Leon sat near a rough stone outcropping, his back pressed against the cold tunnel wall as he stretched his legs in front of him. His fingers absentmindedly traced the uneven ground while his mind drifted, replaying the events of the last week in this godforsaken cavern, and now tunnels. It had been exactly seven days since their world had turned upside down.


    He let out a quiet sigh, watching the dim glow of the blue fungi that had taken root along the walls. The light flickered faintly, casting eerie shadows over the tunnel floor where the seventy, or so survivors who had stayed behind moved about. Each caught in their own struggles. Some were talking in hushed voices, and not so small amount just sat in exhaustion, worry, and mourning. Many were lost in thought.


    Leon adjusted his position, rolling his shoulders. The first two days had been the worst. After the initial panic and the setting up of a watch rotation to keep guard against whatever was lurking in the tunnels. Some people had simply decided to leave.


    Leon had watched them go, groups of survivors convinced this was some elaborate prank, an underground military experiment, or something even crazier. They had stormed off into the tunnels, insisting that there had to be an exit nearby.


    Ethan tried his best to stop them and convince them we needed to stay together. But people had made up their minds. In the end, their original group of two hundred had been cut down to seventy. The rest split off, vanishing into the darkness of the tunnels.


    At first, those who remained had waited. They waited for the groups who left to return with good news. But after a full day of sitting in the cavern, surviving off their rapidly dwindling water bottles and whatever snacks people had on them when they arrived, it became painfully clear—no one was coming back. It had been Ethan who finally said what everyone was too scared to admit.


    “We can’t sit here and wait for them,” he had said, his voice carrying across the cavern, silencing the nervous murmurs. “They either found a way out, forgot about us, or they got lost. Either way, we’re out of food. If we stay here much longer we will starve” Just like that the atmosphere changed. And not for the better.


    More people had started complaining about seeing things, and that it wasn''t safe. The things they said they saw weren’t completely hallucinations, but the shadows in the tunnels played tricks on most of them, and fear made every flicker of movement feel like something watching from the dark. People began whispering that maybe help wasn’t too far off. Maybe rescue was coming.


    Ethan had shut that down fast, like every time prior. “We don’t know when, or if, help is coming,” he had said, standing tall in front of the group. His voice had been steady, calm but firm.


    Leon knew that Ethan believed help would never arrive, and he agreed. The two of them had talked about the system and tried to make sense of it. But in the end, they didn’t have any answers. And even if they had a bleak sight of things, both knew better than to tell that to the rest of the group.


    So instead, he had told them what they needed to hear.


    “If we want to survive and check up on our loved ones, we have to help ourselves first,” Ethan had said. The argument that followed was ungodly. Leon had never seen people argue about basic survival before. But dear God, in his opinion people were being impossibly difficult. There were too many opinions, fear, and uncertainty all around. In the end, they decided to leave the cavern they appeared in.


    It had been chaos at first, but one tunnel was chosen, one of the same two tunnels the first groups had taken. No one knew what had happened to those who left before them. But they had to take a chance, and some argued that it was better to follow in the previous group''s footsteps. And so, they walked.


    The further they traveled, the more the tunnel changed. Leon had been one of the first to notice the fungal growth that had started to appear. Strange, blue mushrooms lined the walls, casting a ghostly luminescence over the previous dark path ahead. They pulsed faintly, their light ebbing and flowing like breath.


    Then, the man wearing a business suit collapsed. It happened suddenly at one moment he was walking behind Ethan, then the next he let out a strangled gasp and crashed to the ground, convulsing. Those around him scrambled away in panic, their collective fear making them hesitate.


    Ethan had reacted first, kneeling beside him on the ground, and quickly laying him in a stable lateral position. “What happened?” he demanded.


    A man wearing cargo pants, someone Leon hadn’t spoken to, stepped forward hesitantly. “I think...I know... Him and I were talking earlier, his name is Jack by the way... And while we were talking he said he was very hungry,” the man said grimly. “He picked one of those mushrooms on the wall.... and well ate it.”


    Leon’s stomach twisted. Shit.


    "Fuck. Is there a doctor?” Ethan called out, scanning the group. There was a long pause. Then, to everyone’s surprise, the elderly woman from the subway, the same one Leon saw knitting, stepped forward. She hadn’t said much this entire time. In fact, she had been eerily quiet throughout everything. Except when Ethen had checked up on her on the second day, and she said she was doing fine. But now, she moved with purpose, kneeling beside Jack’s convulsing body.


    Leon exchanged a glance with Ethan, but neither spoke. The old woman checked Jack’s pulse and then quickly placed both hands over his stomach. A faint green glow pulsed beneath her fingertips. The tunnel fell deathly silent. Someone behind Leon muttered a prayer.


