"... Can you still follow that?"
Sitting by the sidelines as two near blurs of light moved around trying to murder each other with swords, Dexter addressed Carl to his side.
"Sometimes I don't see some of Mac's moves, but otherwise yeah, I can mostly follow what they're doing."
It had been a week since Mac had proclaimed he would teach Liz how to fight. In that time he would arrive at first light, relentlessly taunt Liz until she started fighting him, their sparring match would continue until she reached exhaustion sometime in the evening before repeating the next day.
"Then can you see if she has made any improvements?"
It was an open secret in the Red claw adventurer group that Liz wasn't the smartest fighter. Sure she was outrageously strong, and fast, but her technique amounted to hitting her opponent before they could hit her, simple as.
"She's gotten faster for sure, but Mac isn't really letting attacks through so it's hard to assess."
If Liz was stubborn Mac was doubly so, he took pride in being untouchable and was unbelievably smug, constantly taunting Liz and goading her into fighting for his sole amusement.
"Come on now Missy, didn't you say today was the day you would teach me? Present your opponent with a dilemma, not a problem, then guide them towards your preferred outcome!"
"I'm fucking trying!"
Stepping out of the way of a poorly disguised feint aiming to cut off his right leg, Mac took a half step back, the juked to bait out another attack before he moved in, catching Elizabeth's sword with his own, avoiding a fist meant for his face before he tackled her to the ground.
"And that's one more win for me~"
Sitting on top of Elizabeth, Mac wore a smug smile as she shouted in frustration.
"Move!"
"Make me."
Questionable word use aside, Mac eventually got removed from Elizabeth, but before they were about to go for another round Carl intervened.
"This is all well and good, but shouldn't we all be preparing for our upcoming dungeon expedition?"
"I can do both… But yeah, we should properly start discussing the journey."
Reluctantly agreeing with Carl, Mac put away his sword and avoided a few more jabs from Elizabeth before she also switched gears with a click from her tongue.
"Gather around!"
Summoning the rest of her party with a shout, Elizabeth sat down on the ground cross legged as she started working the problem.
"Just to confirm: Are we really going for the first banner?"
"Yeah, how many floors will that be to get there?"
"Unknown."
"It is anywhere from 50 to 66 floors just to get to the edge of what is explored, depending on what kind of route you want to take."
Supplementing his sister's answer, Carl received a large parchment from Ula that he laid out on the ground for all of them to see. The parchment contained a maze-like map of the floors of the hearst dungeon, with each floor having between 3 and 5 connections to floors further down or up it was a spiderweb of interconnected floors until about half way down the mapped floors where mapped connections became scarce. Not because these connections didn't exist, they most likely did as dungeons seemed to have the same amount of connections between floors all the way down, but because these connections hadn't been fully surveyed and mapped yet.
"Let's say I would want to avoid maze-like floors and ones where islands are too far apart."
"That won't be possible."
Just from a rough understanding of the floors, Carl quickly declared Mac's requests as impossible before Dexter interjected.
"No, it might be doable, but it would require a lot of backtracking and movement across multiple back and forth between different floors instead of going straight down… What exactly is the issue?"
"It is mostly because of the Lynx transports."
Perhaps feeling left out from show and tell, Mac extended his arm and displayed the hologram of a Lynx in the palm of his arm.
"Fully unloaded under this amount of gravity Lynx transports can jump about a hundred meters, any larger distance than that and they will not be able to cross between sky islands."
"And what's the aversion to mazes? I'm pretty sure those vehicles of yours can move around in there."
"That problem in that case is potential overpressure."
Shifting his projection to a Lynx equipped with a refraction wave cannon, Mac displayed the pressure wave it would put out when firing.
"While such overpressure from the cannon will not damage any of you when inside a Lynx, dismounted it can be lethal in an enclosed space."
Mac had chosen Lynx's craft equipped with that kind of relatively simple weapon for their ammunition. While these canons could only effectively employ low speed armour piercing rounds, chemical effect ammunition like high explosive dual purpose worked great against monsters and were easy to transport, saving on space and logistics while still providing plenty of armour piercing power for the task at hand.
"In that case why not limit the amount of maze floors we visit to their first half of the expedition, where monster activity is low?"
"That works, but completely relying on my forces will put a strain on ammunition… I guess that's fine."
Seeing the advantage of drastically simplified navigation outweighed the cost of using a little more ammunition, Mac and the adventurers spent the next few hours working out a route that would take them all the way from floor 1 to the furthest mapped floor 64 where they would start mapping and search efforts. With the meeting finalised, Mac went back through his packing list, reviewed inspection reports and settled on a fleet of vehicles to bring along before placing a deployment order into FLAC.
A full 10 seconds later Mac was contacted by R3D.
(What's up?)
Blocking R3D's attempts at bypassing his security and snooping around, Mac was about to repeat himself when his unruly subordinate finally responded.
[What are you planning?]
(Just a small excursion, nothing major.)
Seeing R3D run through all of his deployment orders once again Mac was about to say something when it spoke up again.
