Leveling Up Wives In The Apocalypse

"I can't control them!" Norbert screamed out.

His voice was filled with complete and utter despair, one that could only be born in the guts of a man who truly lost something important.

"Talk to me, Nor…"

"SHUT UP!" Norbert screamed out before Mathew could even finish a single sentence.

'What the hell is going on?' Mathew backed out a few steps, taken off-guard by Norbert's reaction. 'Did he go mad? Or was he injured?' He quickly ran through all the most obvious options.

But, thanks to the monster's blood being blue, Mathew could tell Norbert didn't really suffer any sort of injury. At least, not a visible one that would open up his skin and cause him to bleed.

Because while his body was covered in blood, all of it was blue and quickly turning stale!

'Did the shockwave damage his internals?' Mathew tried to figure the situation out again. 'Maybe it popped his eardrums? Fucked up his eyes?' he then attempted to use what little he could understand from Norbert's desperate screaming.

Tug.

Mathew turned his head to see Carol pull at his sleeve while pointing with her other hand behind her.

The meaning was fairly obvious.

Mathew turned his eyes to the rest of the group, nodding his head to each and every last one of his girls to signal them to withdraw a few steps.

"Do you have any idea?" Mathew asked only when they got out of the immediate range of Norbert's hearing.

"Before I will answer that, one question to the four of you as you are more sensitive towards it," Carol whispered, keeping her voice low even despite all the distance that separated them from Norbert. She then turned halfway around and pointed her hand at the steaming corpse of the lobster-like monster.

"I remember you muttering something about it being a waste, back at Peter's base," Carol stated as she dropped her hand. "I believe it was about how killing the zombies with firearms is a waste because you do not get the experience that allows you to level up, am I right?"

Mathew raised his eyebrows a little.

'Did I ever talk about this with her?' he thought, scouring his memory to find an appropriate memory. Yet, no matter how hard he searched, Mathew couldn't find a thing.

The young man turned his eyes towards the rest of his real wives, only to be met with exactly the same face of confusion that he was making.

'Did she figure it out all on her own?' Mathew then thought, turning his eyes back towards the girl.

"Oh, come on!" Carol then protested, only to then rapidly raise her hands to her mouth when she realized she raised her voice.

The girl cast a quick glance towards Norbert, checking whether her slightly louder shout brought even more pain to her step-brother.

"I might not be as strong or as sensitive to mana as you guys are," Carol then whispered from behind her fingers. "But I could still tell," she claimed while rolling her eyes. "And when I noticed your reaction to it, I was quite sure."

Mathew shook his head.

"Okay, I understand," he said, stopping his head just in time to cast a look right at Carol's face. "But what's exactly your point?"

"Can you sense the energy to level up from that corpse?" Carol asked in a low voice while pointing her hand at the monster's carcass again.

Mathew turned his eyes towards the steaming pile of blue blood and white insides of the lobster-like monster. He took some time to properly observe it before releasing a deep sigh.

"Yeah," he said, turning his eyes back towards the girl. "I think I can finally see your point."

There was no leftover energy within that monster's corpse. And by following the rule of every game possible, the majority of the experience point from a fight would either be distributed across the entire party, a feature that Mathew had yet to find in the real world or would mostly go to the one who dealt the last, killing blow.

'And in this case, that would make Norbert,' Mathew thought, turning his eyes towards the broken man a few feet away from them.

"I think he isn't crazy nor injured," Carol then whispered, mostly to keep her stepbrother from hearing her voice rather than trying to keep the news to as few ears as possible. "He simply received so much experience from last hitting that monster his levels skyrocketed," Carol finally explained the crux of her idea.

She then heaved a short sigh and shrugged her shoulders.

"His level grew and so did his abilities. But as it wasn't a gradual process, he simply isn't used to the change yet," Carol stated before spreading her arms out and then shaking them.

"That…" Mathew hesitated only for a second. He then heaved a sigh on his own. "That makes quite a lot of sense," he admitted in a low voice before reaching out toward the bottom of his shirt and tearing away a relatively clean part of it.

Mathew moved forward, approaching Norbert again. He held the piece of relatively clean cloth in front of himself with both of his hands, hoping Norbert would somehow spot him and understand his intentions even if he didn't open his mouth.

After all, trying to explain things to the former officer while he would freak out at hearing even the tiniest sound didn't seem like the smartest idea.

'Just like that,' Mathew thought, leaning over Norbert's curled-up body while covering his eyes with the cloth. He then wrapped it a few times around his head, making sure not a single photon could reach his eyes.

'First part done,' Mathew thought once he finished wrapping the cloth on Norbert's face. He then took a few steps back before tearing another piece of material from his shirt.

This time, however, he didn't approach Norbert directly. Instead, he took his time to split the cloth into three parts, two small squares, and a long strip.

Mathew filled the squares with a bit of earth he dug out with his hand from the side of the road. Then, he moved back to Norbert, pressing one of the earth-cloth pockets to his ear before using the long strip of cloth to secure it in place, over Norbert's ear.

Mathew then repeated the whole process for the officer's other ear before taking two steps back and taking in some air.

'Well, here goes nothing,' Mahtew thought, gulping down his saliva. "Norbert…" he started with just the man's name, hoping not to irritate him too much if his countermeasures would prove futile.

Norbert's body twitched… but the man didn't reply.

"Are you any better now?" Mathew then asked a proper question, albeit in a low voice.

Norbert still kept his mouth shut. Thankfully, though, his body unveiled itself a little only for the man to reluctantly nod his head.

Only to then change his mind and rapidly shake it in denial.

"It's good that you can listen to me, though, so listen," Mathew said, deciding to take this opportunity to convey their findings to the man in question. "It appears that you got what you wanted," Mathew muttered while turning his eyes away. "Whatever you see and hear right now…" the young man hesitated a little, "is likely just an effect of your abilities growing a bit too fast for you to control them."