    Just as quickly as it had appeared, the glow faded away. The old woman wobbled, her body swaying, but Ethan caught her before she could collapse. Then Jack''s body stopped convulsing.


    “What… what the hell was that?” Ethan asked, his voice unsteady in wonder. The old woman exhaled slowly. “I don''t really know, I used to study to be a nurse,” she admitted. “When this all started, that''s where my mind went, I tried to think of logical reasons for what was happening. A mass hallucination. An illegal government drug experiment. Some kind of gas leak.” She sighed. “But two nights ago, I felt something. And then… I got a notification saying I had acquired Basic Healing.”


    Leon had blinked at her in shock. The next few minutes had been chaos. Half the group refused to believe her. Magic wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real they said.


    The other half? They wanted answers. Some had watched too many Harry Potter movies and were asking her ridiculous questions. Leon had firmly placed himself in the second group. If magic was real… then he had to try it for himself, after all, he had three points in Mana manipulation.


    One and a half Hours later, after another rest stop in the tunnels, where the same type of glowing crystals from the cavern reappeared embedded in the walls, bathing the space in an otherworldly light, Leon had found a quiet spot and sat down. He closed his eyes.


    The old woman, Ann as she was called, had said to focus on something, like she had done with medicine. And to try to find a strange feeling inside their bodies, she didn''t know more than that. Leon thought about what he was familiar with, and that was glass. About how fire shaped it. How temperature control made it malleable but stable.


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    Then, suddenly, he felt it. It was a soft, subtle energy flowing through his body, warm and alive. His breath caught as it spread throughout his entire being. He focused harder on the image. A small flame flickered to life in his palm. Leon panicked. His immediate reaction was to shake his hand back and forth to try to put the fire out. Instead, the flame flew from his hand and smashed against the cavern wall, sending sparks flying and dislodging small loose stones. This was followed by a chime ringing in his head.


    [ Skill Acquired: Fireball. ]


    Form a small fireball. Damage is based on the amount of mana infused.


    Leon stared at his hands. What. The. Hell. Around him, the entire group had turned to stare at him. Ethan, his eyes wide, had said the only thing that made sense. “What just happened?”


    Leon just stared at his hands. His fingers twitched as if expecting the fire to return. I just cast a spell. The thought was absurd. Magic wasn’t real—it shouldn’t be real. And yet here he was, standing in the middle of a glowing underground tunnel, his palm still warm from the fireball he had hurled into the wall. The silence stretched.


    Ethan’s stunned gaze flicked between Leon and the scorch mark left behind. His jaw tensed, and he exhaled sharply. “You’re telling me that you—” he gestured toward Leon, “just… threw fire?” Leon swallowed, his mind still struggling to process it. “Yeah,” he finally muttered. “I guess I did.” That was all it took.


    The group exploded into chaos. People backed away, whispering among themselves. Some looked at Leon like he was some infernal demon. Others? Their eyes burned with curiosity and hope. A younger guy, maybe in his early twenties, let out a nervous laugh. “No. No, this isn’t real. It’s some hidden trick. You know things street magicians do”


    “Then explain the glowing hands!” someone shot back. Leon sighed, rubbing his forehead. He had seen this before. Not the magic part, that was still new, but the way people reacted when their understanding of the world was shattered. The human mind did not handle the impossible well, there was such a thing as existential dread after all. It was the same when his grandma was shown one of those videos on how big stellar objects could get, by comparing their sizes.


    Ethan, on the other hand, was still staring at him, his expression unreadable. “So now there are two wizards” Ethan eventually said, nodding toward the old woman.


    That shifted the attention. The old woman, who had healed Jack, stood calmly despite the dozens of eyes now pinned on her. She exhaled slowly, glancing at Ethan. That was the final confirmation.


    People started trying it themselves even harder. The first person to succeed was the woman with the dog. She stretched out her hands, eyes squeezed shut, mumbling something under her breath. For a few tense moments, nothing happened. Then, in the space just above her open palm, a thin spike of ice formed, floating in the air.


    A gasp rippled through the group. She yelped in shock, flinching back. The moment her focus broke, the ice shattered into pieces dropping to the cavern floor in a fine mist. And then, it happened again. This time it was the homeless man, the same guy who had been laughing at their predicament since day one, he lifted his hand, and a nearby rock levitated off the ground. It hovered awkwardly trembling in the air as if uncertain whether it wanted to stay or fall. Leon swallowed. That’s… dangerous.


    “Alright,” Ethan clapped his hands together, loudly. “Enough experimenting for now!” His tone had the weight of command, and people froze.


    Leon didn’t blame him for cutting things short. A bunch of untrained, panicked people suddenly wielding elemental magic? That was a recipe for disaster. For example, someone could end up throwing a fireball in a space full of people in panic.....


