We retreated into the tunnel, moving faster than was strictly safe. Behind us, the chittering grew louder, accompanied by tearing sounds as creatures emerged from their cocoons.
"Next passage," Thorne directed when we reached the central chamber again. "We try a different approach."
"Are you insane?" I demanded. "After what we just saw?"
"That's why we came here," he replied, his eyes fever bright. "For discoveries like that. The crystal in that chamber was massive, worth a fortune if we can extract even a portion."
"Did you miss the part with people being turned into insect monsters?" I asked incredulously.
Kira grunted in agreement. "For once, the canary is right. That's beyond our capabilities."
Thorne's face hardened. "We're not leaving until we get what we came for. The Labyrinth changes. We find another path, another crystal formation, preferably one without a nest of whatever those things were."
This was the problem with desperate people; they made terrible risk assessments. I'd seen it before in other doomed expeditions. Once someone was committed to a course of action, especially one driven by desperation, they became virtually immune to reason.
Under normal circumstances, I'd be calculating my exit strategy right now. But I couldn't ignore the fact that danger meant points. If my companions died here and I somehow survived, the receipt would appear again. And after what I'd just witnessed, a substantial crystal chamber with transformed human-insect guardians would almost certainly yield more deaths than a simple kobold warren.
More deaths meant more points. More points meant better items, skills, advantages.
Was I really considering this? Staying in this nightmare labyrinth on the chance of profiting from my companions' gruesome demise?
Yes. Yes, I was.
"Fine," I said finally. "One more path. But we set a firm exit condition. If we find another situation like that, we leave. No arguments."
Dain nodded vigorously. "Agreed. I'm not ending up in one of those cocoons."
Even Kira looked relieved at the suggestion of a defined abort point.
Thorne hesitated, then nodded reluctantly. "One more serious attempt. If it's too dangerous, we retreat and try another day."
We checked Dain's resonance device again and selected a new passage — one showing moderate crystal presence but no signs of the intense activity we'd detected in the insect chamber.
Following the same careful procedure to avoid the pressure plates, we made our way to the chosen tunnel. This one didn't descend but instead proceeded more or less horizontally, curving gently to the right.
After about thirty paces, I noticed something odd. My trap detection skill was highlighting hidden mechanisms in the walls, but not in the consistent pattern I'd expect from intentional traps. These were more random, more... organic.
"Hold up," I said, keeping my voice low. "Something's different about this passage."
Dain paused, examining the wall with his tools. "The material composition is changing. More organic compounds mixed with the mineral structure."
"What does that mean?" Kira asked, grip tightening on her hammer.
"It means," Thorne said slowly, "that we're moving into a section of the Labyrinth that's more alive than the rest."
As if in response to his words, the passage contracted around us—not dramatically, but enough to be noticeable. The walls pulsed, the red veins throbbing more rapidly.
"Did the tunnel just... breathe?" I asked, trying to keep the panic from my voice.
No one answered. We all knew what we'd seen.
Thorne swallowed visibly. "Keep moving. Carefully."
We proceeded more slowly now, everyone hyper-alert. The passage continued to curve rightward, eventually completing what felt like a full circle. The floor began to slope downward again, the descent becoming steeper with each step.
"We're going much deeper than before," Dain noted, checking one of his devices. "Almost twice the depth of our previous expeditions."
That should have been our cue to turn back. Instead, Thorne picked up the pace slightly, the prospector's gleam in his eyes overwhelming caution. "Deeper means fewer visitors. Fewer visitors means more untouched crystal."
The passage finally opened into another chamber, this one smaller than the previous two but with a much higher ceiling that disappeared into darkness above us. The walls were covered with a wet, glistening substance that reflected our light sources with an iridescent sheen.
And there, growing from the center of the floor like a twisted tree, was another crystal formation. This one was smaller than the one in the insect chamber but still impressive, perhaps ten feet tall, branching into dozens of crimson tendrils that reached upward toward the unseen ceiling.
"Perfect," Thorne breathed, already pulling extraction tools from his pouch. "Small enough to work with, large enough to be valuable. No obvious guardians."
My trap detection skill was practically screaming now, highlighting not specific mechanisms but the entire chamber as a danger zone. Something was wrong, fundamentally wrong, but I couldn't identify a specific threat.
"I don't like this," I said, staying at the chamber entrance while the others moved cautiously forward. "Something doesn't feel right."
"Of course it doesn't feel right," Kira muttered. "It's a living dungeon with people-eating bug monsters. Nothing about this place feels right."
Dain had already reached the crystal formation and was examining it with a specialized tool—a thin metal rod with a crystal of its own at the tip, presumably for safe extraction of fragments.
"The structure is sound," he reported. "Cleaner than the specimens we found last time. No visible contaminants."