[And I take it I'll be babysitting while you're out of signal range?]
(That was the plan, yeah.)
If R3D was physically able to sigh deeply it would do so, but instead of starting to complain it rather graciously accepted the responsibility.
[Fine. But you'll owe me, so don't expect me to keep away after this.]
While R3D wasn't as good at combat tactics and diplomacy as Mac, it was capable of babysitting FLAC for a few weeks, but doing so would cost Mac.
(That's fine, seeing how far I've progressed I imagine I'll be able to operate openly inside the Rose kingdom after this. You'll also have some opportunities to extract samples from this world.)
From where Mac was sitting this looked to be the final hurdle of phase 1, and letting R3D run around past that didn't seem like that much of a headache.
-
At noon the next day quite a spectacle occurred outside the entrance to the hearst dungeon. It started like most spectacles with the outsider Mac, as one after another modified dropships started delivering Lynx transports one after another.
1 quickly became 5 which eventually became 10 as the full formation assembled. Ignoring the surrounding adventurers Mac focused on his neural uplink as he called a subordinate.
[Mac? What's going on?]
Hearing Tia almost instantly pick up the call with a slightly nervous tone Mac chuckled for a bit before responding.
"I will be entering the hearst dungeon shortly. Once inside I won't be able to talk to the outside world. While I'm away R3D will manage you and you'll report to them."
Instructing Tia where she should reach out while he was 'out of office', Mac was about to end communications when she spoke up.
[How long will you be gone?]
"It should take 10 days to reach the deepest mapped part of the dungeon, from there we will spend 10 to 15 days exploring before returning… So about a month in total."
With about a month of time away Mac had made sure to pack enough food and water for longer than that, in addition to medical supplies and enough ammunition to overthrow a small country. Still, the real issue would be his return, as Mac expected multiple issues would've piled up by the time he returned.
[Okay… take care out there, and stay safe.]
Having someone worry about him was new to Mac, and might've gotten him flustered if he wasn't good at hiding those kinds of feelings.
"Thanks, I have to go now. See you later."
As the Red claw adventurer party arrived Mac quickly ended his communication.
"There you are Mac, or who am I kidding, kind of hard to miss you when you're standing out like this."
Glancing at the formation of vehicles behind him Elizabeth took note of the very deliberate spectacle Mac was creating.
"Which one of those are our ride?"
"That one, get in so we can get going."
As Mac spoke the closest Lynx transport opened up its doors and welcomed the 5 person Red claw party who quickly boarded.
"... This looks surprisingly comfortable."
The inside of the Lynx transport had a series of 4 two person benches with a narrow hallway on one side, and while there wasn't enough space for Liz to stand upright the seats were soft and comfortable. Sitting down Liz was about to wonder how she would know what was going on when the seat in front of her became a screen, showing the outside where Mac was leading the 10 vehicle convoy on foot into the dungeon.
(Here we go… FLAC logout confirmed and QCT online.)
Sending a final ping to R3D, Mac stepped through the portal into the hearst dungeon. The first floor of the dungeon was noticeably warmer than outside, and without cloud cover as faux sunlight shone down from the sky. Looking back to the portal after taking a few steps into the first floor, Mac started continuously pinging the lead vehicle as it slowly rolled through, obtaining a link and establishing direct control of it as it entered and left FLAC control.
"Hmm."
Adjusting to the mental load at about the same rate as the vehicles entered, Mac stretched his many new limbs and warmed up their attached weapon systems as the 3rd Lynx in the convoy started deploying its human type drones. Exiting through a pair of ports on the transport's rear, the human type drones unfurled themselves as they activated and linked up with Mac's command net. Receiving assignments the drones pushed forward with weapons in hand and quickly formed an outer cordon as the lead Lynx started launching recon drones into the sky.
(All units slaved and under control, imitation FLAC holding steady at 240 commands a second.)
Cracking his neck in concert with all of the deployed human type drones, Mac received a M-227 Helical coil rifle and quickly cycled its action.
(Commence operation, ROE tight.)
Preparing his weapon, Mac's action was mimicked by the entirety of his command net as actions were cycles, weapons loaded and safeties disabled.
"On me."
Forming the head of the spear, Mac led his units out of the adventurer shantytown onto the open plains surrounding it. As the terrain opened up, so did Mac's speed, and soon he was leading the formation in a full sprint, human type drones covering both of his flanks as the Lynx transports and gun carriers in the centre of the formation scanned for targets.
(First destination: 6th floor.)
Following the route he had worked out with Elizabeth and the others, Mac's first destination was the 6th floor he had checked out with Hanna, reaching the portal didn't even take half an hour as the scarce amount of monsters on the first floor were being actively hunted by other adventurers. Stepping through the portal Mac immediately raised his rifle and shot a minotaur as he clicked his tongue.
(Welp, might as well wipe most of them out now instead of being caught mid manoeuvre.)
Knowing full well that the shot was going to attract attention, Mac took a knee as he was joined by his human type drones and the first of the Lynx gun carrier.