    The group slowly settled, the tension still thick in the air. Leon could see it—the gears turning in their heads, the realization settling in. They weren''t thinking of just survival anymore. This was something else entirely. What kind of person didn''t want superpowers? This was like Oprah saying, you get magic, and you get magic and everybody gets magic!! People were tempted to take this opportunity.


    Not everyone had unlocked that kind of magic though. Some developed skills that were far less flashy. A woman in what looked like her late thirties, a mathematician by trade, unlocked a skill called “Efficient Calculation.” It let her solve complex equations faster. Not the most useful in a cave, but still.


    Another man, a butcher from Brooklyn, received “Butcher’s Eyes.”


    [ Skill Acquired: Butcher’s Eyes ]


    Allows the user to analyze an animal or creature and determine whether its meat is safe for consumption.


    That skill had come in handy sooner than expected. Because not long after, they found food. Or rather… they found something that could be food.


    The tunnels stretched on for hours. The air had grown staler, and their water supply was running dangerously low. Then they saw it. A small lizard-like creature, its scales blending into the dark rock, its eyes glowing faintly in the dim light. More importantly, it wasn’t alone.


    Leon counted at least a dozen. They clung to the cavern walls, hiding in crevices and cracks, their small, sharp claws scraping against stone. The group hesitated. No one wanted to make the first move.


    Then Ethan turned to Leon. “You think you could do the fire thing again, this might be edible and could be a source of food in these tunnels,” he said. Leon readied himself. He lifted his hand, swallowing his nerves, and focused. Fireball, he thought in his mind.


    The warmth flared to life in his palm, familiar now but still foreign. He pulled his arm back and threw it with all his might. The fireball sailed through the air, crashing close to a cluster of lizards. One of them let out a shrill screech, writhing as flames consumed it. Immediately the others scattered. “Get them!” Ethan barked.


    A wave of energy surged through the group. The homeless man hurled stones with his newfound telekinesis. The girl with the dog fired off jagged icicles. The rest? They swung wildly with whatever makeshift weapons they had including rocks, crystals, and even belts. It was clumsy and messy. But they won!! No matter how insignificant of a victory it was. When it was over, they had six dead lizards.


    That left one problem: Were they edible? The butcher stepped forward, his eyes narrowing as he activated his skill. After a long moment, he nodded. “Well, according to the thing it says they are safe to eat.” After having evidence in your face, in the form of magic, it was hard not to trust, and having no choice being empty of food and all. They had to take what the butcher said at face value.


    They cooked the first real meal since arriving in the tunnels on Leon''s fire. Many refused, stating it was gross to eat lizards, one man even coming with some racist remark, getting looks in return. But hunger won eventually.


    Food was one thing. Water? That was the real issue. Just like food, they had close to nothing left. And that''s even when Ethen had convinced people to take the smallest amount to make it last. It was then that the man in cargo pants stepped forward. “I… I might be able to help,” he said, rubbing his hands together.


    Leon watched as he took a deep breath and focused. Then water formed over his palm. A tiny droplet at first. Then more, until a small orb of liquid hovered in the air. Someone whispered in awe. But it was not nearly enough.


    After distributing just one and a half water bottle’s worth to the group, the man staggered, looking sick. “Shit,” Ethan muttered, catching him before he collapsed.


    Leon looked on. So they had a way to make water, but not too much at once. That meant they had to continue taking small sips between everyone. Eventually, they would need a real water source, or more people capable of making water. What a weird thing to think...


    It was also not long after this that Ethan discovered his own ability, or skill as they were called.


    [ Skill Acquired: Body Reinforcement ]


    Allows the user to temporarily enhance and reinforce their body. Duration depends on the amount of stamina available.


    But the cost was steep. The moment the effect faded, Ethan would be left physically drained. Leon had seen him test the skill. Not only did it make Ethan''s body move faster, but it also made it stronger, a bit tougher than before, and his mind sharper. But after just a few minutes, Ethan had to sit down, his breath ragged. Still, it was another weapon in their arsenal.


    Leon sighed, rubbing his temples. “And that brings us here,” he muttered.


    The past week had been chaos. But they had survived, and found some semblance of order, at least for now. Leon looked at the system message that everyone else was looking at, at least the ones that hadn''t broken down completely. The one after the system had said only 15% of humanity was left.


    [ New Quest: Slay the Lizard Matron. ]


    A Lizard Matron Hibernates somewhere in this tunnel system. Resting after producing more offspring.


    Objective- Find and eliminate her and her children. Reward: Settlement.


    Leon’s breath caught. Settlement? Then he heard Ethan curse under his breath.