Chapter 119 - Stacking injuries

‘This one doesn’t look all that stronger than the others. Yet, it’s a no-brainer that it’s an evolved one,’ Mathew thought as he rushed right into the group of zombies where he spotted the strange one.

The strange zombie moved. It waved its arm and a third of all the zombies that surrounded it rushed ahead, ready to intercept Mathew’s charge.

‘So it’s a commanding type,’ Mathew thought as he brought his ax to his shoulder before bracing himself for the impact.

‘If I want to clear the way for Nadia, I can’t really bother too much with my safety,’ Mathew decided before gritting his teeth and then speeding up.

Plask!

The feeling of crashing into a sizeable group of zombies was disgusting. Their bodies, already on the verge of rotting, would simply dissolve away upon impact, covering Mathew’s body with the odor and the filth of their insides.

‘I can’t stop!’ Mathew decided, ignoring the displeasure coming from his situation as he finally brought his ax down from his shoulder. In order to do that, he used his own shoulder as the supporting point for leverage while pulling down on the far end of the ax’s handle.

With the momentum Mathew managed to squeeze out of the leverage he came up with, Mathew swung his weapon around, more pushing the zombies away than trying to cut at them.

And yet, the desperately bad state of the zombie’s decaying bodies made it so that even the more blunt nature of Mathew’s strike still worked like a slash, cutting their bodies in half.

Mathew took two more swings before raising his left hand from the handle of the weapon and raising it to his face to clear it out from the gore filth.

“Push, now!” Mathew ordered right as he broke through the siege of zombies all around.

“On it!” Nadia replied happily.

‘Huh?’ Mathew involuntarily shrugged when a strange feeling coursed through his veins. He had to resist his innate desire to turn around and face the looming aura that appeared behind his back…

Only for the aura to disperse a moment later, as Nadia rushed past Mathew’s side and leaped in the direction of the evolved monsters.

‘It’s like there is no fear in her,’ Mathew thought when he took a glance at the girl’s back before she dropped right into the group of zombies ahead.

For a moment, Mathew limited himself just to warding off the attacks of the zombies nearest to him. And as his second wives joined, they managed to clean out the small group in a matter of a single minute.

“Aren’t we going to help her?” Leila asked when she knocked the head off the shoulders of the last zombie.

“Huh?” Mathew shook, his mind too messy to form a single thought.

It appeared that a single activation of whatever aura Nadia had somehow pushed Mathew into this weird, immovable state of mind.

“Mat!” Leila was the first one to notice that there was something wrong with their collective husband. Her high perception could be the reason for that…

Or maybe it was just because she was the only one left by Mathew’s side with Daria bound in a fight at the very front of their group and Nadia messing around in the main crowd of the zombie.

“Huh?” Mathew turned his eyes to the girl, curious about what she had to say.

Leila was the first one to notice that there was something wrong with Mathew. And she was also the first one to take real action to fix it.

SLAP!

Leila didn’t hold her strength back when she slapped Mathew across his face.

“Are you awake again?” she asked while grabbing his head between her hands and looking deep down into his eyes.

“I am,” Mathew replied, pulling his head to the back to free it from Leila’s hands. He then raised his own arms before slapping himself on both his cheeks. “Let’s go help her,” Mathew ordered the moment he managed to sober himself up somewhat.

“That’s what I wanted to hear,” Leila replied, a small smile of relief appearing on her lips.

But Mathew could see it anymore.

Ignoring the plight of the reasonable part of his soul that wished to discover just what the hell made him stop in the middle of his tracks right now, Mathew focused on the simple task of reaching Nadia’s side.

PLACK!

Once again, Mathew’s body was covered in filth when he slammed right into the crowd of zombies.

Nails bruised his skin. Broken bones cut wounds into his flesh. A single zombie even managed to sink its teeth into Mathew’s meat!

And then, Mathew dropped his ax again, clearing the area immediately around him with wide swings.

