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“Now then,” Mathew muttered as he turned around. He cast a quick look at the state of the corridor before nodding his head with satisfaction.

“It seems they worked hard to clear it,” he talked to himself as he moved up the path to inspect the bloody results of the policemen’s rampage.

“That leaves us with only one side of the compound,” the young man added as he raised his eyes to the glass that separated the corridor itself from the classes on its sides.

Thanks to this glass partition that started roughly at the height of one’s belt and reached nearly all the way up to the ceiling, Mathew could look to the outside without stepping inside any of the classes.

“I guess we will need to clear it out before establishing the fortress,” he continued to talk to himself. Yet, rather than staying on the topic, Mathew shook his head and threw one more look at the defeated zombies filling the corridor.

‘Why am I so sure about it, though?’ the young man noticed the lapse in his logic. ‘Who said that we need to kill all the zombies before the place would be safe?’

Mathew shook his head only to then turn around and follow in Nadia’s footsteps.

He, too, had to get to the bottom floor to reach his destination. And since the main staircase of the school was gone, the side-stairs were his only viable choice.

Mathew moved up and reached the stairs in a single moment. Now that his thoughts cleared out and he could see a simple path ahead, all Mathew had to do was to follow it.

He moved down the stairs and then to the rubble-filled central part of the school.

‘We will need to barricade this opening,’ the young man thought as he looked towards the collapsed wing of the compound.

It was a miracle that the entire thing still stood even with this kind of devastating damage to its integrity. Sadly, though, the collapsed wing actually defeated the entire purpose of picking this place as a fortress.

‘Plugging up this hole in any reasonable way would take way too much manpower and resources, both of which we don’t have,’ Mathew thought.

He then pressed his teeth together to the point they nearly started to crack.

‘This is the sunk investment fallacy, isn’t it?’ he asked himself, rolling his eyes over his very own naivete.

In theory, with how damaged the compound was, it would be better to find another place to turn into their fortress. And there were two reasons for that.

First, plugging up the hole left by the collapsed wing was practically impossible. And even if it was, the costs of doing so would greatly outweigh the benefits.

And then came the worse part, one that was less likely to come up but would have much more devastating effects.

‘If a strong, evolved monster managed to get a few good hits at the building, it might simply collapse,’ Mathew thought as he looked a the cracks all over the walls of the compound.

‘Well, I can only hope it won’t all come down today.’ Mathew shook his head and turned around to head towards the autonomous office area. ‘We are too damn tired to go look for a new safehouse,’ he thought as he caught a glance of the sky outside.

It was still bright… but the first hints of the sun setting had already started to appear.

The sky wasn’t sullied with a single, tiniest cloud. As such, it was extremely easy to notice the red hue that started to brighten up on the horizon.

“I guess it’s already too late to even think about any kind of expeditions,” Mathew muttered to himself as he stared into the gentle darkness at the edge of the sky.

“What expedition” Nadia asked when she suddenly appeared behind Mathew’s back. She could’ve used this opportunity to catch him by surprise, but even she knew that getting embraced by someone whose hands were covered in blood, filth, and brain matter wasn’t the most enjoyable experience.

“Don’t worry about it,” Mathew smiled gently as he shook his head to the sides. “It’s nothing that we need to worry about, not yet,” he added as he turned around on his feet.

“I gathered most of the cores that we left before,” Nadia reported and raised her hand with a sizeable bag in it.

Just like all the times before, the bag was made from some severed cloth. The bloodstains all over it only proved both where it came from and what was inside.

“Let’s go back to the office, then,” Mathew commanded before making a move first.

‘With all the cores we left at the office, we should have way more than enough to erect this damned fortress,’ Mathew thought as he hurried into the autonomous area within the school’s compound.

And soon enough, the young couple reached exactly the same place where the two of them had their first time.

‘Thinking back, I kinda used some fun abilities back then, didn’t I?’ Mathew thought, recalling the events that he pushed to the side of his brain. ‘And there is still this wife development system,’ he thought as he sent a quick glance at Nadia’s face.

For something that his system announced with great fanfare, this particular skill of his was pretty much a disappointment.

‘It’s either useless, or I just didn’t figure out how to use it yet,’ Mathew thought before shaking his head and stepping deeper into the office.

This was the place where he summoned the last of the three merchants and, as such, the most obvious choice as to where Mathew should raise the fortress.

“Pass me the stones, please,” Mathew asked while stretching his hand out.

“Here,” Nadia passed the bag over before taking a step back.

‘Huh?’ Mathew shook a little when he noticed the girl’s movement. ‘Is she wary of something? Or maybe does she wants to guard the doors while I’m out at the merchant?’ he thought, only to shake his head and move away.

Mathew then reached the corner where he formerly hid the cores they had left over from before. And with all the cores that his group had to offer, Mathew approached the still figure of the merchant before reaching out and grasping at the darkness below its hood.

Swish!

The foggy darkness of the merchant’s domain shoot past Mathew’s ears, surrounding him and then separating from the rest of the world. And before the young man could as much as blink, he now stood in the strange world he was slowly getting familiar with.

“I wish to erect the fortress,” Mathew announced, raising up both bags with the life cores before throwing them at the merchant’s altar.

“A thousand cores, fortress establishment accepted,” the mechanical voice of the merchant answered, proving Mathew’s information to be correct.

“The number of zombies inside the big, reduce to five hundred.” a new sentence appeared a moment later, instantly crushing down on Mathew’s shoulders.

And before he could as much as say another word, the merchant’s domain dissipated into the air, forcing the young man right back into the real world.

“Huh?” Mathew muttered as he raised his palms only to look at the two bags that he held in his hands.

Even without checking their insides, Mathew could tell that roughly half of their cores disappeared by weight alone.

“What did just happen?” Mathew asked himself, raising his eyes at the merchant before him.

But the free-floating blob of dark fog that would usually be under the merchant’s hood… It was now nowhere the be seen.

Instead, Mathew could see the same dark fog now forming a three-digit number.

517.

‘Is this the number of the zombies left in the area?’ Mathew quickly drew a connection between what had just happened and what he could see right now.

“Nadia, dear, can you go and kill eighteen zombies for me?” Mathew turned his eyes to the girl as he requested.

“Why the specific number?” Nadia asked while raising one of her eyebrows as her curiosity mixed with surprise.

“We need to get the number of zombies inside the compound below five hundred,” Mathew explained. He then raised his hand and pointed at the merchant’s former face. “If I’m not wrong, this number here is the count of the zombies left.

“I don’t see anything, though?” Nadia said, leaning her head to the side as she threw a side-glance at Mathew. Yet, before the young man could say anything, the girl shook her head and smiled. “Well, it doesn’t matter,” she added before turning around and flashing her machete. “I will get it done in a moment; just wait for a second,” she said with a smile before hurrying outside.

‘And here I am, using Nadia again,’ Mathew thought as he ridiculed his own efforts.

Mathew’s thoughts stopped when the number on the merchant’s face started to tick down. Five hundred sixteen, thirteen, nine…

In just a few moments, the number reached clean five hundred. And when it changed again, the merchant’s face returned to how it usually was.

“I guess I can proceed now,” Mathew muttered before hurrying towards the doors.

“It’s fine!” he shouted, hoping the girl would hear him as he couldn’t see her at all. “You can go back now!” he added another shout before moving back into the autonomous office and casting a long look at the merchant.

Mathew then swallowed a gulp of saliva and reached out with his hand.

‘Now or never, I guess.’