“We only have three days of supplies left, right?” Alex spoke up, drawing everyone’s attention. “It took us three days to get here, so why don’t we backtrack to the station, look for more ammo and food on the surface, and rest a day or two? When our gunmen heal up, we come back and wipe the demons out. They aren’t getting through a solid steel door and we aren’t on a time limit.”

When no one argued, Alex continued. “Or we can sleep here tonight, risk our lives fighting another horde of monsters, run out of ammo and food before another few days of walking, and pray that we don’t encounter any other demons or issues while we slowly go hungry?”

That put the nail in the coffin. Stepping over the corpses, Leon guided the group back out of the train and down the tunnel. Some of the students were hesitant to give up after three days of walking from the previous station, but when Dominic handed one a rifle and asked him to go deal with the horde himself, they all became much more accommodating.

No one wanted to die. It was easy to push others to take a risk when you could only benefit from their sacrifice, but being pushed into a job that could realistically end in a horrible, painful death? Suddenly the med students were much more cautious and strategic in their thinking.

***

Something was glowing at the end of the tunnel. Five minutes after deciding to turn back, strange entities appeared and blocked their path. Leon could only make out a few shapes in a hazy blue glow, the light too bright in the contrastingly dark tunnel. When no one wanted to continue, it was decided that Leon would tiptoe closer to see what it was since he had the best eyesight.

Leon was thrilled that he could help out.

Approaching the glow, Leon was forced to stop as his echoing footsteps made the creatures react. The blue light began to flash and undulate, and if he was guessing correctly, they were slowly drifting in his direction in hopes of finding him.

Whatever was lingering there, he didn’t want it to notice him. If those spiders could turn him into human soup, what could glowing monsters do? But that raised a problem. Leon was still too far away to get a clear picture, and if he left now, they would be stuck between the train and those entities.

Searching for an answer, Leon suddenly recalled what he did with the spiders. He had pushed Qi into his head and improved his eyesight enough to see the webs, and while it hadn’t allowed him to save anyone in time, it had raised an interesting question: could he make a skill to improve his eyesight?

Setting off to find out, Leon began to cycle Qi into his eyes. His vision immediately improved. There was no complex technique involved, the membranes and fluid in his eye quickly filling with Qi. Sadly, it wasn’t enough to make out more than vague outlines of whatever skulked around in the distance. Their blue luminescence was contrastingly too bright in the pitch-black tunnels.

Going over his basic anatomy knowledge, Leon visualised a human eye. A crystalline lens would focus the light onto the inside of the eye, and then the rods and cones dotting the surface would absorb the rays so that his optic nerve could send the signal to his brain. However, that was as far as Leon got, his high school level anatomy only giving him two areas to focus on: the lens of his eyes and the rods and cones that could sense light.

He decided to focus on the lens first. Filling it with his Qi, Leon imagined the misty energy changing shape. From a curling haze without direction, it began to shift within the lens, transforming into a convex disk. Leon’s vision immediately began to change, his vision shifting enough that the tunnel became even blurrier.

Leon glanced down at his hands and found that they were clear, but once he looked at the tracks a few metres ahead, he found that they were slowly turning blurry the further he looked away. Manipulating his Qi again, Leon made the disk steeper before he realised that he was worsening his distance vision. It was only when he flattened the disk that the creatures at the other end of the tunnel became sharp and clear.

Of course, that was also when he received a notification.

[Congratulations! You have learned the skill: Far Sight (Common).]

Leon shrugged the notification away and stared at the monstrosities in the distance. For a second, he thought about turning around and taking the risk of fighting the horde of humanoid demons. At least he would be able to sleep later that night if he lived.

A group of ghosts were drifting down the subway towards him. The one at the front was a floating brain, its nerve bundles hanging off its cerebrum like long, glowing blue tentacles. Its eyes were also floating in front of the brain, almost like the eye stalks of a snail. Only instead of sticking out of its head, it was inside some kind of transparent liquid.

The glassy substance shimmered from the glowing nerves, creating a kind of haunting luminescence in the dark tunnels. But as Leon analysed these creatures, he quickly realised that he needed more information.

