"Hold position," Alexander commanded, raising his hand as the gleam of something unusual caught his eye. The team had been navigating a retively stable section of tunnel adjacent to the still-unsolved Rooted Maze, taking a much-needed break from the constantly shifting passages that had been giving them headaches for days.

  He approached the tunnel wall, wiping away some wet dirt to uncover a strange crystal formation growing right out of the roots. The crystal glowed faintly from within, creating little rainbow patterns as it caught the blue light from the mushrooms nearby.

  "Whoa, check this out," he said, leaning in for a closer look but not touching it. "Haven't seen anything like this back in the forest."

  Riva came over, quickly pulling up her analysis screen with a flick of her fingers. "That's weird," she said as numbers and charts appeared in front of her. "This thing's packed with energy. Has some rare elements and... huh, something that's not even in our database."

  "We've been so busy trying to figure out that maze that we totally missed all this good stuff," Alexander said, shaking his head. "Looks like Floor 2 isn't just puzzles and predators—it's got resources we can actually use."

  Valeria swiped through her map, bringing up glowing highlights of simir formations they'd walked right past. "There's more of these all over the pce," she said, pointing at the dispy. "Mostly in the older, thicker roots that don't move around much."

  Alexander nodded. "Okay, new pn. We'll keep working on solving the maze, but let's also gather some of these materials whenever we can. Could seriously upgrade our gear."

  He pulled up his interface with a quick gesture, creating a new task list. "Let's be smart about this. First we find and mark everything, then we carefully take the best stuff."

  Riva knelt down to get a better look at the crystal without touching it. "We can't just hack these out with regur tools," she said, frowning. "See how they're structured? They'd just break into pieces."

  She quickly opened her crafting menu with a practiced gesture, fingers moving through glowing icons as she designed new tools. "I can make some special extractors for these. Stuff that won't vibrate, won't change temperature, and spreads out the pressure when we pull."

  While Riva got busy crafting, Elijah wandered over to some strange pnts growing next to the crystals. Unlike the mushrooms that were everywhere in the tunnels, these were actual flowering pnts with see-through stems and tiny, colorful blooms. As he leaned in closer, the flowers seemed to turn toward his hands like they knew he was there.

  "That's weird," he said softly, carefully taking a sample and adding it to his inventory. "These pnts shouldn't even be alive down here. There's no sunlight for them."

  He tapped his interface to scan the pnt, watching as its internal structure appeared on his dispy. "Huh. They're not using light at all. They're somehow feeding off these crystals instead."

  Alexander nodded thoughtfully. "Cross-reference with our ecosystem documentation. Are there other symbiotic retionships we've missed?"

  The team spread out within the secure tunnel section, each focusing on different resource identification tasks while maintaining security protocols. Their systematic survey quickly revealed that Floor 2 contained a wealth of unique resources they had been passing by during their maze navigation efforts.

  Valeria sorted everything they found into categories in her inventory, typing bels and notes as she worked:

  "Okay, I've got it organized," she said, turning her dispy so they could all see. "Three main groups:

  Crystals:

  Glowing energy crystals (really want these)Super-strong reinforcement crystals (pretty useful)Weird humming crystals (not sure what they do yet)Pnts:

  Flowers that live off crystals (healing stuff)Special fungi that concentrate compounds (might be useful)Responsive mosses (react to environment changes)Organic Materials:

  Sticky root goop (good for binding things)Fungus slime (seems to enhance properties of other materials)Mixed mineral-organic stuff (multiple applications)"By lunchtime, Riva had finished making her specialized tools and started carefully extracting crystal samples. It was delicate work—one wrong move and the crystals would just shatter into useless pieces.

  "These are definitely not just shiny rocks," she said, holding up a brightly colored crystal she'd just removed. "Look, it's still pulsing with the same rhythm as when it was in the wall."

  Meanwhile, Alexander was checking out some different mineral deposits. "These needle-shaped crystals could make our weapons and armor way stronger," he said, carefully adding a cluster to his inventory after extracting them from the wall.

  But the coolest stuff came from Elijah's pnt discoveries. These weren't just pnts growing near crystals—they were actually using the crystal energy and turning it into something else.

  "Check this out," he said, pulling a white pnt with blue flowers from his sample pouch. "This one makes a compound that speeds up your brain. And this little guy," he pointed to a small pnt with spiral leaves, "makes a pain reliever that works better than anything in our med kits."

