"Mat!" Leila called, ignoring the risk of attracting the zombies.
Or rather, she was clearly eager to bring more of them to the fray so that the count of their cores would increase.
There was this visceral joy visible in the girl's eyes as if she truly enjoyed gathering the cores.
'It's as if she didn't see them as corpses of her schoolmates,' Mathew thought, lowkey troubled with such development.
It wasn't anything bad for the girl to find a coping mechanism for her situation. But seeing her beautiful face all in smiles while her hands have blood all over them?
This was the most disturbing image Mathew could find on the entire floor. Not the grotesque piles of corpses, not the blood splattered all over the place... The weird, satisfied smile of the girl who covered in fear from the zombies just a few moments earlier.
'Maybe leveling up has some weird effect on one's brain?' Mathew attempted to guess, only to shake his head and drop the topic.
This wasn't the time for such unnecessary debate.
"Yes?" Mathew called back to the girl, standing up from the pile he finished counting.
"I think we have well over two hundred now!" the girl announced, brimming with smiles.
"Guys, how about some help?!" Daria called out from the staircase, despite progressing down the stairs instead of just holding her high ground.
'Yeah,' Mathew thought, shaking his head as he straightened up and picked up his ax. 'There is definitely something in the air messing with our heads.'
Maybe it was adrenaline rushing through their veins. Maybe a visceral joy of their complicated lives simplified to the struggle for survival. Or maybe there actually was something in the system that messed with their brains.
'Did something like this happen before?' Mathew thought, reaching to his memories. And yet, no matter how hard he looked, he couldn't pinpoint the answer.
"I'm on my way!" Mathew shouted, shaking his head to get rid of those useless thoughts.
Whether or not something was interfering with their brains wasn't a topic for now.
'Once we will secure the school, there will be some time to think about it,' he thought, swinging his ax even before reaching the staircase.
Daria would likely be able to hold the zombies off... But Mathew didn't want to risk it. And since she called for help, he was more than happy to provide it.
"We should have nearly two hundred by now!" Leila shouted over as she dropped yet another haul by the pile of the life cores. "Are you sure you don't want to summon that merchant first?"
Ever since Mathew first mentioned the possibility of summoning a merchant, Leila was its greatest supporter. It was likely also the reason why she was so eager to collect the cores from the fallen zombies.
Because with the merchant, their ability to survive in the apocalypse would skyrocket.
"Still, are you really sure it's better than going back to the one you already summoned?" Daria asked when Mathew reached her position and started to swing his trusty ax around. "It's not like it would take super long either," she added, only to shrug her shoulders before cutting off a zombie's head with Mathew's sword.
"We still need to summon two more merchants in the school to turn it into a true fortress," Mathew rebuked, sharing the one vital piece of information that he found out in his past life.
Normally, he would keep it hidden, staying true to his idea of keeping his cards by his chest. Yet in this world, where he was likely the only one to have a system within the boundary of the school...
What could anyone do with that information?
'Sure, I could find a better location to place the merchant, but at this very moment, there are far more benefits to just going with the flow,' Mathew thought, sending a few more hits into the horde before nudging Daria.
"Let's head back," Mathew ordered.
They reached the breaking point of the stairs, where their other part would descend towards the bottom floor rather than the wall ending the building. If they kept on going, they would soon attract the zombies from below.
And this wasn't the purpose yet.
"Yeah," Daria nodded her head, obediently pulling back.
Compared to her girlfriend, she turned out to be much more level-headed, capable of holding her newly awoken instincts at bay.
Now that Mathew had made his decision, he cleaned out the last few zombies from the stairs before lowering his torso to start picking up the cores.
'I think we could easily reach three hundred,' the young man thought, comparing the number of unlooted corpses to the number of those that Leila and he himself had already cleared out.
'I guess it's better to just go and do it,' Mathew thought, stepping forward and leaving the task of protecting the staircase to Daria.
He then approached the pile of the stones before putting them into a piece of cloth torn out of a random zombie's uniform. And then, just like he did on the top floor of the school before, Mathew repeated the summoning ritual.
"I, Mathew, son of Arthur, do hereby summon a tiered merchant!"
This was as far as Mathew's knowledge reached. What was the title of the third merchant required to form a fortress? He didn't know.
'I bet I can buy that information out of this guy,' Mathew thought, watching how the stones exploded in brightness only for a hooded shadow to appear where they were once the light vanished.
"Tiered merchant?" Leila asked, raising her eyes towards Mathew's face right as he reached for the merchant's shadow.
"That's right," Mathew nodded his head. "Contrary to the claim merchant above, this one, can evolve," he explained before pushing his hand forward and grasping at the dancing shadow underneath the merchant's hood.