Leveling Up Wives In The Apocalypse



"Why wasn't I invited to this meeting in the first place?"

Hearing Carol's question, Mathew's jaws involuntarily tightened, nearly making him cut his bottom lip with his teeth.

'Why didn't I include her, that's a good question,' he thought, ransacking his mind for any viable answer or a delaying tactic.

Mathew opened his mouth, ready to unleash the usual dose of bullshit…

'Wait, no,' he thought, closing his mouth back down. 'Rather than looking for an excuse, why I didn't invite her for real?'

Mathew closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He then took a few moments for this slight meditation to help him calm his nerves.

"I guess it was just a brain fart," he then revealed after analyzing the proper reasons why he didn't include the girl. "Now that I think about it, I was so set on splitting those I consider my wives from those who are just cooperating that I didn't consider your position," he admitted before lowering his head a bit. "Sorry for that."

Carol's face, initially slightly angry, calmed down.

She wasn't angry in the first place, just confused and slightly hurt at most. But now, her cheeks turned slightly red, a detail that she put on a greater display when she turned her head aside to avert her eyes.

'What is she getting all embarrassed for?'

If there was any field that Mathew gained a lot of experience in over the past few days, it was the ability to read his women. By interacting with them over and over again and in situations all over the spectrum of intensity, he learned a little about what their small expressions and ticks could possibly mean.

And to be frank, blushing and looking away were one of the few most obvious clues.

"I guess I'm your wife indeed, hehe…" Carol, to Mathew's surprise, muttered under her nose, voicing out her commentary despite the initial attempt to hide her feelings.

"Anyway," Mathew rolled his eyes, trying to move on from this ultimately meaningless topic and back to the important stuff. Yet, his attempt went up in smoke when he failed to stop a humble smile that appeared in reaction to Carol's slight giggle.

There was just something in seeing one of his girls act innocently happy like this.

Even if her acts around the beginning of their relationship could be called everything but honest or innocent.

'Thinking about this, I didn't sleep with her even once since she became my wife,' Mathew noticed…

Only to roll his eyes again as he cast the thought aside.

'If I want to keep up my ability to have those lovely girls by my side,' he thought, taking a deep breath, 'then I need to deal with my duties first!'

"Listen up, now that I think about it, there is another reason why I didn't include you in this meeting." Mathew removed all the excess emotions from his soul as he looked properly at Carol's face.

The girl herself raised one of her eyebrows while crossing her arms over her chest.

"Is that so?" she asked, full of obvious doubt… if not openly putting Mathew's words in question.

"It's not something I consciously thought about, just something I voiced out in my thoughts now." Mathew raised his hands in a gesture of going on defense. Then, he turned his head over his shoulder, to where the hunters of the group were already rushing away to find potential recruits.

"On this expedition, we are bound to get some wounded or just flat-out cowards," Mathew sighed, "and it will be your job to escort them back to the fortress every now and then."

When Mathew journeyed and adventured with his wives or experienced companions like Norbert and Daniel alone, he didn't really consider the option of retreat. The very idea of having even one of his companions suffer a serious injury was just too drastic for Mathew to accept it.

'I know it's immature, I know it's something I should prepare for, but…'

Mathew released a long sigh.

'But, huh?' he thought as he lowered his eyes. 'A word that magically erases everything that came before it.'

Mathew knew that not allowing the idea of one of his wives or close companions drawing the short straw was outright stupid. Yet, he only noticed it when he observed the different approach he automatically assumed towards the hunters, both the current ones and the potential recruits.

Mathew refused the reality where any of his wives got hurt. But he actively anticipated his current expedition to come at a bloody cost.

"And how is that preventing me from taking an active part in the meeting?" Carol asked, this time simply confused.

"You are the leader of the hunters," Mathew pointed out. "It should be your job to keep all of them safe and all…" The young man hesitated for a while. "But I worry that if I let you lead now, you will soon come to face the same problem that prompted me to organize this expedition in the first place.

Carol couldn't know Mathew's reasons. She didn't talk with him about it and it was rather unlikely Leila would blabber to her about it. Yet, he didn't cut the deliberation short by simply revealing them, not even when he had yet to bring both Nadia and Daria up to speed.

No.

'Nadia knows me well enough to figure it out. Daria doesn't seem to care. Carol, though…' Mathew squinted his eyes, 'she needs to figure it out herself.'

"The reason why you are organizing the expedition…" Carol muttered, revealing where did she start her search for Mathew's reasons. Instead of trying to figure out the potential problems ahead of her, she opted to analyze Mathew's experience and learn from his mistakes instead of making her own.

For a moment, the group turned silent, with only the noise of the hunters running around to be the first to reach their potential recruits cutting into the peaceful atmosphere.

"Is it because we can only go out together if we want to ensure our relative safety, limiting the scope of how much we can explore just by ourselves?" Carol came out with a guess after less than a minute.

"That's certainly a good point," Mathew nodded, "but not the crux of the matter."

"I see…" Carol muttered as she lowered her head and brought her right hand up. Once again she dived deep into her thoughts, even ending up nibbling on the nail of her thumb as she sought the answer to Mathew's query.

"Something that you are facing now and I would face in the near future as a leader of the hunters…" Carol whispered to herself, sorting out the information she had and had to use to figure out the answer.

Waiting for the girl to figure it out, Mathew raised his eyes and looked at the rest of his group.

Nadia was simply standing in the back of the group, nodding her head with a slight smile as she observed Carol with curiosity. Leila didn't seem to care at all while Daria was too preoccupied looking for something to sit down at to bother with the situation at all.

"Is it about delegating the job to others?" Carol asked roughly two minutes later.

"Bingo," Mathew smiled. "Sooner or later, you will move on from leading the hunters. And while you didn't do that all that much in the first place," his smile soured a little, "I want the first batch to be ready to take the responsibility as soon as this expedition is over."