"So, how does it feel?"
Having waited for Liz to emerge from the portal next to him, Mac showed a slight smile. Instead of immediately answering, Liz took a few steps forward as she took in the surroundings, volcanic ash had already started clinging to the soles of her boots and the air reeked of sulfur, but it was still everything she had imagined and even more.
"It feels fantastic."
By all means Elizabeth and Mac stood in a hellscape, charred remains of a forest with a volcano mid eruption sitting on its own floating island some 10 kilometers away. Still Liz, and to a lesser extent Mac, were both ecstatic, for this was unexplored terrain, an unknown and unnumbered floor which hadn't seen people since the time of the first king's expedition.
"Ah~ Trailblazing sure feels nice, especially in environments like this."
Stopping to take a deep breath as he stepped through the portal behind his sister and Mac, Carl took in the scenery as he let his wings flutter.
"It vaguely feels like home~"
"I know what you mean, the air is also thin here like we're on a mountaintop."
While the two dragonkin had a great time in their new environment, the rest of the party which slowly joined them had other impressions.
"Gha, it stinks of sulfur, even through the mask…"
"Yeah, no wonder those two got so excited."
Dexter and Jack weren't a fan of this floor in the dungeon, but at least their supplied masks weren't fogging up like Ula's was currently.
"H-help."
"Right, hold your breath for a moment."
Tending to Ula's mask, Mac readjusted the seal and made it purge a few times before it got a proper seal on her face and the mask started working again.
"Are you sure you're fine without a mask Mac?"
As the only person without a mask other than the two half dragons, Mac's initial refusal to wear any personal protective equipment had confused Ula, but seeing he was seemingly fine breathing in quite a bit of sulfur still made her worry.
"Don't worry, I can handle far worse than this, and even if I couldn't I don't really need to breathe more than once every few weeks."
Reassuring Ula by reminding her of just some of his inhumane qualities and a pat on the head, Mac showed a smile which wasn't quite right.
"So how does it look, Mac? How many portals have you found?"
Having taken in the surroundings as the convoy of Lynx transports and gun carriers started making their way through the portal, Liz decided it was time to move and sought guidance from Mac and his series of surveillance drones busy mapping the floor.
"3 so far, but I'm not completely done mapping this floor, there are also those guys to worry about."
Gesturing vaguely to the 2 meter long wyverns currently circling above them, Mac focused on recon as the adventurers started handling the monsters.
"Leave those to us! Carl with me. Ula please support us while you two guard her."
"Rog'."
"Leave it to us."
"I'll go on ahead sis!"
Calling the shots and watching her younger brother take off with much enthusiasm, Elizabeth took a deep breath as she steadied herself, then her dragon wings sprouted from her back as they materialised before she set off for the sky, winking to Mac as she took flight.
(I should ask to study how exactly she does that…)
Mac had seen Elizabeth's and Carl's wings appear out of nothing a few times now, but he still had no idea how it happened, still, that was a problem for another time when he had processing power to spare.
Taking flight as she drew her sword, Elizabeth turned gravity into a mere suggestion as she surged forward, instantly closing the distance to her first target she dissected the wyvern from wing to throat, spinning a few times before she spread her wings wide to come to a stop in mid-air like a falcon. Surveying her surroundings Liz spun to avoid the maw of a monster, cutting the creature's wing off in the passing before she kicked another one, sending the wyvern directly into her brother's blade.
"Thanks!"
Grateful for the assist, Carl swung at another monster as a wyvern rapidly approaching behind him opened up its maw to eat him, only it never got to close the distance as it was impaled by an ice crystal priced it from below. Stepping out of the splash radius of a falling monster corpse, Mac continued his survey through his surveillance drones and found another 3 portals in addition to the one they had just gone through, bringing the total up to 7.
(Now just to map the initial area through those portals…)
Closing his eyes to focus as he stepped out of the way of another monster corpse, Mac preprogrammed the surveillance drones for their eventual loss of signal as they would enter the portal to the next floor, scream out with all their active and passive sensors for a few seconds before returning. With the initial scans of the unknown floors, Mac could match the area around the unknown floor to his records and figure out if the portal led back to something he knew or onwards to something unknown.
"How is it looking?"
Standing next to Mac with his mace ready, Jack saw that the wyverns were mostly dealt with and started on their next moves.
"3 new floors and 4 repeat, seems like. We'll map the new floors in order of proximity before deciding where to proceed."
"So the same as last time?"
"Yeah, the same as last time."
With no maps to rely on and no idea where the first banner had ended up, this routine of steadily advancing while mapping everything had become routine at this point. Excitement of getting to explore the unknown aside, this was more akin to a survey mission than anything else.
"We're clear."
Landing with a thud next to Mac, Liz swung her sword to flick off any blood, then she wiped it clean and sheathed it as she reported.
