Nara walked for nearly an hour through the thickening woods, bare feet silent on moss and fallen needles. The heavy satchel dug into her shoulder with every step, but she refused to slow. Behind her, soft rustling followed at a constant ten-pace distance. She stopped. The rustling stopped. She started again. The rustling resumed.
She spun around.
The goblin stood there in the moonlight, yellow eyes glowing faintly grey, head tilted like a curious dog. It had followed her the entire way without making a sound louder than a leaf brushing against leather.
"Go," she said flatly, pointing back the way they had come.
The goblin blinked once. Slowly.
She tried again, voice colder. "Leave. Disappear. I release you."
It tilted its head the other way. The chest wound where the soul gem sat had fully closed, leaving only a faint grey scar. The creature looked almost expectant.
Nara drew the small utility knife from the satchel and held it up so the blade caught the light. "I will cut you apart if you keep following me."
The goblin considered the knife for a long moment, then sat down on its haunches and waited, as if the threat was merely interesting conversation.
She exhaled through her nose, sharp and annoyed. Fine. If it refused to leave, she would deal with it later. For now, the woods were too dangerous to waste energy on a stubborn corpse.
She kept walking.
The goblin followed.
After another twenty minutes she gave up and stopped in a small clearing ringed by thick ferns. She dropped the satchel, rolled her shoulders, and glared at the creature.
It sat opposite her, cross-legged, hands resting on its knees like it was attending a meeting.
She needed a name. Calling it "the goblin" every time she thought about it felt inefficient. A name would make commands clearer. The word arrived in her head before she could stop it.
"Pip," she said, testing the sound. It felt stupid the moment it left her mouth. She was immediately annoyed at herself for the softness. She was undead. She had a glitch class. She did not give pet names to revived monsters.
Pip's ears perked up. The goblin made a small clicking sound in its throat that might have been approval.
Nara opened the goblin's System panel with nothing more than a thought. She had no idea how she could do that. The interface appeared instantly, clean except for the same faint corrupted flicker at the edges that marked everything connected to her now.
Pip – Goblin Scout, Level 1Class: Undead Scout (Glitch Variant)Skills: Minor Stealth (Passive), Basic Tracking, Undead ResilienceBond: Primary Authority – NaraLoyalty: 100%
She stared at the panel. She had never seen another creature's full status before. Not in the fields. Not even when Kael had shown her pages from the Grimoire. Yet here it was, laid out as clearly as her own grey bar. Another glitch. She noted it mentally, adding it to the growing list of things the System should not allow.
Pip watched her read, patient and unblinking.
She pulled the manual back out and settled against a tree trunk, legs stretched out. Moonlight was still sufficient. She flipped to the creature section and began reading about Zone 1 monsters while Pip sat opposite her like a student waiting for lecture.
The pages described goblins as bottom-tier scavengers, common near borders, rarely rising above Level 3 unless they formed warbands. Higher Zone 1 threats included shadow wolves, mana leeches, and the occasional corrupted treant. Each entry included drop tables, weak points, and recommended harvesting methods. She absorbed it all, committing numbers and diagrams to memory with the same mechanical focus she once used for berry counts.
Then she found the subsection on unregistered undead.
The text was short and clinical. Unregistered undead technically did not exist within the System's primary architecture. They fell outside standard classification because they lacked proper zone authority registration. Auto-kill protocols for undead—designed to purge corrupted life-force—were tied exclusively to registered authorities. As long as no one with System Authority (Travellers, guild officials, noble enforcers, or higher) decided she was worth filing the proper paperwork, the System would largely ignore her. Grey states were glitches. Glitches were low priority unless they scaled.
She read the passage three times.
Safe. For now. As long as she stayed quiet and no one important noticed.
Pip made another soft clicking sound. Nara glanced up. The goblin was pointing at the manual, then at itself, then back at the manual. She ignored it.
She kept reading, cross-referencing the stealth skill listed in Pip's panel with the manual's descriptions. Minor Stealth allowed short periods of near-invisibility in natural cover. Useful. Especially for something that refused to leave her side.
A faint rustle reached her ears—different from Pip's quiet movements. Heavier. Multiple sets of boots.
Pip's head snapped toward the sound. The goblin moved faster than she expected, lunging forward and grabbing the sleeve of her tunic with cold fingers. It pulled hard, then pointed urgently into the trees on the far side of the clearing.
Torchlight flickered between the trunks. Three, maybe four separate flames. Voices carried on the night air—sharp, organized, angry.
Nara recognized the lead voice instantly.
Kael.
"…spread out. The satchel has a tracker. She couldn't have gone far. That bitch took everything."
Three armed escorts moved with him. Leather armor, short swords, one carrying a crossbow. Their class markers flickered faintly above their heads—Level 8 to Level 12 fighters, all with basic Zone 1 clearance. Kael's own marker burned brighter, Traveller status giving him authority that could end her grey existence with a single report.
Pip tugged her sleeve again, harder, trying to pull her toward denser cover.
Nara's mind raced through calculations. Distance. Numbers. Weapons. The satchel on her back. Pip's stealth skill. Her own grey bar still sitting at twenty-three percent.
Kael had found her trail.
And he sounded like a man who had decided his property needed to be punished.
She rose slowly, hand already reaching for the utility knife, while Pip melted into the ferns beside her, grey eyes locked on the approaching torches.
The cage had followed her across the border.