A low but growing hiss filled the tunnel. Min visibly paled. "The females," he pointed toward the entrance of the tunnel, where dozens of shadow stalkers were beginning to stir. "We’ve woken them up." The effect was instantaneous. The first of the females launched herself toward them, tentacles extended and pulsing with absorption hunger, the air around them seeming to distort with her approach. Lin reacted without hesitation. With a fluid movement, she leaped over the creature, spinning in the air to deliver a brutal kick to the center of its mass, carefully avoiding any contact with the tentacles. "Shizu! Taro!" she shouted as she landed. "We need a wall! Now!" Shizu stamped her foot against the ground, her earth wolverine manifesting. The tunnel began to change as enormous stone blocks emerged from its walls and floor, the sound of grinding stone filling the air. Taro joined his efforts, his living tunnel working to solidify and structure the emerging barrier. The wall began to take shape, but too slowly, more shadow stalkers were approaching, their tentacles reaching hungrily toward the group. "We’re going to need help!" Taro shouted, sweat beading on his forehead. Larissa stepped forward without hesitation. Her mineral crystals shone intensely as they joined the structure, reinforcing the weak points and accelerating the construction process. "It’s not enough!" Lin warned, eliminating another shadow stalker with a kick, her foot striking with precise force. "Keep them back while the wall completes!" Trent stepped forward, his fire ant manifesting, heat radiating from his skin in visible waves. "Back!" he warned before a fireball erupted from his hands, illuminating the entire tunnel with an orange glow that cast bizarre, dancing shadows on the walls. The heat explosion and small oxygen pressure change pushed the shadow stalkers several meters back, buying precious time for the wall’s construction. The air shimmered from the thermal disturbance, making the approaching creatures appear to waver like mirages. One guard’s firefly and another guard’s coral joined the effort as more and more blocks were added to the barrier, their energy signatures adding strength to the growing wall. The wall finally closed, sealing the tunnel with a definitive sound just as the large wave of shadow stalkers was about to reach them. The final stone slid into place with a heavy, resonant thud that seemed to echo with finality. For a few seconds, no one spoke. The only sound was that of heavy breathing and the occasional muffled impact from the other side of the wall, where the enraged shadow stalkers tried to penetrate the barrier, their attacks creating tiny vibrations that ran through the stone. "It will hold for a while thanks to Taro’s living tunnel," Shizu finally stated, leaning against the wall to catch her breath, her palms flat against the cool surface. "Good," Lin nodded, her expression grave. "Because now we have two problems. Two students are trapped somewhere far below us, and with this tunnel blocked, we’ll have to find another exit to reach Zhao." "And night will fall soon," added one of the guards, glancing toward the tunnel’s entrance. "The shadow stalkers won’t stop after dark." 𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞 The group exchanged somber looks, the reality of their situation settling heavily. With darkness approaching, perhaps they wouldn’t be able to rescue their companions lost in the depths anytime soon. "What do we do now?" asked Liora, her voice small in the silence that had fallen over them. Lin looked toward the wall they had built, then toward the opposite direction of the tunnel where more sounds started to come closer, her mind rapidly calculating their options. "First, we need to close that side to… Second, we make a group to reach Zhao," she responded. "Third, another group to find our lost ones." ♢♢♢♢ Ren increased his mushrooms’ brightness, illuminating the chamber into which they had fallen more broadly. The room was approximately circular, with four tunnels extending in different directions like fingers of a monstrous hand. But what immediately caught his attention wasn’t the structure, but its contents. Corpses. Dozens of them, in various states of decomposition. Some appeared relatively fresh, while others were reduced to little more than bones and carapace fragments. All showed signs of having been partially devoured, limbs torn away and torsos hollowed out. "What... what is this place?" Han whispered, his spider partially manifesting as an instinctive response to the perceived danger, silvery threads appearing between his fingers. "A storeroom," Ren responded, his mind working at full speed while analyzing the remains. "Something is using this chamber to store food." There were numerous half-eaten female shadow stalker bodies, but he cautiously approached one of the more complete cadavers. It was a medium-sized worm, its segmented body now flaccid and partially emptied. Next to it lay the remains of what appeared to be a Stone Lurker, its once hard rocky skin shattered. "This doesn’t make sense," Ren murmured, systematically observing the other bodies. "At this depth we should mainly find Worms, Stone Lurkers, Giant Moles, and small Mimic insects. Nothing capable of creating tunnels this size..." His eyes stopped on a particularly large cadaver. Despite being partially consumed, it was unmistakable. "A male shadow stalker," he identified, his voice barely audible. Worried, Ren crouched to feel the ground for vibrations, but the layer covering the tunnel seemed to cancel any external sensation, they were isolated in the chamber, cut off from the world. Han had approached to examine the chamber walls as well. "These crystals..." he began, running his fingers over the surface. "They’re not natural formations." Ren moved closer to the wall to examine it more carefully. The surface was covered by a layer of translucent crystals that reflected his mushrooms’ light, creating an eerie, shifting pattern as he moved. "It’s some type of coating," he explained while studying the structure. "Similar to what living tunnels or giant scavenger wasp larvae produce. But none of those creatures belong to this area." "The trap we fell through isn’t from any of those...?" Han left the question hanging, his voice tight with apprehension. "Mimic insects are known for their illusions," Ren explained, "but they use them to hide, not to set traps, and their effects aren’t permanent nor can they be reflected in crystals like the ones we saw above. This is... something else." His gaze methodically moved around the chamber, studying each detail with scientific attention, his mushrooms pulsing in complex patterns, as if performing invisible calculations. "Whatever created this place," he finally concluded, "is collecting creatures from different depths for some weird reason other than feeding… or going up would make no sense." Ren looked at the fallen backpacks, filled with valuable skins they had collected during their last incursion. In any other circumstance, abandoning them would have been unthinkable. But now... "We can’t take them," he decided, pointing to the backpacks. "They’re too heavy and would slow us down." "Slow us down for what? ¿We won’t wait to be rescued?" Han asked, though his expression already anticipated the answer. "To escape," Ren headed toward one of the walls, examining it carefully. "This chamber is something’s pantry, Han. And whatever stores food here will eventually return." "Couldn’t we hide in one of these tunnels?" Han pointed to the four exits extending from the chamber, each mouth a dark promise of unknown dangers. "We don’t know where they lead," Ren shook his head. "And given the creatures that have ended up here, they likely lead to more traps like the one that caught us." His hand stopped at a specific point on the wall, where the crystals seemed slightly thinner. "We need to create our own path," he declared. "Break through this wall and dig upward as quickly as possible." "Dig?" Han looked skeptical. "We’re like three hundred meters deep. Other creatures will also feel the vibrations and even that thing may follow our tunnel..." "We don’t need to reach the surface from here," Ren explained, beginning to systematically strike the point he had identified with a diamond covered fist. "We just need to get out of this specific area and find some natural tunnel before the owner of this... collection returns."