Chapter 162 First step of the exploit

“So it’s something like that,” Mathew’s junior muttered while leaning over a piece of paper marked with several numbers.

“Any ideas?” Mathew asked, a hint of impatience flashing in his eyes.

Just explaining the problem without revealing its exact details took a while. Covering the paper with numbers and graphs took another moment.

“It would be far easier with a computer, to be honest,” Mathew’s junior sighed.

He appeared to be around sixteen years of age. He had short, brown hair and eyes of a color hanging between deep brown and dark green. He wore a set of thick glasses that accented the hint of intelligence hidden within his expression.

A type of silent honor student.

And this young man now raised his gaze from the papers and turned into Mathew’s face.

“I think I can get the gist of it,” he said, straightening his back formerly bent over the piece of paper with all the data.

“Huh? Already?” Mathew asked, taken aback. ‘That quick?’ he thought as a slight sense of shame appeared in his soul. ‘Is it really that easy?’ he asked himself, twisting his lips in a small, ugly grimace. ‘Then why couldn’t I figure it out myself?’

“First, you need to fill out the first basket with fifty pieces,” Mathew’s junior spoke, lowering his hand and pointing at one of the small graphs on the paper. “But you already know that,” he then added, putting up a small smile.

‘It’s good that he isn’t scared of me,’ Mathew thought, the look on his face tensing up a little. ‘But…’

“Once you reach the point where the benefits of all the baskets are the same, you need to put twenty pieces to the first basked for every ten pieces you put to each of the other three baskets.”

The young man took a breath and rested his fists on his hips. A confident smile appeared on his face.

“Then how do I calculate how many pieces I can get?” Mathew asked, swallowing both his shame and pride as he leaned over the paper as well.

“That’s actually simple,” the young man smiled and lowered his eyes over the paper. “You just add this number here to every next step,” he explained, moving his finger to another formula.

‘So the cost of each successive step increases by the base number and a multiplication of seventy,’ Mathew thought, reading the numbers out.

‘I can wrap my head about the general idea,’ he thought, releasing a small sigh. ‘But grasping if all the numbers are correct is beyond me,’ he admitted to himself.

Mathew then shook his head, hiding a small smile from appearing on his face.

‘Thankfully, I don’t need to remember any of those numbers as long as I follow one, simple rule.’

“Thanks for the help,” Mathew said, hiding his grin as he looked up at his former junior. “There is a huge chance we will need your help in the future, so I would like to thank you in advance,” he then added, staring down his junior with a perverse smile of a black company recruiter roping in yet another innocent soul into his shady business.

“Ugh…” the schoolboy released a small moan as he took a steep back.

“Don’t worry,” Mathew laughed out. He then brought his hand up to his junior. “Thanks for the help,” he repeated himself, this time with a straight, serious face.

“Yeah,” the young man awkwardly accepted Mathew’s hand, averting his eyes as he shook it.

‘Wait, isn’t this…’ Mathew suddenly froze all over, a terror appearing out of the very bottom of his soul. ‘No fucking way,’ Mathew thought, gritting his teeth and suddenly pulling his hand back.

“Well then, we are kinda on a clock right now,” Mathew muttered, turning around and reaching for the patch of golden grass right beside.

‘Thinking about this,’ Mathew’s thoughts suddenly stopped when he noticed a certain possibility. ‘I only can enable my wives to level up by killing zombies,’ he thought, opening his eyes wide as the golden light of the grass enveloped his body.

‘But maybe I can do it with this feature?’

Mathew’s train of thought broke when he suddenly plummeted into the subspace.

And for but a moment, he could gaze right into the flash of the golden light as it overtook his eyes.

“Huh?” Mathew muttered as he regained his sense of reality a moment later.

He couldn’t recall a single thing about what he saw inside that light.

‘My head hurts,’ Mathew thought, falling down to his knees as he brought his hands to his temples. An ugly sense welled up in his stomach and down his throat, almost making the young man throw up on the spot.

‘I don’t have the time for this,’ Mathew thought, gritting his teeth as he forced his body to stand up. He then raised his eyes while clamping his mouth shut in hopes of preventing the convulsions that shook his stomach.

Finally, Mathew’s eyes fell upon the golden display decorated with numbers detailing the strengths of everyone in his group.

