Leveling Up Wives In The Apocalypse

Mathew waited for a long time for the merchant to give out its answer. He waited so long, that out of pure boredom, he started to read through all the details of various systems showcased on the nearby pedestals.

"Unable to assess customer's system grade(Check A/N)," the merchant finally replied in its usual voice after what seemed like an eternity... or after Mathew managed to read through nearly half of all the systems that were gathered in the alley.

"Customer's system is of a grade beyond what the grade of system seeds that customer currently can purchase," the robotic voice filled in some details. "As such, it's impossible to assess the customer's system grade without extraction."

"Does the customer wish to proceed with the system extraction?" the merchant then asked.

As usual, its voice was completely robotic, deprived of all and any humanity in it. And yet, just like a few times in the past, Mathew could hear a hint of some emotion in it.

And this time, it was excitement.

"No, sorry," Mathew was quick to deny the merchant's suggestion. "It was only my curiosity, not a real wish to sell it..." Mathew smiled, "just yet."

He had no intention of selling the system before he would be able to purchase a fitting replacement.

'Even though the design of my system has its flaws and pushes me to bed all sorts of girls...' Mathew thought, twisting his lips in a grimace of unwillingness at the mere memory of the exhaustion from his days before the girls had the talk and set up the turn-based system. 'For now, it's way too risky to mess around with it,' Mathew decided.

A single look at the world dominator system was nearly enough to convince Mathew to change his system. Yet...

While the mention of 'officers' in the system's seed description implied the existence of a similar kind to Mathew's wives... It was nothing but the young man's guess.

And after all the mistakes he made in the last few days, Mathew knew better than to bet the future of his group on a mere guess.

'Okay then,' Mathew happily turned his eyes away from the pedestals displaying the details of the systems before leisurely walking back to the entrance of the alley.

'I will need to read through all the systems before deciding which one to buy,' he decided while finding the simplest excuse he could to push the second half of the reading for later.

'At least I won't have to waste so much time doing it as I did before,' he thought, as he glanced over his shoulder at the systems he read about before receiving the answer from the merchant.

And there was one thing that should be pretty damn obvious to the young man since the beginning.

Most of the systems that he read about while going backward... were systems that already appeared in the higher grades. And while there were quite a lot of systems that didn't make it to the top possible grades of what Mathew could purchase, a proper majority of them would appear within the range of at least three different grades!

'Now,' Mathew thought as he approached the entry to the system seed alley, 'let's see what we have here,' he thought, taking a look as he walked around the corner.

Yet, rather than instantly checking out the content of the shelves, Mathew's eyes locked on something that he didn't expect.

Due to how he never took a short walk to inspect all the alleys at once, he assumed that every last one of them would be as long and filled with items as the ones he already visited.

Yet, as he stepped into the fifth valley, Mathew was faced with its end... only a few meters away from the entrance!

He couldn't see it before due to how relatively narrow they were and the angle of his eyes.

Normally, a low selection that barely went beyond what Mathew could access in the previous iteration of the shop would rain down on his parade pretty hard.

But...

'The papers in the former alley were system seeds,' he thought, turning his eyes towards the wares offered within the fifth alley. 'So what the heck are those?'

Mathew got interested in the fifth alley only because it appeared to be the same as the fourth. Yet, a single look at the content written on the same kind of pedestals and papers that he saw in the fourth alley quickly dissolved this illusion of his.

[Firebolt]

[Type: Magic]

[Class: Projectile]

[Mana cost: 10]

[Grade: low]

[Requirements:

- Mind: 40

- Arcane: 60

]

[The spell allows the caster to form a bolt of purified mana with the seed of fire anchored into it. It will home on the target through the shortest possible extension of the initial arc of the path. Explodes upon impact with the majority of its energy applied to the outer end of the explosion.]

[Cost: 100 cores]

Mathew had to tighten his ass muscles to stop himself from shitting all over his pants in excitement.

'That's just the first spell I took a look at, what else does this alley have?!'

Soon, Mathew fell into a reading frenzy, studying every last detail of all the spells the short alley had to offer.

And as it turned out, the grades that he found out about when checking out the system seed section applied to the spells as well, with the exception of not a single one of the spells falling below the low grade.

All in all, most of the spells that the system offered were skewed towards the higher grades, with the great majority of them ranging between advanced, high advanced, and special grades.

But as if it wasn't enough, there was one minor detail that Mathew found extremely useful.

[Core Explosion]

[Limitation: Applicable only to the zombies and monsters below the caster level]

[Type: Dark Magic]

[Class: Instadeath/AoE]

[Mana cost: 280]

[Grade: Special]

[Requirements:

- Mind 400

- Arcane 300

]

[The spell allows the caster to cause the explosion of a core within the body of an active subhuman. The wave of energy projected from the explosion may trigger the chain reaction within the cores it reaches with the rate of 50% per core of equal grade and a 25% chance added for every level of grade difference.

The spell consumes the cores of the defeated monsters.]

[Cost: 1 700 000 cores]

On its own, it was a quirky yet clearly powerful spell. One that would be extremely useful in a scenario where its user had an abundance of cores but lacked the patience to deal with a low-level horde.

Yet, it wasn't those types of details or applicability that caught Mathew's attention.

It was the two different colors in which the stats requirements were highlighted with.

The arcane requirement was all in greed, showcasing that despite Mathew's situation limiting his usage of his stats to only a fraction of what he currently had, this limitation didn't apply to the spell requirements at all.

And yet...

The mind requirement was displayed in red. And while on its own, it wasn't a big deal as Mathew could easily confirm that even his true level of mind was below what the spell required.

No.

What was important about it... was that the ability to confirm the first stage of purchase was blocked due to Mathew not fulfilling the stat requirements in the first place!