wait till you see her being dere,” she added before turning her eyes to another fight.
‘Well…’ Mathew thought, slashing another zombie’s neck off while pretending not to notice Nadia’s intense stare glued to his back. ‘Fuck.’
The young man knew better than to let himself get embroiled in the romantic conflict.
‘It will be better if I just ignore all those comments and focus on Nadia,’ he decided, rushing into the fight to forget about the troubling matter.
But the troubling matter wasn’t going to go away just like that.
“You know,” Nadia muttered when she caught up to Mathew’s side. “All the stuff they are saying… It’s getting me quite worried,” she admitted, lowering her eyes when a blush appeared on her cheeks.
Still, her hands never ceased to move, claiming the heads of several more zombies just in that short moment alone.
“Isn’t this enough for you?”
This was a simple question.
From one end, there was absolutely nothing wrong about asking it.
Yet, when those words left Mathew’s mouth, he felt an urge to clutch at his heart.
Not because he regretted them. Not because he was hurt by them either. But because asking this question could potentially harm Nadia’s feelings.
“It’s not like that,” Nadia shook her head, stopping the onslaught of zombies that became a background activity for us for the first time since she joined the fight.
She then brought her arms together, acting as if she was trying to hug herself.
“I know that you are not lying to me nor trying to cheat…” Nadia said, hesitation written all over her face.
In the end, she couldn’t form even a single, proper sentence to explain what was going on in her head.
‘Damn it,’ Nadia inwardly screamed out, feeling as if her face was about to explode from embarrassment. ‘How come I’m so shy even after we did it already?’ she asked herself, only to shake her head and raise her eyes.
“I just know that in this new world, we can’t discount any advantage that we can get,” Nadia said, lowering her arms and approaching Mathew from the front.
She didn’t stop all the way to the point when her forehead struck the young man in his chest.
“I just need some time to accept this idea. Is that okay?” Nadia muttered, her voice getting weaker with each word.
‘Oh damn,’ Mathew’s entire body tensed up.
Seeing Nadia so defenseless struck a strange chord in his soul. With her seemingly delicate body now gently pressed against him, her shoulders crying for a hand to embrace them…
“I do not know what the future holds,” Mathew whispered in a low voice, hoping to keep this moment as private and intimate as he could. “But to make you as happy and as comfortable as I can, I will stop at nothing,” he said before raising his hand to the girl’s chin and raising it up while lowering his own face.
Then, Mathew sealed his words with a gentle kiss.