Samuel's solemn expression turned into a frown after witnessing Drake's recklessness, he might need to butt in and warn him properly lest their teamwork be affected during a tense situation.
Drake was a seasoned warrior, his skills were top-notch. That included his ability to scout and sense danger. Samuel knew this.
Drake probably wasn't ignoring his authority on purpose. In his eyes, there was nothing worth thinking about, there was nothing that could put him or the team at risk.
Even if there was, it was in his nature to be fearless and unyielding. In the first place, fighting something in close quarters requires you to be fearless. Cowards would never dare take such a dangerous position if the situation allows it.
His actions were still out of line, however.
"Drake, you should wait for Samuel to finish his thinking" It was the sweet voice of Clarys Goodful, the A-class healer.
She wasn't a statue, she had her own thoughts and ideas. As a diligent person, she was not in favor of disregarding authority. Samuel was put in charge so he should be the one to lead the way and think about their next move.
"I am just taking us to the third floor as soon as possible" Drake replied.
Hearing this, Samuel decided to butt in.
"We need to scout out the dungeon and if we don't see an issue, finish it. That hasn't happened yet so you should let me lead the way." Samuel's words carried with them a tinge of irritation.
Drake naturally took note of this, resulting in an odd stare off between him and Drake. They both stared at the other in the eye without willing to break eye contact, neither of them hid their fury.
After a couple more seconds, Drake was the first to break the contact. He walked away from the front of the squad and now stood next to Felix who wasn't able to follow his quick action earlier and thus stood there dumbly.
"Let's go then" He said indifferently towards Samuel and Clarys. It was as if nothing had happened.
Maybe Samuel's unyielding attitude got through to Drake, regardless, Samuel was naturally not opposed to his quick change of heart so he instantly signaled for the now gossiping adventurers to quiet down and begin moving forward. Using a magic device to guide them, Samuel led them away.
With such a handy device and Samuel's expert leadership skills, they managed to easily make their way to the second floor.
The first floor wasn't anything hard for the B-class and A-class bunch. The deadliest things had been the traps scattered around the floor in the direct path towards the stairs.
But even those things seemed pretty dull when pit against them, the sharp bone arrows or potions of vile had little to no effect on them other than being annoying.
Only some of the weaker B-class mages had to be wary. Nonetheless these traps never even got the chance to succeed due to Drake's acute senses and Samuel's keen wind reading abilities.
The next step in their plan was to look for spacial fluctuations on the second floor using a separate device. Whenever a dungeon expanded their territory they needed to bend space which was bound to leave easily identifiable traces especially if the process was still ongoing.
The reason why they had skipped over the first floor was that the dungeon's influence in areas closer to the entrance was small. Only when its influence expanded all the way down to the first floor would the threat of a free dungeon become real.
The average dungeon can take more than a year to break through one floor based on the data gathered by the Freedom Union. This rate only increases if the dungeon is offered sacrifices. Basically failed expeditions. Since apart from some crazy cults, no one was willing to feed a dungeon.
Samuel checked for any traces but came up empty. The difficulty of the second floor was also fairly similar to the first one. They would be able to reach the next floor soon enough, Samuel thought as he put the device away.
'Even if the boss has respawned we shouldn't have too much trouble' Although he thought so, he wouldn't relax until the end.
***
Some hours earlier, back in the skull tribe's settlement, Duma was pacing back and forth anxiously inside of his shack.
For some reason, things were not going as he had expected them to. What was supposed to be a simple announcement of allegiance had somehow turned into an angry mob.
He was luckily able to forcefully subdue the insurrection before things became too severe. Unfortunately however, that did not help his image.
He was being called the most foolish and cowardly tribe leader that their skull tribe had ever seen. And the previous incident turned it into a foolishly impulsive and cowardly leader!
They didn't call him ruthless which was usually a good trait among leaders for attacking his people, it was instead impulsive! Impulsive! They were orcs for f*cks sake! He couldn't comprehend why his usual facade was now failing him.
Just as Duma had reached his wits' end, Ed entered his cabin spooking the inattentive orc.
"AH! ...You are back" His oddly high-pitched scream was luckily not heard by anybody in the vicinity. Well… except for Ed. He just kept on giving him more hands to play against him.
"Ahem, I came to check up on your progress here." Ed said in a somewhat disappointed, he could tell by his entrance that he had picked the wrong man for the job…
He sighed internally… if only he could assess a person's character beforehand.
'No wait I might be able to do that' The deduction skill used his own knowledge to form conjectures but the assessment skill relied on more than that. It meant that his arguably poor social skills would not come into play and he might be able to, therefore, find out people's characters with little to no observation.
So he went right ahead, it would also give the skill some experience so there was no harm.
[Duma (Stressed and fearful)]
Orc leader of the skull tribe. A cowardly person with unrealistic expectations.
The description seemed fairly standard, unfortunately, he didn't have anything for comparison though. Ed made a mental note to always remember to assess new people from now on lest something similar happen in the future.
'Maybe I can find out more with the special chance' It was either that or Duma was a very simple orc. Which all things considered, didn't seem entirely unlikely.
"Mutiny! This is mutiny!" Yelled Duma with a wronged expression.
This made Ed realize that he had completely ignored the stressed Duma who now wore a tearful expression as he let out all of his sorrows.
"Tell me in more details" Ed said to make it seem like he had been listening.
"Ok! But you have to help me! I can't ally with you if we don't get this under control" Said Duma desperately.
Ed simply motioned for him to speak without making any promises.
If the matter was too troublesome and time-consuming it might be a much better idea to just head towards the settlement and inform Vorgarag of his findings.
The sooner they transported some of the mana crystals the better since they would have more formations increasing their safety measures.
"I ordered for the orcs to gather so that I could inform them of the alliance but after I announced it they all went mad. They were calling me things and some even challenged me to a fight! The nerve of the-!" Duma was about to rant about his misgivings but after seeing Ed's expression change he held himself back. He let out a couple of odd coughs and got back on track.
"I accepted some of the duels beating them fair and square causing some of the naysayers to calm down but someone threw stones at me from somewhere and all of a sudden a commotion happened. I got some of my subordinates to forcefully subdue the chaos but it backfired! It all backfired! Take responsibility!" Duma was going back to venting but this time he stopped on his own seeing Ed's pensive expression.
'It seems like someone planned this out' Ed's eyes shone at the thought of finding a smart and capable person, maybe he could delegate such a task to them instead.