“Can’t we even take a moment to dress up?” Daria spat through her teeth. “Surely, it wouldn’t take us that long!”

Her objection was pretty valid. She paraded through the blood-stained corridor butt-naked.

Now that the situation has somewhat calmed down, she grew more and more aware of her exhibitionist tendencies. Yet, with only her long, dark hair to cover herself up with, Daria’s wishes only made her look slightly adorable.

‘Huh?’ Mathew suddenly froze for just a second. He then picked up the pace as if nothing had happened, but his attention was focused on something deep within.

‘Did I just consider her… cute?’

With the element of shocking seduction now out of the picture, Mathew managed to approach the situation with reason instead of instincts.

‘How could I do that?’ Mathew lashed at himself in his thoughts while walking down the corridor. ‘I really shouldn’t let myself end in a situation like that again,’ he thought, furrowing his brows.

“When fighting zombies and monsters, the less stuff they can grab you by, the better,” Mathew finally explained his reason why he kept the girls naked and half-naked. “That’s also why you should bind or even cut your hair,” he added.

In the apocalypse, there was no room for sentiments. Those girls could fancy their hairstyle, yet it was one of the worst traps for those with long hair.

Because in the slugfest of fighting with the zombies, a single, well-aimed grab and the zombies would effectively eliminate the combatant.

The blessing of not turning from just a single bite or scratch wouldn’t matter much if a zombie were to simply snap one’s neck off.

“But wouldn’t clothes offer us some protection from the zombies?” Leila pointed out, holding on to a table’s leg that she improvised as her weapon. “I mean, one scratch, and we are out, right?” she suggested as if it was something obvious.

“You watch way too many movies.” Mathew shook his head before refocusing himself on the mission.

They lingered on the single floor for long enough. Now it was the time to solve the problem of those monster roars coming from below.

“Remember, they look awful, but they are slow,” Mathew pointed out as they reached the intact staircase.

It was also the first place where they finally encountered the zombies again.

Lured by the constant small noises they made while hidden in the classrooms, zombies only needed time to find their way back to their floor.

‘The same happened back to our fortress,’ Mathew thought, recalling the events from his first attempt at surviving this disaster.

He then swung his fireman’s ax down on a zombie’s head.

“Normally, we would try to collect those stones,” Mathew instructed, pointing at a shiny bit hidden within the brain matter of the zombie that he just downed.

“Ewww!” Daria protested, raising her hand to her mouth and turning her eyes away. The convulsion mixed with unsavory sounds that followed indicated what she was up to.

“If they are important…” Leila proved to be somewhat cold-hearted, looking unperturbed at the corpse of her former classmate. “Why are we not collecting them now?”

Mathew didn’t reply. He turned unusually silent, focused on the approaching zombies instead.

The staircase was still relatively empty, with only a few zombies reaching that far. But as they moved down, more and more of the deceased students started to appear.

“What do we do?” Daria asked, clenching her jaws as she tightened her grasp over the sword.

It was the weapon that Mathew bought from the merchant and now shared with the girl. She somehow ended up first to gain a level from Mathew’s donation, so the young man deemed her more suitable to carry a proper weapon.

“Just inflict a heavy head trauma,” Mathew instructed, swinging his ax again as they forced their way into the thicker crowd of the zombies.

As they left the staircase behind, the girls slowly got used to the simplistic combat.

‘The first day or two should be easy like that,’ Mathew thought, biting down on his lips. That’s how the apocalypse played out in his memory.

And yet…

A damned monster had already threatened to destroy the school’s foundation only a few hours since everything began!

‘How could the events change so much?’ Mathew asked himself, steadily swinging his weapon to the sides and laying scores of his former schoolmates to their final rest.

‘I’m the only one who changed,’ Mathew thought, only to bite even harder on his lips.

In the end, clearing an entire floor out of zombies took the group roughly twenty minutes.

Just like in Mathew’s original life, as long as one was composed and determined, one could stop a wave of zombies all by themselves.

“We don’t collect the stones because they are of no use to us,” Mathew finally explained the question that Leila posed before they descended the stairs. “For now, that is,” he added, only to begin his march back towards the secondary staircase.

Normally, those stones would become a commonplace currency for the survivors. The few trades that his group at the fortress did were all about exchanging those cores.

And yet, Mathew felt no fear in leaving them to wait in the rotting flesh.

Because due to his interference, only he and several soldiers managed to kill a zombie during the opening phase of the apocalypse.

In other words, besides the few corpses resting beneath the pile of rubble, he was likely the only system-holder in the entire school!

In other words, in the entire school, Mathew currently held a monopoly over the usage of the stones. As such, they were of use only for him and those allied to him!

“Right,” Leila nodded her head, gripping her worn-down metal rod in her hands. “We are going to slay some monster, right?” she added, cutely leaning her head to the side.

“That gesture would be quite cute,” Mathew commented, throwing a quick look at the girl. “That is if you didn’t have blood all over your tits,” he added before rolling his eyes and turning them back towards the staircase.

Due to the commotion, zombies already started appearing, slowly crawling out from the floor below.

“We still have several floors to go through,” Mathew announced, turning his eyes towards the two girls. “Are you ready?” he asked while scanning the changes on their status window.

[Wife #2]

[Name: Leila Hussate/Daria Paternal]

[Age: 19/19]

[Level: 2/4]

[Class: Clubster/Warrior]

[Status: Aroused/Determined]

Just a quick glance was enough for Mathew to gulp down his saliva.

Over the course of them clearing the floor, Mathew received the notification that his level donation function became available. And without a second thought, he used it right on his wife number two.

Between the donation and her own growth, Daria managed to reach level fourth, while Leila ended up at a measly second level.

‘I wonder how strong they are right now,’ Mathew thought. He never got to experience levels or anything of that sort with his previous system. And now, he struggled to judge the meaning behind the information he could see.

‘Still, they both gained an entire level just from this short fight,’ Mathew thought, before looking around, right as he neared the staircase. ‘I wonder how did my own stats change,’ he thought before fixing his grip over the ax’s handle and smashing it down on the nearest zombie.