Chapter 302 Shadowy Elephant In The Room

"Woah!" Nadia squealed in reaction to Mathew's hasty decision to summon the merchant.

Leila simply watched the things happen while Norbert visibly tensed up.

Summoning a merchant in the middle of the potentially enemy territory wasn't what either of them would consider a good idea. Not only because it meant wasting a hundred of the precious cores, not only because it only served Marcus' agenda, but mostly because it would obviously make him aware of such mechanics within the new reality that surrounded them!

And just this knowledge alone was one massive advantage that Mathew… just gave up on.

When it came to the merchant himself, it appeared in the usual manner. A hundred of the cores within the pushcart lit up before exploding in a flash of intense light. And by the time the flash dissipated, a new shadowy persona stood right by the side of the cart.

"Why did you do that?!" Nadia freaked out, no longer willing to hold back her doubts.

Mathew didn't bother to calm her down or freak out in response to her raised voice. He looked at the girl… and smiled.

"What's the best strategy for fighting an enemy with greater numbers than you?" he asked, seemingly out of nowhere.

Mathew made sure to turn his head around as he asked his question, making it clear he directed it to everyone, not just Nadia alone.

"Divide and conquer," Norbert replied right away.

For him, it was common knowledge.

"Or in more modern terms," the former officer smiled, "defeat in detail."

"That's right," Mathew nodded his head with a satisfied smile. "And what's the first rule of fighting an opponent too smart for you?"

This time, there were no immediate answers to follow Mathew's question.

​ After all, the young man moved from the obvious stuff that even non-combatants were likely to know to a sphere of his own opinions.

Leila clearly wouldn't mind arguing with Mathew over his opinions. Yet, at this particular moment, there was no place for such an argument. And so, rather than starting a discourse for the sake of the discourse, she kept her lips pursed while she waited for Mathew to reveal his real intentions.

"The first rule of dealing with people too smart for their own good is to make them overthink stuff. Or, in simpler terms," Mathew allowed a wide smile to creep up on his lips, "be as random as possible."

Mathew's companions each took a moment to digest his words. Every last one of them made a different expression while doing so.

"Are you trying to tell me that you summoned a merchant…" Nadia pursed her lips and ignored the part where she outlined all the negatives of such a decision, "just as a distraction?!"

"No, not really," Mathew laughed a little. He then raised his hand and pointed at a small window floating right beside the merchant's hooded head. "There were two other major reasons."

"Ah…" Nadia twitched a little. She then closed her mouth and averted her eyes while a small blush appeared on her face.

It likely wasn't her own shame of missing the points Mathew took into account while making his decision. As far as Mathew himself could tell, it was Leila's amused stare directed at Nadia that made his sweetheart embarrassed.

Mathew didn't spare any time lingering around. Instead, he swung the shuts of the window open before grasping as many of the cores as he could and then pouring them down the abyss of the storage.

'It's a good thing this small bet paid off,' he thought as he continued to throw more and more of the cores through the window. 'Otherwise, I would have no other choice but to admit I was wrong,' he thought, only for a twitch to shake his head.

Between fighting hordes of zombies and admitting his mistake, Mathew had no doubts about what he dreaded more.

"Here is the second ba… WOAH!" Tommy, Peter's friend, entered the room with another cart full of zombie cores. He entered with a huge smile on his face, only for his expression to sour when he noticed the shadowy figure of the merchant sitting right in the middle of the room.

"W-who… who is that new friend of yours?" he then asked in an unsteady voice while pretending not to be terrified by the shadows seeping out of every inch of the merchant's hooded being.

"Did you see Peter on your way here?" Mathew asked, ignoring the man's terror-driven question. 'To speak less is silver. To speak nothing at all is gold,' he thought, opting not to divulge any more information than it was absolutely necessary.

"Nah," Tommy replied, alternating his eyes between Mathew's face and the shadowy elephant in the room. "I came here with the cores as soon as they loaded all the remaining ones on my cart…" he added while resting his hand on the handle of his pushcart.

"It would be for the best for you to stay and wait with us, then," Mathew said, discarding the emptied-out cart to the side of the room. He then moved past the middle-aged man and grabbed the handle of the other cart, bringing it closer to the merchant with a single pull.

And then, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, he got back to his task of moving the cores from a place accessible to everyone to a place only he and his wives could ever access.

"Is something going on?" Tommy asked after getting over the fact that not only was there something randomly floating at the eye level in the room but also over how the stones were thrown through the seemingly normal, save for its levitation, window's frame would disappear from the world rather than falling down on its other side.

Tommy then cast a glance around the room, taking the stock of everyone's expression.

"No, allow me to rephrase my question," he muttered while gulping his saliva for yet another time. "Is something going down?"

Mathew only smiled in response to Tommy's question. He never stopped throwing the stones over to his storage, though, knowing full well how little time they currently had.

'Did I put things in motion a bit too soon?" Mathew thought once his hand scrapped the bottom of the cart, leaving only a few cores for him to move.

Then, another idea entered his mind.

"Nothing much is going on," Mathew suddenly spoke out, changing his mind about keeping Tommy in the dark as much as possible. "We are just going to try and help Marcus solve what looks like his biggest problem here," the young man added while throwing the last few cores through the storage window.

"Guys," Peter spoke out right as he stepped inside the room.

'Could he have any better timing?' Mathew asked, rolling his eyes.

As if following some sort of a magical clock, Peter stepped as soon as the last core found itself within Mathew's storage, saving him the mind-boggling image of the cores disappearing into a thin air after passing through a floating window.

"Marcus agreed to the meeting," Peter reported as his eyes skimmed over the shadowy person in the room.

There was a weird hint of some strange emotion on his face, too small for Mathew to figure out what it could entail.

"But since everyone is extremely busy with their work, we need to come right away," Peter informed.

"It's perfectly fine," Mathew carefreely replied. "I just need a single minute," he then added, ignoring Peter's pleas for hurry as he reached out and grasped at the shadows hidden underneath the merchant's hood.