Half an hour had passed since Ayren woke up, his head seemed to be frying at that moment.
"Tsk, damn it, I thought I had already felt everything there was to feel about the new eyes, but this won't do."
After he woke up, he thought maybe his brain would slowly get used to it. And because of that, he even found things interesting. Looking at the house and noticing details that didn't exist for him before.
The trail of dust on everything, a spot on the wall where it formed a pattern resembling an ugly face. The micro cuts on his own nails. Cuts on his skin, where he didn't even remember hitting or injuring himself.
But everything was too much, literally too much information.
Seeing so much started to hurt again. But it wasn't his eyes, the problem was his head, his mind, his brain.
His body sometimes trembled, the information came all at once, from all sides, without any filter. Even closing them to calm down didn't help, it wasn't his eyes, they were fine. The problem was bigger.
"Damn it, looks like seeing is one thing, but processing is another."
He sat on the mattress again after grabbing a can of soda and putting it on his forehead, it was the only cold thing he could find.
"This pain… it's not strong, but it's scary, it's subtle. It stays at the back of the head and sometimes climbs like an electric current. As if it's going to explode at any moment. Tsk, this is driving me crazy, fuck."
Ayren was rambling to himself, clenching his fists.
"Damn it, I need somehow, some way to make my brain keep up with my new vision, whatever it is, eagle eyes or something even better…"
"Obviously, I just need a better brain, yes, the ads. There's definitely going to be something like that, I just have to search!" Ayren tried to set the pain aside while getting excited by the idea.
He grabbed the laptop, his hands were trembling slightly due to the constant pain. But it was bearable for now.
He searched for how to improve brain capacity, intelligence, amount of information, and anything like that.
He entered the most absurd sites he found with lots and lots of strange theories. Soon, ads began to appear.
After fifteen minutes, the pain was making him agonized again, increasing with every second he looked at the screen. His focus was sometimes lost because of some insect in his peripheral vision or anything else that caught his attention. His field of vision at the moment was no good.
Then it finally appeared, he knew that was what he needed.
[STOP using only 10% of your brain. Do this and unlock your brain capacity!!]
Without thinking about anything, without hesitation, Ayren immediately clicked. The ad led to another page with a text explaining how this thing about using 10% of the brain was a myth but saying how you could really improve your memory capacity or similar things. But Ayren didn't care if it was fake.
He now knew that if the ad promised it, if he finished reading it, it would become reality anyway. And after five minutes of text and more text, finally the last word, he was already bracing himself for the pain…
But, unexpectedly, Ayren didn't feel the pain coming, didn't feel an impact in his body. Not even a shock or needles. Actually, it was as if he had been hit by a cold breeze.
Something fresh ran through his entire body until it concentrated in his head. As if he had stuck his whole head into a frozen lake. It was cold and pure, as if it were washing everything that was clogged in every corner of his head.
The pain disappeared. His thoughts calmed down. The weight of the information vanished, as if some instinctive filter had been switched on.
His eyes opened completely.
This time, it was perfect.
Ayren understood, without needing an explanation, he understood how to control it. In an instant, he saw as he used to, in another, his focus completely changed. An extreme zoom, the range, the distance. He could and knew exactly how to control how far he wanted to see.
It was like a new limb or muscle he always had but only now learned how to use.
He stepped out onto the balcony, the moonlight lit up his neighborhood far from the city center. He wanted to, and so he saw the ant crossing the street four floors below. He could count how many hairs were on his arm if he wanted. But if not, his brain understood.
He went back inside and wanted to fully test the change. Reading random texts, he felt as if the words made better sense in his head. He could see the entire sentence even before reading. His memory also had a huge qualitative shift. Things he saw years ago came to mind like little flashes.
Faces from childhood to now appeared, faces he didn't know his brain had stored, clear as if they were perfect photos that had always been there, just hidden by something.
But overall, Ayren didn't feel like he had changed. No, he was still the same Ayren.
His thoughts, ideas, and nothing had changed. But he felt the gears now turned perfectly without struggle.
Ayren stood still for a while. Sitting on the floor, just existing.
After a few minutes, he thought about all the recent events.
"All the ads will now become my truth. So, literally anything can happen. I have to think more carefully now about the consequences."
"This time, I really could have died. I wouldn't have cared before, but now… There's too much here to discover, to feel, and to see how far this can go."
