Extracting the life cores from the zombies was pretty simple. With how only a heavy trauma to the head could put an end to them, picking up those small stones that would crystalize out in the center of their brain was a job anyone could do.
That is, as long as they wouldn't cover everything with their vomit first, only to faint later.
"You shouldn't measure everyone with your standards," the police officer said, only to release an exhausted sigh a moment later.
Even only a bit over an hour had passed since the man appeared before Mat for the first time; the events that transpired were so rapid and engaging that the young man felt as if he had known the man for ages.
And here he was, schooling Mathew away after noticing just a small glance followed by a roll of Mat's eyes.
"My standards are the world's standards, now," Mathew rebuked, only to straighten himself up and move over to another corpse.
Thankfully, the crystalization of life's core within one's brain was the first step of the zombie transformation. As such, even those that Mat finished before they could fully turn turned into a harvestable material for him.
Yet, while Mathew continued to look for any positives in the current situation, the few soldiers that helped him to gather the cores...
Their attention was fully focused on keeping themselves sane.
They were all veteran soldiers. They saw the true battle with their very own eyes.
But what was left in the main corridor of the second to last floor was far from anything they could experience on a modern battlefield. In the battle, they would rarely have to dig through the literal brains of the fallen.
"That doesn't mean people will have an easy time adapting," the officer countered, only to turn his face sideways to cast a glance upstairs.
"Why didn't you help us earlier?!" one of the students cried out. From his point of view, Mathew couldn't even tell who it was. "I almost died, you know?!"
Hearing the complaints, Mathew only rolled his eyes before returning to his job.
Dealing with the dissatisfied and distressed fellow students of his wasn't his job.
"You should go and save the others now!" a new, feminine voice entered the cry.
"What the hell are you doing here?! Go and clean the school from those freaks!" someone else joined in as well.
'They are refusing to accept the reality,' Mathew thought, sending a sneaky glance over to the panicky group. 'I didn't really believe something like this could happen back when they described it to me,' he recalled one of the stories he heard back at the fortress in the past.
Apparently, the main reason behind the fall of the first attempt at organized attempt was just that - people were too hesitant to do the one thing that could save them. Too stuck in the old world to accept the change and adapt to it.
It was something that Mathew only heard happened. But now, he was growing increasingly aware he would also be the one who would have to deal with this mess.
"Okay, that's enough," Mathew spat out. He stood up and looked around the place.
'They might dislike it, but they are working like obedient little bees,' he thought, nodding with satisfaction at the effort of the soldiers dedicated to the collection task.
It would be only a matter of a few minutes before they would be done with their task.
And that meant Mathew only had a few more minutes to regain control over the top floors of the school.
"Everyone shut the fuck up," Mathew shouted as soon as he appeared on the stairs.
At first, his words only worked because his voice was loud and generally unexpected.
Then, the law enforcement looked over, ready to deal with another troublemaker... Only to relax and back up when they saw Mathew's face.
Even if he wasn't their leader, Mathew's words already proved to be crucial to their survival.
No one said a word to explain Mathew's importance to his fellow student. Yet, maybe it was due to the atmosphere that surrounded him or maybe his bloodthirsty rampage earlier, but not a single student dared to complain to him.
"First, let's explain a few things," Mathew stated as soon as he reached the end of the stairs. He put his legs parted wide and crossed his arms on his chest. "Loud noises attract zombies," the young man threw out a pretty important piece of information as if it was nothing.
"As such, I advise you lot to shut the hell up," Mathew added, reveling in the newfound position of power. "This is the land that I put a claim to," the young man continued, caring not for how cringy and chunni his words could sound.
"What claim?" someone from the crowd asked, cleverly hiding behind the others just in case this question would bring forth a punishment.
"Here are the stones we gathered," one of the soldiers from the floor below came up and passed a small bag into Mathew's hands.
This particular soldier appeared to be too overwhelmed by the blood on his hands to care about Mathew's little speech.
"Good job, soldier," Mathew replied with the line he heard in some western movie. A small smile appeared on the corners of his lips.
Yet, instead of answering the question that the soldier stopped him from answering, Mathew grabbed the stones and poured them all directly on the floor.
'Damn, it's kinda exciting,' the young man thought, staring at the pile of shiny life cores at his feet.
Mathew then brought his hand forward and hung it in the air, directly above the pile of cores.
"I, Mathew, son of Arthur, do hereby summon a claim merchant," Mathew spoke.
