‘This has to be some sort of a joke,’ Mathew thought.
He could feel his blood stalling, reaching an all-time low in its flow.
A single drop of sweat squeezed out through the pores of his skin. It then trickled down his face, leaving a wet trail all the way down to his chin.
‘ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS?!’ Mathew raged in his soul.
His face moved even so slightly, courtesy of his recovering strength. He was still a way off, but from how the state of his soul started to affect the state of his body, he was on a good way to recovering.
‘I worked so fucking hard to decipher it all, only to gain the ability to see the system without any of that effort?!’ Mathew’s soul exploded with rage.
‘I could take it when the merchants were messing with me,’ he thought. ‘I could take it when monsters I have never seen even two weeks into the apocalypse appeared on its first day.’
Mathew took a deep, long breath. And then, he slowly let the air out.
‘But I can’t take it when even my system is fucking messing with me!’
For a moment, Mathew could only let his fury rage on. The mental feeling of disgust filled the young man’s soul as he faced the deviousness of
his own system.
‘Wait, no,’ Mathew thought, virtually shaking his head. ‘Without the system, I would long be one of the corpses on the ground,’ he thought, forcing his anger down.
‘It’s quite inconvenient how this feature unlocked,’ Mathew admitted, calming his thoughts down. ‘But that doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with the system. I should be grateful for how much it helped instead,’ Mathew thought, forcibly changing his train of thought.
He already went through the process of angering a seemingly emotionless force.
‘I’m not going to make the same mistake that I did back with the merchant,’ Mathew thought, slowly and carefully mending his attitude.
Angering the merchant led to said merchant making things hard on Mathew. And the young man knew better than to risk going through the same situation but with his system, the one lifeline he had in this apocalyptic world!
‘Anyway,’ Mathew thought, finally putting the state of his soul aside only to focus on the new content of his system. And now that he could just see it rather than trying to decipher every letter he saw within a single drop of sweat on Nadia’s back…
‘This bonus ability really is worth a lot,’ Mathew summed up a mere moment later, once he was done with reading through all of the new stuff.
First came the new window. It bore the name “System Skills” and floated amidst the ranks of the other two windows that Mathew saw before.
The window itself was exactly the same as the others. It consisted of a solid-like frame with half-translucent letters detailing whatever information the system wanted to present.
[System Skills]
[Core detonation: by filling the core with the energy of his own, the host can then proceed to smash it. The physical stimulus releases the energy stored within the core in the form of a shockwave and a ray of light that knocks away and stuns all in the vicinity.]
[Overuse(Passive): By constantly pushing himself beyond the limits, the host acquired the ability to temporarily present strength and agility beyond his natural means. Activates whenever the host intends to use his full strength at the cost of immense pain after use.]
[Overuse(Active): Expansion of the Passive skill. Requirements to use: Unknown. Effects: Unknown)
[Mind’s flesh: Allows its user to project his innermost desire into creating a phantom force that can then interact with physical word. The more intense the activity, the greater the burden on the user’s arcane.]
[Barrier of light<primitive>: Host can expend his arcana to create a barrier of lights separating him from the greater area around.]
‘Damn,’ Mathew thought, the air wheezing as he took in a deep breath. ‘Tha’s quite a lot of things to remember and practice,’ he thought.
Mathew’s normal reaction to a new set of assignments would usually be quite weak. Yet, this time, he couldn’t help but get excited.
After all, contrary to whatever he would learn at school, Mathew could see the benefits of figuring out the ins and outs of his skills in the immediate future.
Yet, rather than losing himself in the excitement, Mathew once again restrained his emotions.
‘As great as those skills sound, that’s not everything that changed,’ the young man thought, refusing to get emotional ever again.
‘Now then,’ Mathew mentally coughed to clear his thoughts, ‘what was it about the wives development?’ he asked himself in his Mind, only to move his eyes back at the naked back of the girl currently sleeping on top of him.
‘I really am a nerd, aren’t I?’ Mathew suddenly thought, his soul filling with self-mocking. ‘I have my crush soundly sleeping on top of my chest, and here I’m thinking about gaming elements of this new reality.’
Mathew rolled his eyes before releasing a deep sigh.
‘Huh?” Mathew shrugged when he realized what just happened.
His body… his body actually moved along with his sigh!
‘Am I recovering?’ Mathew asked himself, only to see how the hand that he naturally attempted to raise… actually moved up.
‘So I am recovering,’ Mathew thought, staring at the inner side of his palm.
It was a simple sight. Something that he unconsciously had seen tens of thousands of times in the past.
Yet right now, being able to see the small lines of his palm, the same lines that kids in the kindergarten and gypsies would use to tell one’s future, had a different feel to it. And all of it because of a very simple reason.
Because now that Mathew could move…
‘She lowkey raped me, so she surely won’t mind if I touch her a bit, wouldn’t she?’ Mathew thought, slowly lowering his hand over the girl’s back.
‘More,’ Mathew thought the second he directly touched the girl’s skin. ‘I want to touch her more!’ he thought, raising his other hand…
And then, Mathew enclosed his hands behind the girl’s back.
All for the sake of hugging Nadia as she peacefully slept on top of his chest.