Try the next room.

"How much longer do you think Eva will be affected by the crystal's powers?" asks Nyllia.

Masumi ponders. "I don't think it'll be too much longer, though I have a feeling one stel'ae isn't meant to suck down the entirety of the crystal's magic at once. But if she has latent stel'ae powers, she likely also has latent cravings, and became carried away upon tasting something so potent."

Eva nuzzles her head up against your side and whispers, "I am quite good at sucking things down."

"I wish we knew more about stel'ae. It seems lore about them is rare," you say. "We don't really have many people to ask. Someone in the Circle might. Maybe after all of this, we should see if her dad knows anything at all."

Around the next corner is an opened chamber with yet another passage forwards on the opposite end--no doors to block your progress. You feel movement of the air shift as you stare ahead. Through said passage one could go right or left, but you get the feeling this particular room of the dungeon is going to be much larger than the ones you've seen so far.

Just then, something falls from the ceiling.

The shadow moves quickly. Niki raises her shield, and something strikes it, though she doesn't budge. Everybody readies their weapon as they look past the party's tank to whatever foe stands before her.

It's a woman. Or rather, it's shaped like one. She's partly translucent and blue--yet another slime. She looks taken aback by the futile effect of her strike. In panic, she turns and runs, taking the left path before the pitter-patter of her feet fades into the distance.

"Hmm. Makes sense," Nyllia comments. "Slimes are easily attracted to magic. As you already know by the existence of Jelly, if they absorb enough, they can evolve into an entirely different sort of creature. The slime girl. Stel'ae seem to have had a highly magical society, not just with what they consumed."

"All sorts of magic still persist here," you say. "So they definitely didn't just mindlessly eat all magic in sight. They had special treats made to consume. What led them to being hunted to extinction?"

"Mistrust perhaps. Misunderstanding."

"We can't completely dismiss the idea that they did something terrible," Masumi adds. "We know little about them after all."

You shake your head. "No matter what they did, eliminating an entire species is unforgivable. I doubt they deserved anything close to that fate."

Niki, peaking ahead to where the slime girl had just fled, looks back and says, "I think this might be some kind of a maze."