Then, the combined shine of all the life cores suddenly multiplied, only to erect itself as a pillar of light, as high as the roof of the place. And just as rapidly as it appeared, the light condensed into an outline of an androgynous person.
When the radiance fully faded away, instead of the huge chunk of the stones Mathew gathered, there was a hooded figure standing in silence.
'Good thing this formula worked,' Mathew thought, swallowing his saliva.
This was truly a nerve-wracking moment. Depending on whether this formula would work or not, the future of all the people around him would change.
Thankfully, for the first time since the apocalypse started in Mathew's previous life, he could claim to see a ray of hope.
'Summoning a merchant is the one step I never reached back then,' Mathew thought, moving back with his thoughts to the past now gone.
Their fortress gathered ninety-three life cores. A humble amount given the two weeks it took them... But as the apocalypse evolved, those who failed to stay on track would be left forever longing to catch up.
'Once monsters started appearing, hunting expeditions were no longer possible,' Mathew thought, raising his hand as he approached the hooded figure.
There was no face, no legs or hands. There wasn't a body to that figure, just a dark shadow hidden within the confines of the floor-long, grey robe.
Mathew's hand stopped just an inch away from the shadoww coiling underneath the robe.
He then turned his head around to where he left Nadia to rest.
'I will heal you, you understand?' Mathew thought, reaffirming himself in his determination.
He then moved his eyes to the side, to where all the saved schoolmates of his stood.
'Right, I still didn't answer their question,' Mathew thought.
The edges of his mouth curled up, turning his lips into a small smile.
"As of now, I'm the lord of this merchant," Mathew revealed, looking at his colleagues with a serious expression. "I'm also the only one capable of expanding on the merchant's network of this area," he added, sharing the info that he never got to confirm.
'Let's hope that no one tries to call this bluff,' Mathew thought, only for his smile to turn slightly wicked. 'Well, I shouldn't worry too much. The chances of anyone being able to summon another merchant so soon...'
With each passing second, Mathew's smile turned darker and darker.
But his strange position was quickly becoming uncomfortable.
"It's better if you keep that in mind for the future," Mathew threw at his colleagues before turning his eyes back towards the shadowy figure of the grey, claim merchant.
'Now then, show me your wares!' Mathew uttered a completely useless and unnecessary formula in his mind before reaching out and grasping at the darkness coiling underneath the merchant's robe.
The second Mathew's hand grasped at the darkness, the black shadow suddenly expanded, shielding the young man from the world around him.
Surrounded by the vividly black shadow, Mathew remained calm.
When he visited a merchant before, his heart nearly stopped. But now that he knew what to expect, he managed to keep his calm.
And then, one by one, items started to appear on the screen of said shadow. Like a light thrown into the dark surface, the outline of each item was carved out in the darkness, only for the explanation of the item itself to appear right besides it.
'Just like I expected,' Mathew thought, releasing a heavy sigh.
The items on display were exactly the same as what he saw during his former visit to the merchant. Or rather, the stock of the claim merchant turned out to be even smaller than what the wandering merchant offered back then.
"First off, how many stones do I have?" Mathew muttered, using his voice to help direct his actions.
The young man then bent his knee, leaning down to grab all the remaining cores.
"Roughly twenty, huh?" he muttered.
As disappointing of a number as it was, it also reflected the number of people that Mathew and the police failed to save.
'I have quite the mixed feelings about it, don't I?' Mathew reflected on his own state of mind. He then shook his head, clearing it from the useless doubts and hesitations.
"I would like the basic expansion of the system," Mathew stated, throwing a single stone into the darkness.
Yet, instead of disappearing just like the stones that Mathew used to summon the merchant, the core simply slowed down and came to a complete halt in mid-air.
And then it just dangled in there, suspended in the air as if there was an invisible surface prompting it up.
'This is weird,' Mathew thought, baffled by the lack of reaction from the merchant. 'That's how much I paid back at the wandering one, so why doesn't it work now?'
The basic expansion of the system was a pretty confusing name for the service Mathew attempted to buy.
It was one of the wares that would never be displayed out in the open as, according to the rumors Mathew learned, it was one of the four services that all the merchants provided. Yet, rather than the expansion of the system, it should actually be called the system discovery instead.
"Let's try with two?" Mathew muttered to himself, bringing another life core up and then throwing it forward.
