"I have a sort of…familiar you can say," Allen whispered. "It lets me see what it sees and that's what I'm using right now to scout the area."

Luna's eyes widened a little and her gaze became more focused on him.

"A familiar?" she whispered back with her voice being in a state that was full of not shock, but rather awe.

"Like a spirit bird? I've read about them in old storybooks but never thought they were real things. I didn't think that magic was real anymore. That's incredibly rare.

"The type of rare that if you spoke about it without proof you'd be laughed at for being someone who still believes in storybooks."

"Really?" Allen asked with a sense of curiosity in his voice.

"They are rather normal in my country. I mean sure they're not commonplace and you do have to go through a deal of trouble to tame one but they still exist fairly normally like other exquisite animals," he explained.

She had a thousand more questions buzzing up in her brain. He could see them in her eyes, but due to the situation they were in and the fact that she was a soldier on a mission she bit her lip and just nodded. Deciding to keep her mouth shut in the end.

She kept her curiosity to herself not wanting to break his focus. She just stayed quiet with her hand on her sword, and letting him continue.

On the screen in Allen's mind, the drone hovered. It was at the altitude of three hundred meters now.

The feed was a mix of bright and ghostly green. The campfires below were not small warm dots like they were when viewed from a normal eye but rather blazing white splotches.

The night vision camera was an advanced piece of tech and was designed with the intent of amplifying the smallest amount of light. It was not designed to stare directly into multiple large fires.

The light from the flames was so strong it washed out all the detail around them and it was like staring into three small and green suns.

He couldn't make out any details near the fires and just saw the blinding light and the dark and fuzzy shapes of tents further out. It was a mess. He couldn't tell which tent was which.

Allen squinted at the bright and messy feed.

This is a problem, he thought to himself. I see a lot of tents but they all look the same from up here. I have no way to tell them apart.

He turned to Luna who was still scanning the darkness around them with her eyes. "Do you know what the commander's tent looks like? Is it bigger? Does it have a special banner? Anything?"

Luna shook her head and her voice low and full of frustration.

"I don't. The scouts who tried to get this info… most of them didn't make it back and were caught early on. The mission was a complete failure. We lost three good men."

She paused as she was clearly trying to remember every detail.

"All we have is their last and garbled report. It came just before we lost contact and said that the target's tent should be on the left side of the entrance."

Allen processed this. "The left side of which entrance? The main gate they were watching?"

"That's the problem," Luna whispered, and he could hear the anger in her voice. "The report wasn't clear and seemed like it was sent in a hurry. This camp is huge and has three main gates.

"There are three openings in the wall so that the soldiers can move out quickly when the war is ongoing. And since there are three gates it causes a lot of confusion as we don't know which gate they meant. It could be any of them."

Allen was silent for a moment. Three gates. It was a rather vague and unconfirmed intel. A failed mission that got three people killed. Great. This was just getting better and better.

This was a complete shot in the dark.

He turned back to Luna and she seemed frustrated at herself for not being able to provide him with enough help.

"This much is also enough," he said with his voice being surprisingly calm. "Having a little spark is better than shooting an arrow in the complete dark."

Of course, he thought to himself. A spark is only useful when you're carrying a few gallons of gasoline to throw on it. And I just so happen to have that gasoline.

He focused his attention back on the green-tinted drone feed and got himself back in focus.

Okay there are going to be a few changes. I'm sure you already heard it but we have three known variables, the gates and we have one piece of vague intel which is the left side of the entrance.

I need you to run a probability analysis while assuming the most likely conditions, use the drone feed as data to help get as accurate as possible to the real result.

He began to give his commands to the system as he thought of a possible way to get out of this situation.

Use our current gate the one behind us as the first reference point. Scan the camp and find the other two gates are and then

He continued, getting more specific. I'm looking for a single and high-value target which is the command tent similar to the one where Lishia usually stays. That means a tent that is larger than the others and will probably be isolated.

It will have more guards nearby and more foot traffic. I want you to filter out all the obvious non-targets. Discard the clusters of small and identical tents or any barracks. Discard any obvious storage areas or stables. I want you to single out any potential command structures in all three zones.

Can you do that?

He waited with his eyes fixed on the feed. The system's reply was quick and it was just as annoying as he expected.

[Analysis failed.]

[Advanced heuristic search and object differentiation are not unlocked at your current level.]

[Advanced thinking capabilities are not unlocked at your current level.]

[Unable to analyze foot traffic patterns.]

[Unable to differentiate structure types.]

[Cannot filter 'barracks' or 'storage'.]

Allen stared at the new notifications for a moment.

Fucking useless. He cursed.

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