The stats of his girls grew for about a single level each ever since he checked them before departing for the media building.

‘We likely got a level each from fighting the zombies in that building,’ Mahtew thought as he finally found the strength to raise his fingers to the display.

“Remember the rule,” Mathew thought, adding a specific number of points to every member of his group.

[Cost: 360]

The number appeared in the secondary display.

‘And now we just rinse and repeat,’ Mathew thought, a smile flashing up on his face in spite of how he felt.

360, 790, 1290, 1860…

The numbers grew for every repetition of the process that Mathew completed.

Twenty points into his own stats then ten points into each of the girls.

“I don’t think I should spend all the coins I have,” Mathew thought, quickly calculating how many he had left. ‘Well, we are going to farm more pretty soon anyway,’ he thought, quickly changing his mind.

1860, 2500…

‘That’s the limit I guess,’ Mathew thought.

After all the purchases he did, he only had around twenty-eight hundred cores left in total. And after a quick check, another step would bring the leveling up cost to over three thousand cores.

‘Let’s go with this,’ Mathew thought, taking a deep breath as he looked down at the changes he introduced to everyone’s stats.

[Mathew Karian]

[Level – 2/2]

[Vitality – 50] > [Vitality – 80]

[Brawn – 42] > [Brawn – 60]

[Agility – 48] > [Agility – 60]

[Mind – 20] > [Mind – 50]

[Arcane – 50] > [Arcane – 60]

[Total – 200+42] > [Total 300+42]

[Accumulated Levels – 15/24] > [Accumulated Levels – 15/34]

[Avaible points: 42]

[Wife #1]

[Name: Nadia Astra]

[Age: 19]

[Level: 16+9] > [Level: 21+9]

[Race: Half-zombie]

[Class: First Wife – Class 1]

[Status: Mentally troubled]

[Level – 25] > [Level – 30]

[Vitality – 77] > [Vitality – 90]

[Brawn – 72] > [Brawn – 80]

[Agility – 68] > [Agility – 80]

[Mind – 10] > [Mind – 20]

[Arcane – 25] > [Arcane – 32]

[Total – 302(90 gifted)]

[Wife #2]

[Name: Leila Hussate]

[Age: 19]

[Level: 17+3] > [Level: 22+3]

[Race: Human]

[Class: Brawler – Class 1]

[Status: N/A]

[Level – 20] – > [Level – 25]

[Vitality – 60] > [Vitality – 70]

[Brawn – 79] > [Brawn – 90]

[Agility – 54] > [Agility – 74]

[Mind – 0] > [Mind – 9]

[Arcane – 15]

[Total – 258(30 gifted)]

[Wife #2]

[Name: Daria Paternal]

[Age: 19]

[Level: 18+3] > [Level: 23+3]

[Race: Human]

[Class: Seductress – class 1]

[Status: N/A]

[Level – 22] > [Level – 27]

[Vitality – 35] > [Vitality – 50]

[Brawn – 40]

[Agility – 34] > [Agility – 40]

[Mind – 32] > [Mind – 36]

[Arcane – 75] > [Arcane – 100]

[Total – 276(30 gifted)]

The list of changes was long, yet it brought the strength of everyone in Mathew’s team by a massive chunk.

‘I hope this kind of distribution will be all right,’ the young man thought, staring down at the list of his choices before reaching out and pressing the confirmation.

For a moment, the golden light that made up the entire subrealm tensed up. The air suddenly turned as thick as liquid, stopping Mathew from moving in any way or form.

And then, the surrounding space started to twist. The golden light exploded from every tiniest crack in space, rushing towards Mathew’s immobilized flesh.

He was suspended in space, doomed to just watch the events as they developed.

The scenery filled with golden light. The displays faded away, made from the exact same light that invaded the space. And as the light rushed towards Mathew, his vision first brightened up, only to then suddenly turn dark, right as the golden realm shattered, sending unconscious Mathew falling to the floor.

He plummeted down… Yet there was no one there to catch him.

With just the corner of his eye, Mathew could somehow still see. And he saw every member of his party suddenly getting weak knees while the golden light assaulted them as well.

‘Did I overdo it?’ A residual thought appeared in Mathew’s head as the darkness surrounded his consciousness, shutting it down like one would blow out a candle.