‘Normal zombies are no match for my attacks anymore,’ Mathew thought, finally experiencing the real effects of his growing strength first-hand.

The number of injuries he received when slamming into the wall of zombies would be more than enough to make him turn into another screeching corpse. And yet, he didn’t feel any symptoms of turning, something that he well-documented thanks to the last bit of help from his fallen companions in his first run of the apocalypse.

His attacks themselves could also use as a great measurement. Back in yesterday’s morning, Mathew still had to put considerable strength behind his strikes, even when using his high-leveled weapon, to split a zombie in half. And now, he could do so en masse without slowing his hand down even for the tiniest bit!

‘But all this growth will be meaningless if Nadia ends up hurt,’ Mathew thought as he ramped up both the speed and the strength behind his strikes, culling zombies left and right in his mad dash towards Nadia.

“Matty!” Nadia called out joyfully when her man joined her side in the fight.

“Are you okay?!” Mathew had to fight off the desire to drop everything and grab the girl into his arms. As such, it was already a showcase of his mental strength when he managed to limit the reaction to his worry to just a simple question.

“Huh?” Nadia shrugged a little. “I’m perfectly fine, why would you ask?” she asked while a look of surprise filled her face.

“There was something wrong with me,” Mathew replied shortly as he swung his ax again. He then allowed the blade to fall down by his side as he froze in place and took a deep breath. “I couldn’t move at all, as if something charmed me to stay in place,” the young man randomly commented, only to realize that the scale of the truth behind his words was actually too big for comfort.

‘Huh?’ he thought when he came to understand that the symptoms that he described just now, could be applied to his situation… once again.

“What the hell…” Mathew muttered under his breath, pushing himself further and further… But no matter how hard he tried, Mathew’s body simply refused to react to his orders.

“Matty?” Nadia turned her eyes to the young man’s body, sensing that something wasn’t right there.

‘Don’t lose your goddamn focus!’ Mathew wished to scream, unable to do anything but watch how Nadia’s moments of carelessness nearly resulted in a zombie daring to scratch her fair skin.

He continued to try to free himself from the strange state he found himself in. Yet, as his efforts proved futile, Mathew then looked around to at least assess the situation.

Several zombies were nearing him, ready to pounce the moment they would reach close enough.

Some of them would fall halfway under relentless attacks of Leila’s machete… but three of them managed to slip through.

Mathew continued to move his eyes, a movement that now had a lot more meaning ever since this became the only thing he could actually do.

And then he saw it.

The very same zombie that caught Mathew’s attention before currently had its eyes glued to his head.

‘So you are the culprit, huh?’ Mathew thought.

He could tell with just a single look that the weird cohesion of this particular group of zombies that initially caught his attention was now back to how zombies would normally act.

‘So you can’t command while you are rooting me in place, can you?’ Mathew thought, happy that he managed to figure out his opponent… And desperate because he couldn’t do shit to even tell others about it.

“Mathew!” Leila shouted. Yet, this time, she was too busy with all the zombies around to rush to his aid.

The three zombies that managed to slip past Leila reached out their decaying hands, two of them aiming for Mathew’s face, one of them aiming for his juicy waist.

“ENOUGH!”

Mathew screamed from the bottom of his lungs. He pushed his body to its limits… And he managed to break through the invisible chains of inactivity. He swung his ax in the air, killing the two zombies that reached out for his head.

‘Fuck!’ Mathew had no other choice but to grit his teeth when the thrid zombie’s teeth sank into the flesh of his waist.

The young man got rid of the pest with a single swing of his fist… Only to then fall down on one knee as a sudden wave of weakness messed up his stability.

“Matty?” Nadia turned her head, once again noticing that there was something wrong with her lover.

Yet, just as the girl was about to do something stupid, Mathew sparked out the last bit of energy he could control in his now pretty dangerous state…

Only to grab the end of his ax and send it flying towards the evolved zombie!