"Then let's move, form up for a convoy!"
With all monsters taken care of, the mapping of the area complete and the Lynx's ready to move, Mac ordered the adventurers to mount up as they started moving towards the first portal they needed to map.
"Say, are those corpses valuable in any way? Should we take some with us?"
Remembering that other adventurer party they had run into a few days ago and that they had been in this dungeon to hunt wyverns, Mac asked Elizabeth if there was anything worth salvaging from the corpses strewn all around.
"Hmm, not really? That other party was most likely after the skins, which are somewhat valuable, but not really worth slowing us down over."
Sure, there was a decent profit to make skinning wyverns, but the bounty of just finding the first banner would dwarf that. It was really just the question of scale.
"Then let's keep going."
Unaware of what was chasing them, the monster remains that were left behind started moving slightly with sparks of red lighting, but that was only after Mac and the others had left the floor.
Over the next 6 hours Mac and the adventurers made it through 4 floors and mapped countless others, eventually settling in for the night in a grassland floor with open skies and something approximating stars glowing in the distance.
"Hmm…"
Staring up at the night sky again, Mac conducted a spectrographic analysis and once again confirmed what he was seeing wasn't starlight, but something close approximating it. Peeking at the near radio spectrum Mac found the same distinct lack of cosmic background radiation and sight of far off radio pulsars or stellar nurseries he usually navigated by.
"Something interesting up there?"
Joining Mac on the top of a Lynx, Liz sat down next to him as she also looked to the stars.
"Not really, no. The sky is not even consistent between floors, and it's lacking what I usually look for when navigating or just star gazing."
This had been something of a routine by now. When the adventurers and Mac made camp for the night Mac would grab a rifle and find perch on top of a Lynx and Elizabeth, Dexter, Jack, Ula or Carl would join him for a time, taking and keeping him company for a time. Mostly through, it was Liz who came to keep him company.
"Then, what do you usually look for in the night sky? The sky outside of dungeons that is."
Elizabeth and Mac had talked about the night sky a number of times already, as it was right in front of the both of them and Mac had talked a lot about how this sky was wrong compared to what he was used to. This had eventually made Liz curious enough to finally ask him something a tinge more personal.
"The first thing I usually look for are pulsars, as they're the most apparent and what I use to navigate… They're like the 'north star' of the universe and each of them are mostly unique in their spin rates."
"... Pulsars are those things that spin really fast, right?"
Having talked about this before, Liz was somewhat familiar with what Mac was talking about, but as his words were nothing but vague concepts in her mind it wasn't really sticking.
"Yeah, they're basically the corpses of stars. Collapsed from the size of a star down to a large city they spin multiple times a second… Just like when you fly around and spin, pulling your wings in will make you spin faster."
"... Even if what you say makes sense I find it hard to imagine."
Genuinely trying to understand what Mac was saying, Liz was still finding it hard to imagine a chunk of former star the size of the capital spinning multiple times a second, spewing light like a lighthouse.
"Then let's go for a visual aid, excuse me for a moment."
Having decided that the area around them was secure for a moment, Mac placed a hand over Elizabeth's eyes and focused. Deciding to wait instead of immediately asking what Mac was doing, Liz's vision quickly shifted out from beneath her as she was suddenly surrounded by stars all around her.
"There we are, this is what the sky looks like around your world, showing the light which you can see."
Taking Elizabeth on a virtual star tour, Mac briefly explained the different kinds of lights she was seeing before getting to the point as Elizabeth's sight shifted again, showing radio waves instead of visible light.
"And these are the pulsars I talked about, see how they pulse like that?"
"Yeah, I can see why you call them that now… So, you use them to navigate?"
Circling back to the point now that she understood what Mac was talking about, Liz felt a sense of childlike wonder as she started seeing the world around her in an entirely new light. The stars weren't painted some on far away glass, they were a sea in of themselves, a sea where Mac hailed from.
Instead of immediately responding, Mac shifted Liz's vision to what a pulsar looked like up close, displaying what it had looked like last time he had conducted fleet operations near one of those star corpses.
"These are the stellar objects I navigate by, which is why I always look for them first. But enough about that, do you want to know about my travels in general?"
Removing his hand from Elizabeth's eyes, Mac didn't miss the amazed look and sense of childlike wonder in her eyes as he asked if she wanted to know more.
"Yeah, how do you travel around in space, I imagine it must be dangerous."
"That would be a word for it yeah, there is no breathable air, relative speeds means even a few flicks of paint can be deadly and temperature can fluctuate wildly from shade to light."
That night Elizabeth didn't really get much sleep as she was enamored with stories about Mac's travels, from space itself to the strange worlds he had visited he carried seemingly endless amounts of stories and tales from his time.