The pain he felt left him desperate at the time, but at the same time… curious.
Ayren didn't want to lose this. This feeling of finally having something no one else had.
"I can't lose this, no way. This way, I can easily become the richest person in the world. The strongest human being, someone with powers no one would ever imagine." Ayren said as various feelings flooded his mind.
"Maybe I'll become something more. Yes, maybe a God…" His breathing and heartbeat increased while thoughts he still didn't consider dangerous began to emerge in droves.
"Maybe a Demon?"
At that moment, something deep within his existence seemed to ignite. It was small, like a spark, almost imperceptible at the center of his soul. Ayren felt as if he had recognized that desire as true.
"Yes! I can't die, no way. I need to see how far I want to go, how far I can go." Ayren clenched his hands as he stood up, he wouldn't be able to sleep that night, much less have the will to. Calmly, he left his apartment and went down the stairs.
But before he could walk far, he went back upstairs to his home.
"What a horrible appearance, I'm probably dirtier than some homeless people. I haven't showered in a few days, the clothes are too short, torn, and dirty. My hair, don't even mention it. Yeah, maybe I really would've died this time if all this hadn't happened suddenly."
Ayren, who was going out to spend some money after realizing it would soon be morning, decided to go back home. The reason was that, as soon as he stepped out, he saw his reflection in a window of a house across the street. He saw with more detail than he wanted and felt a slight disgust from the accumulated dirt on him.
"But… I don't even have water, how am I supposed to shower? Hmm, I'll see if I can shower at Seris' place. She probably still has water."
"Compared to me, whose money only lasted until now, Seris still has a few years left, since she had triple compared to me."
"Actually, if it weren't for her sharing noodles with me, I would've died a long time ago, right? No… if it weren't for our bet, I wouldn't have been here for a long time. I have to thank her somehow. Since if it weren't for that. I wouldn't be witnessing these things, right?" Ayren spoke to himself in a low voice while climbing the floors of his building until he reached his neighbor's door.
But as soon as he got there, he noticed something was strange.
On the floor, there were drops of blood, actually, they were tiny, and no one would notice. But for Ayren with his new vision, it was obvious.
A slight worry hit him as, without thinking much, he knocked on Seris' door.
"Seris, are you home?"
Ayren knocked several times, asking if she was okay, if she was awake, but the answer never came.
"Shit, something really happened, it's impossible she's not home. She never went out like me, especially at this hour… And her sleep is completely light every time she wakes up at the first touch." Ayren's worry increased. Seris was the only thing he still cared about before the ads. Definitely, if something happened to her, it would bother him.
He then tried to open the door, but it was obviously locked.
"Should I break in? No, not yet." Ayren then thought of something.
He ran to his apartment and came back to Seris' door within minutes, grabbed some old paper clips from his room, and knew what to do.
His eyes focused on the door lock, the zoom and increased sharpness made Ayren see completely inside. Without much effort, the clip unlocked the door.
"These eyes are really going to be useful for a lot of things, I imagine." Ayren was happy with the result, but only for a second. As soon as the door fully opened, he saw many, many bloodstains on the floor.
They were tiny but increased until reaching Seris' bedroom door where they became large enough for anyone to see the drops.
"Seris!!" Ayren ran to the room, opening it all at once. And as soon as he entered, a horrible smell filled his nostrils. But stranger than that…
"What the hell happened here?!?"
Seris' room was completely shut, the walls painted red. There was nothing in the room except a large cushion in the center. Around the cushion, many, many pentagrams and symbols of different types were written on the floor.
In the center of the room, lying on the cushion, was Seris motionless, blood coming from her mouth, but Ayren immediately saw that she was still alive. He could see her chest heaving slightly from breathing.
He ran to her body and tried to wake her but couldn't in any way. Without thinking much, he grabbed his cellphone and called emergency services.
"I need an ambulance. My neighbor passed out at home…" Ayren told what happened, and quickly the call ended.
"You really thought you'd lose this time, I imagine, right, Seris? But I'm not going to let you die easily."
'Just like you didn't let me before…' Ayren thought as he gently held her hand.
"But seriously. What the hell were you trying to do here, huh, Seris?"
He wondered, looking at the countless pentagrams and symbols, they didn't make sense. They seemed to have been made on different days, it was as if…
"As if you had tried to summon thousands of different demons at the same time."