"I’m sure the dragon passed through this place not too long ago, the traces are still here, so by following them, we might be able to easily find the dragon."
"Are you sure? We didn’t see any traces of the dragon and from what we guessed, it should have already escaped to the fourth floor..." Staring doubtfully at the self-proclaimed dragon tracker who had suddenly appeared alongside a sizable group of weaker adventurers, the leader of the powerful group of adventurers could not stop himself from questioning the other party.
After all, if he could find traces of the dragon they were chasing along the path they had walked, wasn’t it telling him and the rest of his people that they were useless?
Even if the other party was correct, this kind of situation didn’t exactly earn the self-proclaimed dragon tracker any point in his eyes unless his tracking really did lead to them finding the dragon, but...
"This way! If we go this way, we should soon find the dragon!"
As the other party began making his way in the direction that they had originally come from, and the same direction where the other side of the whirlpool of chaos was located, he couldn’t help frowning visibly to himself.
Understanding that there was little to no chance that the dragon had somehow walked to this location and then turned back towards the passage at the bottom of the whirlpool of chaos. Especially given how that place should already be swarming with people.
"You can continue on your own, we will continue on our path to the fourth floor..." And given that there was no reason for him to follow this self-proclaimed dragon tracker, he ultimately decided against it-
"Brother, I think it wouldn’t hurt to follow for a bit to see where this leads."
"Yeah, there is no harm in checking it out, who knows, we might really find the dragon without having to go to the fourth floor of the dungeon!"
"I agree, I also heard about this tracker before, he is trustworthy and skilled at what he does, I think it will be beneficial for us to trust his word and follow."
But even as he voiced out his thoughts of leaving behind this self-proclaimed dragon tracker, his good brothers and sisters decided to voice their opposition to what he said, causing the corner of his lips to twitch in annoyance.
Not because he was annoyed that his companions started talking back to him, but instead because he understood full well what these good brothers and sisters of his were thinking.
It wasn’t that they trusted this self-proclaimed dragon tracker and were willing to follow him to find the dragon, but instead because they saw this as a way out of having to go to the fourth floor of the dungeon.
Even worse, with how everyone suddenly decided to voice their opposition to his suggestion of ignoring this little tracker, he had to oblige with what everyone said to ensure things remained peaceful amongst everyone. After all, his group wasn’t exactly made up of lifelong friends and companions, but it was more so just the people he could get together in a short time that he knew and trusted to some extent.
In the end, he ended up finding himself following this self-proclaimed dragon tracker for a good fifteen minutes without any success through the increasingly brutal sandstorm before this ’dragon tracker’ lost the tracks he was following and ended up doing a complete one eighty. Turning around and going in the exact same direction they had just come from before saying that he had found traces of the dragon and they were even clearer than the ones from before, as they began going back in the direction they had just come from.
Not to mention him and his group losing hope in this self-proclaimed dragon tracker, even the group of adventurers following alongside him also seemed to lose hope in his accuracy after seeing this little stunt.
Unsurprisingly, when this self-proclaimed dragon tracker turned around again and was about to pull another one eighty back in the direction they had come from, no one listened to him and continued forward towards the passage leading to the fourth floor of the dungeon.
If the self-proclaimed dragon tracker was the slightest bit accurate in his words about the dragon having passed through this place in the past, it was highly likely that it had already made it through the passage to the fourth floor of the dungeon that they were heading towards.
So, there was no more reason for anyone to delay the inevitable if they wanted to continue chasing down the dragon, as the two groups of adventurers began walking alongside each other towards the passage leading down to the fourth floor of the dungeon.
Planning to split up and explore on their own like they had originally been doing after getting to the fourth floor of the dungeon, as neither party wanted to run into the dragon together, as that meant they would inevitably have to split up the rewards for hunting down the dragon.
The only reason they had come together on the third floor being due to a certain ’dragon tracker’.
Speaking of which, after he had been abandoned by everyone who saw him as useless after the repeated failures to find the dragon and odd sudden turn he had pulled, the dragon tracker continued forward along the traces that had been left behind. Fully trusting his own abilities as he continued forward even as the two groups of adventurers disappeared in the sandstorm behind him. Not that he noticed, as he was far too focused on the traces of the dragon he was following.
"Aha! It should be just over-"
Ptsh-!
And just as he saw a clear footprint left behind by Scaly, the dragon he had been searching for officially emerged to end his life without anything more than a soft piercing sound, as the self-proclaimed dragon tracker fell dead without anyone from the two adventurer groups up ahead realizing what had happened behind them...