Chad and Connor reached the same rise overlooking what had been the city of Albuquerque that he had scouted from before. The fog was, if anything, more dense than it had been before. It formed a nearly perfect semi-spherical dome about sixty miles in diameter. Not wasting any time, Chad pulled out the drone’s charging dock. He didn’t want to risk it running out of power, so he had the magical machine settle in its little bay and begin recharging. They had been using the thing to scout for them as they traveled from the small down where they’d fought and killed the Cholla Beast.

In less than fifteen minutes, the drone chirped and the faint glow it radiated rippled. checking the controller, he saw it was fully charged. It had only used about ten percent of its Power capacity. Going through the mission parameters, he selected the “Behind Enemy Lines” scouting mission and targeted the center of the dome as its destination. The mission would prioritize stealth, enemy numbers, resources, and average threat levels. It would also flag any enemy that had a significantly higher threat level, if they existed. The drone chirped a confirmation as the onboard AI accepted the mission and lifted off of the dock.

As the drone flew off, Chad and Connor both retreated from the edge of the bluff and settled under some scrawny pine trees. It was the best cover they had in the area and hoped they wouldn’t be spotted while they stared at the controller’s screen. The device automatically recorded everything the drone saw and picked up on its myriad scanning systems.

“That has some seriously high definition,” Connor said after a couple of minutes in silence.

“Yeah, the even when using the zoom function,” Chad replied. “It remains sharp. No pixilation or fuzzing. Hush, it’s about to enter the fog now.”

The picture immediately grew drastically dimmer as it plunged through whatever barrier kept the fog from dispersing in the intense heat of the New Mexico sun. In less than a second, the AI shifted through different vision modes until it settled on a form of light enhancing night vision combined with ultraviolet and thermal imaging overlaid and enhanced. The picture brightened and they could see more clearly, with just a faint haze softening the image.

The scene they watched reminded Chad of a low budget zombie flick. Skeletal-looking trees covered the expanse surrounding the much smaller city at the very center of the fog. Rough looking stone buildings that reminded him of mausoleums in a graveyard surrounded a horrifyingly magnificent grand cathedral-looking building. It stood at least five stories tall, with several sharp towers rising even higher, and one central tower that rose to a full ten stories tall. Even through the screen, the dark grey stone it was built from gave off a menacing aura of death and doom.

Zombies and skeletons shambled through the surrounding, dead-looking forest. Chad had to look twice when he saw the hostile count continuing to climb. It was already over three million, and the drone continued to find more of them as it continued its circling path. In and above the trees, more of the spectral wraiths could be seen flying around. They didn’t seem to have any purpose other than keeping in motion. Some were flying in circles, others bobbed in and out of the canopy of bare branches. The pit in Chad’s stomach continued to deepen as he saw what they were up against. Individually, every undead monster the drone had spotted had been weak, little more than cannon fodder. But like with a colony of ants, or bees, quantity became a quality all its own.

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Maintaining a high altitude, the Drone slowly spiraled in closer to the center. As it did, the numbers of weak hostiles had pretty much stopped climbing, aside from a few single digit jumps, when a new cluster had been found. But within the area covered in buildings, the numbers of stronger monsters started to appear on the display. It was in this area that the Draugr congregated. Chad had expected the same mindless wandering, but these creatures' behavior seemed different compared to the ones they’d fought just the previous day. Sure, the Draugr seemed smarter than the zombies and skeletons, but they didn’t really seem capable of independent thought and action. The ones in the settlement, for lack of a better word, looked like they were going about various jobs. Some were in the middle of crafting weapons and armor, another looked like it was using alchemy to prepare potions of some kind.

The onboard AI had tagged the brainless undead as an F ranked threat. The Draugr inside were significantly stronger with a threat level of D. during the drive earlier, Chad had familiarized himself with the AI’s ranking system. He didn’t know why, but chalked it up to a translation thing, but it used the alphabet system for designating threats. G was the lowest rank, consisting of practically harmless creatures like bunnies or mice, while A rank or even the higher S rank were practically god-like beings in power. Out of curiosity, Chad had checked his own threat rank, and even with his bloodline ability, he was only classified as an E Rank threat on his own. It chapped his ass to be classed as weaker than the Draugr, when he’d managed to kill several on his own, but it was what it was. The only thing he could do was to continue progressing.

Chad blinked as he cleared his thoughts and re-focused on the Drone’s footage. There were sixty Draugr that it had detected. The smaller buildings seemed to be crypt-like housing for them, and about half of the smarter undead were inside those buildings. The few that weren’t housing them looked like storage buildings of one kind or another. One held bundles of various dark loving plants and fungi that possessed alchemical properties, another held stone, wood and other building materials, while a third had various monster parts filling its shelves. The amount of available resources were staggering, and Chad wanted to look through all of those valuable alchemical ingredients.

Finished with its scouting of the area around the central building, the drone crept in closer to one of the tall, open windows that gave entry to the main building. Inside, sitting on a massive stone throne at one end of a great hall, sat a strange Draugr wearing an ill-fitting but expensive looking suit. As ridiculous as the creature looked, Chad nearly choked when the threat assessment gave it a C rank. The gap in power between each threat rank was larger for each higher rank. An E rank threat was typically twice as strong as an F rank, and a D rank was close to twice as powerful as the E rank. The fact that a C rank sat there shook Chad to his core.

“My, my, what have we here?” a dry voice came out of the controller's speakers. “A little bird taking a peek at little old me?”

The strange Draugr had turned its purple backlit eyes up at where the drone was hovering invisibly.

“You know, one shouldn’t spy on my Lady’s Chosen one. She whispers in my ear and she sees all.”

The video footage shook as the Drone was nearly knocked out of the air. It immediately dropped its camouflage and went into evasive maneuvers. The feed spun, disorienting fast, but Chad caught sight of over two dozen Draugr forming ice spears and launching them. Screeching sounds came from the surrounding woods as scores of specters flew rapidly towards the drone.

“Shit! We need to get out of here,” Chad swore.

“You don’t have to tell me twice,” Connor answered.

Sending a quick message to the Drone, Chad told it to evade the pursuit and then return to the hamlet once everything was clear. But if it couldn’t lose them, to not bring them back to his home. Once that was completed, Chad shoved the charging dock into his storage ring and joined Connor in their strategic retreat.