Not all of them were floating brains. Some had bound themselves to the corpses and bodies of other creatures, their tentacles glowing through the skin of their victims. Leon almost threw up at the sight of them. The tendrils were buried inside their victims, the nerves glowing under their skin in lines.

The most obvious were the humans. People with pale white bodies that were likely on the train or in the subway when the bombs dropped, their corpses shambling down the tunnel with exposed brains resting on top of their heads. The tendrils then ran down their backs and pierced into their spines, taking over control of their bodily functions in a chaotic mesh of lines that shone with blue light under their skin.

But as Leon watched these creatures, it made him wonder if the people were really dead. The eye stalks of the ghosts moved around, but so did the eyes of the people, and neither of the two moved in sync. It was almost like the people were still alive, the ghosts acting like some kind of parasite that liked to take over the living bodies of their prey.

Holding his lunch in, Leon began to manipulate Far Sight. It would take around an hour for the ghosts to reach the train, but that didn't make him happy. It could take him days to find a solution. He needed more information. A weakness, or even a flaw he could take advantage of to clear the path ahead.

Anything.

But no matter how much he changed the lens, nothing of note was improved. Leon grit his teeth as he examined the rods and cones that made up the inside of his eyes. He didn’t know how they worked, but he would have to figure it out as quickly as he could.

Qi filled the rods and cones already. It would be impossible to finely manipulate either one since they were interspersed over his entire eye in a chaotic mix. Sadly, that meant he wouldn’t be able to make any fine adjustments, leaving him to play around until something worked.

He started by coating the membrane with a protective film, but that change blinded him. Leon panicked for a moment as everything went black. He pulled the Qi back into the inner membrane and was surprised to see a flash of brightness and colour erupt from the total darkness of going blind.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

That was… odd.

It only lasted for a split second, but the amount of colour he saw was unusual to say the least. Leon decided to run with that idea and fumbled around until something changed. By pulling his Qi into the membrane and through the other side of his eye, the rods and cones seemed to absorb more light, expanding the range of colour he could perceive.

It took him a minute to tweak, but the effect was nothing to scoff at. It all started with a stream of Qi flowing over the surface of his eye and into the lens. From there, it was pulled back into the rods and cones along with the light his eye naturally absorbed. But instead of stopping there, the Qi continued to flow down the back of his eye and down his optic nerve where it dispersed into his brain.

The effect was overwhelmingly greater, the colour gamut he could experience only growing larger. The ghosts were positively glowing now. Different parts of their brain flashed with what Leon could only assume was ultraviolet light, and as those flashes travelled down their nerve tendrils, their liquid bodies shimmered with colours he simply didn’t have words to describe.

That was when Leon realised that he had never seen those colours before today, and he likely never would again unless he used Qi. They simply didn’t exist within the scope of human understanding, and since he didn’t have words to describe the colours he was seeing, it meant that humans couldn’t perceive them.

Incredible. His eyes could see more than any other human now; experience colours that not even the greatest artists in history had seen. In the future, art would change in ways he couldn’t imagine once other people became able to experience these new colours and shades.

But his joy didn’t last for long, Leon’s new vision allowing him to see further behind the group of ghosts. Spiders. They’d also taken over about twenty spiders, nearly all of them scuttling on the roof and walls. If people sized spiders were horrifying before, seeing a brain attached to the top of their thorax was a whole new kind of disturbing.

The only thing keeping Leon from bolting down the tunnel was the buzz of a new notification.

[Congratulations! You have evolved Far Sight (Common) into True Sight (Uncommon).]

Leon felt something shift in the skill. It felt like a new ability had been added to his eyes, but as someone screamed behind him, he was forced to stop and make sure the ghosts didn't react to the sound.

The horde didn’t change their speed, giving him a chance to sigh in relief as he quickly ran back to find a ghost separated from the horde. It wasn’t attached to any kind of creature, its brain and tentacles spread out and exposed in all its horror.

Exposed and attacking Redgy, the riot shield man.