The two cores gently shone as they hovered mid-air, only for their radiance to explosively increase and then disappear along with the physical manifestation of the cores.
'Did it do anything?' Mathew thought, puzzled by the lack of reaction from himself or his surroundings.
But the stones disappeared. And that meant the transaction went through!
"Do you have any items to heal the virus zombification?" Mathew asked, pursuing the most important of his tasks.
Now that he confirmed that the merchant worked more or less the same right now as it did back in his past future, Mathew could move on to the important stuff.
"One hundred and fifty cores," a strange, nearly robotic voice filled the shadowy realm that currently trapped Mathew.
'Damn,' the young man cursed in his thoughts, only to tighten his knuckles. 'One hundred and fifty cores it is, then,' he thought.
A hundred and fifty lives in exchange for healing one.
That was the prize the merchant asked for, turning Nadia back into a human if Mathew's system wouldn't be sufficient to stop the process going on in the girl's body.
'Right, I have yet to even check my system yet,' Mathew thought, looking around the shadowy realm in a hurry.
"Five food packs," Mathew said, picking five more stones before throwing them at the shadows of the realm.
'Transaction completed,' Mathew thought when the stones disappeared. And once the light they created had subsided, five crates, each roughly the size of a personal computer, waited on the floor.
"End the transactions," Mathew spoke.
He had too few stones to get anything of value from this merchant.
Sure, the notes with information that he offered were pretty damn interesting... But each of those pages cost a steep prize of fifty coins.
It wasn't a big prize for learning something new about this changing world... But it was a prize that Mathew couldn't afford right now anyway.
Then, the smoke that trapped Mat in this strange realm suddenly started to move towards the center of the space, all condensing back into the swirling darkness that Mathew initially grasped.
"Hey, are you okay?!" the police officer shouted, his face screaming worry.
"Huh?" Mathew shrugged, surprised by the unexpectedly warm welcome. "What do you mean?" he asked, puzzled by the reaction of this otherwise stoic man.
"Ever since that man appeared..." the officer moved his eyes towards the figure of the merchant. His hand voluntarily moved to the man's holster, resting down on the handle of his pistol. He then moved his eyes back at Mathew's face. "You just stood there and threw the stones up, all for those stones to disappear," he added before taking a closer look at the place where Mathew stood.
"This figure is a merchant," Mathew explained before stepping to the side, allowing others to see the stock of food that he bought for the low price of five lives.
Each of the food crates would provide enough food for a group of five to survive for a day. With five crates of food, there were enough supplies to sustain twenty-five people for a day.
'Not enough,' Mathew thought, looking around the group.
Twenty-five rations would be enough just to feed the students. But adding the law enforcement guys would instantly make their current stock of food... insufficient.
"Counting the stuff we can pillage from the vendors and the warehouse..." Mathew muttered, paying no mind to the people around him.
Then, the young man looked up at the officer.
"I want you to search around the floor for any form of food and supplies," Mathew informed, only for a wrinkle to appear on top of his forehead. "Also, could you station two of your mean on each of the two secondary staircases?"
The main stairway leading to the topmost floor was mined and ready to be demolished. But that didn't mean it was the only way to get on the last floor.
'Even though there are only small chances the zombies would find them, one cannot be too careful,' Mathew thought.
"Will do," the officer nodded his head, likely seeing no point in arguing right now. "But where do we find them?" he then asked before raising his hand and scratching the side of his head.
"Just ask one of the students," Mathew replied and waved his hand, leaving the area near the merchant as he moved towards sleeping Nadia.
"Right now, I don't want anyone to disturb me. Is that understood?" Mathew informed in a voice that wouldn't accept any opposition.
"I guess it's better not to ask what you are going to do to her," the officer commented, only for a small smile to appear on his lips. "Fine, take your time. Just tell me one last thing," he stated, his smile evaporating in an instant. "What should we do if more students come here?"
"Kill the infected, let the others in," Mathew gave his directions. "The more manpower we have, the longer we should be able to survive."
With that said, Mathew didn't allow anyone else to stop him in his march toward his girl. Towards his wife.
'Even if it was all for the system's sake,' Mathew thought, bitting down on his lips as he took a knee before the girl. 'It feels weirdly satisfying to think of her as of my wife,' he thought, reaching out to caress Nadia's cheek.
And the second Mathew's fingers made contact with Nadia's skin, his vision suddenly blurred, only for a set of three half-transparent windows to appear before his eyes.
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