"Whatever you see and hear right now is likely just an effect of your abilities growing a bit too fast for you to control them," Mathew said before turning his eyes to the side and swallowing all sorts of other things that he felt tempted to speak about.
'There is no need to bother him with all my doubts,' he thought, forcing his mouth to close up rather than bombarding the officer with his questions.
Why did people back at Peter's base failed to get any experience from the zombies they killed with their firearms? Was it because they didn't have a system in contrast to Norbert? Or maybe there was something else?
Mathew shook his head.
'There will be a lot of time to think about it later,' Mathew thought as he gulped his saliva and shook his head. He then turned around and took a look at the monster's corpse. 'For now, though, we should look for a way to get rid of it all.'
Just like was the case with the zombie corpses, leaving a monster's carcass to just lie around would pose a massive sanitary risk. And while it was possible to just mark out the entire area around the corpse as a no-go zone for the people within their group…
What would happen if another group of people came? What would happen if a need arose for Mathew's people to reclaim this area?
'And we still don't know what will happen if zombies or animals feast on it, even if the corpse no longer holds the experience type of energy…' Mathew thought, closing his eyes.
The young man then took a full, deep breath before opening his eyes again.
"Are you any better?" Mathew then asked silently, opting to focus on the problem before him rather than the problem he saw no solution for.
"I… I think so," Norbert replied in a hesitant voice.
Still, this kind of answer was already better than no answer at all or some crazed mumbling he performed before.
"Don't worry, we are not moving yet," Mathew said with a gentle sigh. "So you can take your time to get used to this new situation. And in the meantime…" Mathew changed his normal, talking voice to mutter as he turned away from Norbert and started making his way toward the rest of the group.
"How is he?" Carol asked before anyone else, clearly worried about the state of her step-brother.
"Not great, not terrible," Mathew replied while shaking his head. "He needs some time so let's let him rest," he then suggested before turning his eyes away from the girls and then to the sky.
It was still as dark as it could be. Without any of the city lights, only Mathew's stats allowed him to peer through the veil of darkness. And yet… It was only a small hint, but Mathew could tell in some time, the sun would start to raise.
'Is this an instinct or something?' Mathew thought, sparing only a short thought on the topic before moving his eyes back to the one thing he didn't really want to think about.
The corpse of the lobster-like monster.
"If only we could eat it…" Mathew sighed before taking a step forward.
"What's the problem?" Nadia asked, finally noticing the signs of Mathew's anxiety.
"This," Mathew nodded his chin forward. "We have to do something about the corpse before it starts rotting," he explained.
"It's still pretty far from the areas we control, though?" Nadia replied while turning her head over to the side and resting her hands on her hips.
For a moment, she simply stared at Mathew's face with a confused expression on her own.
Nadia then rolled her eyes before taking three steps forward, turning around, and bringing her hands on top of Mathew's shoulders.
"Matty, listen," she started with a whisper while staring directly into his eyes. "There are likely thousands of corpses littered all over this city, not to even think about the rest of the world."
A moment of silence allowed the young man to slowly digest the girl's words.
"What do you want to say?" Mathew asked with a light sigh.
"Just leave it be," Nadia said without even a second of hesitation. She then heaved a sigh of her own. "Listen, there is no way for us to clean it all up on our own. And if we were to bring enough manpower, then it would turn pretty damn hard to protect them all."
Nadia shut her mouth and closed her eyes. She then took a few deep breaths as she forced herself to calm down.
"You can't fix the entire world, dear," she said, staring right into Mathew's eyes. "You can't fix all the problems. So, rather than troubling yourself with what you can't do, you should focus on what you actually can."
Mathew didn't avert his eyes. He stared right into Nadia's eyes, taking his time to think her words through.
'It's true that this area is still a bit away from all of our camps. So even if raising a settlement was to turn all the areas between them into our zone of control, it still shouldn't be that much of a problem…'
Mathew took in a deep breath.
"Well then, we can't do everything there is to do, right?" he muttered, finally giving up on the idea of cleaning up the monster's corpse. "Still, make sure to find its core," Mathew said as he brought his own hands up, grabbed Nadia's arms, and removed them from his shoulders. "This fight was way too damn hard to give up on the loot, especially, given how we need all the cores we can get right now."
"That's more like it," Nadia muttered, freely allowing Mathew to move her hands away while putting a smile on her face.
"What?" Mathew raised his eyebrow, confused by the sudden shift in the girl's words.
'What's more like it? This kind of comment… how does it connect to what we were talking about just now?'
"I'm just glad to see the true you back," Nadia grinned before taking a step back and taking a look to the side at the rest of their group. "But as much as I would love to keep going…" she whispered, turning her eyes back towards Mathew's face before pretending to struggle to get her arms out of his grasp, "but it's not my turn tonight," Nadia said only for her face to sour a little.
Then, she raised her eyes only to wrestle her wrists free from Mathew's hands.
"And you need to make sure to reward all of us properly, don't you?"
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