Its brain was hovering above Redgy's head while its nerve tendrils sunk into his face, neck, and back. They wormed their way into any orifice they could find, crawling under his skin in luminescent lines. Dominic hit the floating brain with the butt of his rifle, but the plastic stock just went straight through its cerebrum as if it was an illusion.

Leon pushed through the crowd and thrust his palm into the monster’s brain. Qi Burst was harder to use now that it wasn’t a registered skill, but with the thing slowly crawling into Redgy’s body, he had more than enough time to form the technique.

Its brain splattered into goo from the palm strike, the glowing body falling limp on top of Redgy. The tendrils were still inside his neck, but Marcus shoved his hands into the liquid and grabbed the brain so he could slowly pull it out.

The tendrils quivered and Marcus screamed. He fell back with his hands outstretched, smoke wafting off his skin. The shiny liquid was melting his hands. Olivia pulled out her drink bottle and tipped it out onto his hands, but the water didn’t rinse any of the liquid away.

Leon stepped forward and released a small gust of Qi over Marcus’ hands. His power came out as a gentle surge of mist, but unlike his expectations, the liquid absorbed his Qi and only became stronger. Marcus howled in renewed agony, the plumes of smoke growing thicker as they burned even more of his hands.

That was when Leon felt a pulse of something in the air. He couldn’t tell what it was, but he could feel that it was coming from Marcus. His friend’s aura saturation was over ninety the last time they checked. If he was close to awakening his spirit, it made sense that his distress could bridge the gap and allow him to awaken without a hundred points.

Leon only hoped that he was right.

“Breathe out and push Qi into your hands,” Leon shouted, standing over Marcus and grabbing his shoulder. “Look at me, Marcus. Look!”

His friend bared his teeth from the agony, his eyes wide as he stared up at Leon.

“Breathe. Take a deep breath and push, alright?”

Marcus let out a shuddering breath, and seconds later, a clear mist rose from his skin. The smoke began to die out as Qi rose out of his pores and forced the liquid off his hands. A few drops landed on the iron tracks, smoke rising up as they bore a hole into the metal.

Marcus’ hands were a patchwork of missing skin, his tendons and bones sticking out in places. His jaw was clenched shut as he trembled from the pain. Two doctors from the burn ward got to work. They applied bandages and ointment, but their voices were panicked as they whispered about fourth-degree burns.

They were apparently lethal, and if Marcus didn’t kill some demons and absorb their life essence, he may very well die.

Leaving his friend to be treated, Leon walked back over to Redgy.

He had tried to angle his Qi Burst towards the tunnel wall, and judging by the hole it had melted, that was a smart decision. No one else had been splashed by the glowing acid. Still, Redgy was understandably shaken. He yanked out the tendrils with shaking hands. Many had reached all the way down into his chest, the agony of pulling them free enough to make him loudly curse.

Once everyone calmed down, Dominic warned that he was about to fire his weapon. Leon put his earplugs in along with everyone else, and about ten seconds later, the man fired a shot at the brain lying on the ground. The bullet went straight through, the impact doing nothing but creating a ripple in its liquid flesh.

“Fuck! Is Qi really the only thing that’ll kill these bastards?”

“That looks to be the case,” Eric replied, his face pale.

“Hold on,” Leon said, looking at Redgy. “Where the hell did that one come from? I didn’t see any of them get past me?”

Redgy kicked the corpse puddle in a rage, the edge of his boot melting just a bit. “It rose out of the freaking ground. Phased through solid concrete and a metal track like it was nothing. Next thing I know…”

Redgy shuddered and started to curse again, so Leon turned to the others and began to work out a way to survive this. They tried infusing Qi into a bullet and seeing if that would kill a ghost, but the bullet either crumbled or the Qi drained out the second it stopped flowing in. Leon even tried to work around that by flooding the whole gun with his Qi, only to have it still do nothing.

Once they were out of ideas, decided to try out True Sight, his upgraded vision skill. He stared at the corpse as Qi flowed into his eyes, and to his surprise, a text box appeared above the creature's head.

[Depthstalker Phantom (Common)]

Phantasmal beings. They haunt the dark corners of many worlds and kill any unsuspecting prey that fails to outrun them.