Glancing back down towards the group of adventurers that had somehow managed to get hold of a sand boat that they were now using to chase after her thanks to two of them jumping into the ocean of sand before somehow starting to swim forward while pushing the sand boat forward, Scaly had no idea what to say in response to what she saw and could only shift her attention back towards finding a spiral staircase leading to the first floor of the dungeon.
A spiral staircase that should have been extremely simple for her to find with how open the second floor of the dungeon was with essentially nothing blocking her view but turned out to be far more difficult than she had originally anticipated, as the spiral staircases that should have been around had seemingly decided to run away.
Annoying as this was, Scaly didn’t think too much about it and just believed that she had ended up especially unlucky with where she ended up on the second floor of the dungeon. Believing that it wouldn’t be long before she saw that familiar staircase piercing through the ceiling of the second floor.
However, as she five minutes turned into thirty and no spiral staircase emerged, she began growing suspicious that something might have ended up happening to the spiral staircases she should have long since spotted from afar.
After all, she clearly remembered how abundant these spiral staircases were when she had made her way through the second floor in the past searching for a passage leading down to the third floor. Even if she had the worst possible luck in where she ended up upon arriving back on the second floor, she should have encountered at least a handful of spiral staircases by now.
In the end, as she felt her own ability to find the spiral staircases on the second floor had seemingly developed into a unique spiral staircase avoidance ability, Scaly couldn’t help turning her gaze towards the dwarf on her back who had been focused on silently meditating to recover some of the mana he had ended up burning through during his desperate escape from the fifth floor of the dungeon not that long ago.
"Hm? Something the matter?" Feeling this somewhat ashamed and shy gaze, Verdell slowly opened his eyes as he asked, causing Scaly to roll her eyes at the question. Given that she was a dragon, it was obvious she couldn’t answer his question like he wanted, something the person in question should also understand as she didn’t exactly resemble a normal dwarf or human for that matter.
Rustle~
Still, she tried her best to convey her message glancing towards the special magical tool he had used earlier to locate the passage to the second floor while at the same time shaking around a bit in the air to ensure he saw what she was signaling towards, something Verdell understood almost immediately. Surprising Scaly somewhat, as she had prepared several other methods to try and pull him onto the correct path.
But, disappoint as she might be that she wouldn’t be able to try those other methods of make Verdell understand what she wanted from him, she still felt a sense of relief upon seeing him pull up the magical tool before starting to use it to try and locate the closest passage to the first floor of the dungeon.
"Huh? That is... Odd" But as he began using the magic tool, he suddenly began frowning visibly as he muttered something rather ominous to himself.
Odd!? What do you mean odd!?
Earning her scrutiny, but it was of no use, as the person remained tightlipped fiddling around with the magical compass for a good few minutes before a look of understanding finally appeared in his eyes.
"Well... I have bad news and more bad news, which one do you want to hear first?"
What kind of question is this!? Bad new or even worse news!? Just say what you want!
"Ehm... First, the least bad news is that something happened to the spiral pillars on the second floor of the tower and its highly unlikely that they will reemerge within the next 12 or 16 hours.
The even worse news is that several SS Rank Adventurers seem to have entered the dungeon and should be behind the disappearance of the spiral staircases, though I have no information on any of them." Maybe feeling her somewhat intense stare, Verdell didn’t hide anything as he shared everything he had managed to learn from the small compass that he had been carrying along with him and used to save her from the third floor not that long ago.
In fact, Verdell wasn’t sharing everything, as the claim about SS Rank Adventurers wasn’t entirely the doing of those powerful adventurers, but more so seemed like a setup against the branch guild leader by some rivals who might have used some unique method to threaten the dungeon, causing it enter a state of panic where it almost completely served the connection between the different floors and made it far more difficult to reach the last and final floor of the dungeon where the dungeon core itself was located.
A dungeon core, an object of immense value, but at the same time also something no one wanted to get with, as both the Adventurers Guild and the Holy Light Church would come after them.
After all, valuable as a dungeon core was, once it was taken out of a dungeon, it would die and along with its death, the dungeon it governed would start a slow decay before collapsing. A process that could take anywhere between ten years to hundreds of years depending on the size of the dungeon when the dungeon core was taken out or destroyed.
This kind of thing was directly cutting down the chicken for meat while giving up the endless supply of eggs it produced as the chicken in this example was immortal and could continue producing eggs forever in a similar manner as a dungeon endlessly producing resources without break.
Of course, there would always be those who wanted to get their hands on a dungeon core, but fate was kind and a dungeon could not only protect itself within its domain by using powerful monsters, but never ever left the lowest and most dangerous floor of the dungeon. Getting to it alone was something even SS Rank Adventurers would find difficult if not impossible depending on the dungeon they were facing.
Given how difficult it would be for an adventurer and even the guild itself to force those staircases connecting the different floors to disappear or destroy them, Verdell guessed that the reason for their disappearance didn’t have anything to do with someone hiding them to prevent Scaly from escaping, but instead because something that threatened the dungeon core had ended up taking place. Potentially someone entering the very lowest floor of the dungeon.
But... Given how much the guild and other major powers throughout the continent stood against something like taking out or destroying dungeon cores unless absolutely necessary, there was no way someone would have been granted permission to enter the lowest floor of a dungeon easily.
And more importantly, if such approval had been granted, it would have been announced to reduce panic when the dungeon went on the defensive while also giving those inside the dungeon some time to leave in case they didn’t want to end up potentially trapped within the dungeon for however long it took the dungeon to recover back to a normal state again, something that could take anywhere from a few months to a few years.
The only positive was the fact that he knew that the path between floors would never be severed completely, as there would always exist a few unique links between the different floors, though they were far harder to find compared to the easy to find spiral staircases that essentially announced their own presence to anyone who looked around for more thana few seconds.
"Hm... We could try and use that passage between the first and second floor, though I doubt its left unguarded. Especially now that the dungeon has entered a panicked state, that place is bound to be swarming with other adventurers looking to leave..." Silently murmuring to himself as he remained seated on top of Scaly, Verdell did know about one such alternate path connecting the first and second floor of the swirling sands dungeon.
But he also understood that with the current state of things, that place would be swarming with adventurers looking to enter and leave the second floor of the dungeon. Among them, there would undoubtedly be those coming to chase down the dragon he found himself atop of alongside those who had been chasing after him.
In other words, going would come with certain risks and he had no clue whether they would be worth it or not considering they might also be able to look for another hidden path connecting the first and second floor.