  Alexander leaned in for a closer look. "Can we grow more of these? Or do they only work in these specific spots?"

  "That's what I want to find out," Elijah said. He set up a small garden area in a safe corner of their camp, carefully moving selected pnts with their surrounding dirt and tiny organisms into his makeshift nursery.

  As he worked, he started noticing something weird—the pnts seemed to react to him specifically. When he talked to them quietly (something he'd always done when working with pnts), they actually moved, their leaves and stems shifting position like they were listening to him.

  What made him uncomfortable was realizing that Valeria had noticed too. She kept her usual poker face, but he caught her watching him work with the pnts several times. Sometimes she'd quickly make notes in her private interface screen when she thought he wasn't looking.

  The subtle scrutiny made him increasingly self-conscious. He began to minimize his more intuitive interactions with the pnts when others were present, saving his experimental communication attempts for moments of privacy.

  While they kept working on solving the Rooted Maze during most days, they used their rest times to gather these resources, and it really paid off. Riva figured out how to add the crystal pieces to their gear, making everything work better than the standard Game equipment.

  "Look what happens when you put these energy crystals near your interface," she showed them, attaching a carefully cut crystal fragment to her wristband. Her dispy immediately became sharper and responded faster. "And these structural crystals make weapon edges super strong. I've added them to my knife and it cuts through almost anything now."

  Alexander watched her demonstration, nodding. "Let's focus on stuff we can use right away," he said. "And try not to take too much from any one spot. We don't want to mess up the ecosystem down here. Could trigger predators or cause those maze tunnels to shift even more."

  Their careful approach worked well. Soon they had a Game inventory full of Floor 2 special resources. Valeria added all the resource locations to their map, making it easy to spot good gathering spots along their pnned routes through the rest of the maze.

  Elijah's little garden was doing surprisingly well. The transpnted pnts didn't just survive—they actually grew better in the setup he created. He figured out the right soil mix, how wet to keep everything, and which crystals to put near different pnts through careful observation and some gut feelings about what would work.

  "I've got five different medicinal pnts growing now," he told the team after a few days. "And we can harvest useful stuff without killing the pnts."

  He showed them how to carefully collect tiny amounts of sap or pollen that contained the good stuff. The results were impressive—the pain reliever from the spiral pnts worked the second you put it on a cut or bruise, while the brain-booster from the blue flowers made you think faster and react quicker when you rubbed a little on your skin.

  The weird thing with Valeria kept happening, though. During one harvesting session, Elijah was carefully collecting sap from a pnt that seemed especially responsive to him. He turned around to find Valeria watching him with her analysis screen open, though she quickly switched to something else when he caught her looking.

  "Is there something specific about these pnts you're studying?" he finally asked, feeling awkward about being watched all the time.

  Valeria just shrugged, keeping her cool scientist vibe. "Various factors," she said vaguely. "Trying to optimize results."

  Her answer didn't really expin anything, but Elijah didn't push it. Whatever she was so interested in, she kept it to herself, never sharing with the team or directly asking him about the strange way the pnts responded to him.

  By the time they finished their resource gathering, everyone's Game inventory was packed with Floor 2 special items, all neatly beled and organized for easy access. The benefits were obvious as they started using these materials.

  Riva upgraded their weapons with crystals, making them way more effective against the tunnel predators. Alexander added crystal reinforcements to their armor, making it stronger without getting heavier. Valeria boosted her mapping tools so they could scan deeper and more accurately.

  But Elijah's pnt medicines might have been the most useful of all. He created a whole collection of botanical remedies that were way better than standard Game healing items. They had stuff for treating wounds, boosting stamina, improving night vision, and speeding up recovery times.

  "This resource collection has really paid off," Alexander said as they gathered up their enhanced gear to get back to tackling the maze. "We've turned Floor 2 from just an obstacle course into a supply source."

  As they prepared to head out, Elijah took a moment with his garden. The pnts seemed to recognize him, turning their leaves toward him like they knew who he was. When he whispered to them—"We'll be back soon"—the blue brain-booster flowers pulsed gently, their tiny blooms opening and closing in sequence.

  He turned around to find Valeria watching him again. She quickly looked back at her map when he caught her, her face giving nothing away. Whatever she was so interested in about his weird connection with the pnts, she was keeping it to herself—just one more mystery in a pce already full of puzzles.