Zero tried to combine [CLEVE] with [BASIC SLASH].
The result was embarrassing. His arm moved in two directions at once, the conflicting trajectories sending him stumbling into a tree trunk. The impact split his shoulder, sending golden light leaking into the dirt.
[MANA DEPLETED]
The text flashed yellow in his vision. Zero slid down the bark until he was sitting in the mud. His chassis was heavy. Too heavy. He had spent one thousand years taking damage, but he had never dealt it. He was a library of ten thousand violences with no index.
Zero looked at his hands. The fingers that had snapped Min-hos wrist were trembling. Not from fear. From exertion. He was not built for output. He was built for input.
A new sensation bloomed in his chest. Not pain. He knew pain intimately. This was emptiness. A hollowness that had nothing to do with the cracks in his wood.
Zero was hungry.
Not for food. NPCs did not eat. But he wanted something. Purpose, maybe. Or revenge. Or just to understand why he was still moving when the script had ended.
The forest was dark. The canopy above blocked the sky he had just learned existed. Shadows moved between the trees, and Zero realized he was hearing footsteps.
"Oh," a voice said. "Oh, you are messed up."
Zero tried to stand. His legs would not obey. He reached for [HEAVENFALL], but he had dropped it somewhere in the underbrush.
A girl stepped into the clearing.
She was small. Human. Wearing white robes that had seen better days, stained with grass at the hem. Brown hair in a messy bun. She held a wooden staff that glowed with a soft light, and she was looking at Zero with eyes that were wide and curious and not afraid.
"Is that a costume?" she asked. She tilted her head. "The new patch added player housing decorations, but I did not think you could wear them."
Zero said nothing. His dialogue tree still felt broken, stuck between the three barks he had used for centuries and the new words he had learned from Min-hos blood.
She stepped closer. "You are glitching hard, friend. Your health bar is not showing up. Are you stuck in a roleplay emote?"
She reached out.
Her hand touched Zeros shoulder, where the wood had split. Her fingers were warm. Not the burning warmth of [FIREBALL]. Not the sharp heat of a blade. Just warm. Human. Gentle.
For one thousand years, every contact had been violence. This was the first time someone had touched Zero to fix instead of break.
"Oh," she whispered. Her eyes softened. "You are not a player."
She raised her staff. [HEALING LIGHT]
The spell washed over Zero in a wave of blue-white luminescence. It seeped into his cracks, knitting the wood back together. It filled his hollow chest with something like peace. The trembling in his fingers stopped.
[HP RESTORED]
[STATUS: STABILIZED]
"Better?" she asked.
Zero nodded. It was all he could manage.
She sat down in the mud next to him, unbothered by the dirt on her robes. "I am Aria," she said. "E-Rank [Healer]. Well, former E-Rank. Now I am just stuck. I failed the certification dungeon three times. They say my reaction time is too slow to be a real healer."
She talked like a river flowed, constant and unafraid of silence. "I have been camping in these woods for a week, grinding herbs to sell for enough silver to try again. But honestly? I think I am just going to stay here. The tutorial village sucks, but the monsters out here are at least predictable. Unlike players."
She looked at Zero. Really looked at him. At the golden light still leaking from his seams. At [HEAVENFALL] glinting in the ferns nearby.
"You are him," she said. Her voice dropped to a whisper. "The Rogue NPC. The message went out to everyone. You killed Sung Min-ho."
Zero tensed. His hand crept toward the sword.
She did not run.
Instead, she asked, "Did they really hit you ten million times?"
The question caught Zero off guard. Not "Are you going to kill me?" Not "What are you?" Just the arithmetic of his suffering.
"Yes," Zero said. His voice still sounded like splinters and static, but it was getting smoother. "Give or take."
She stared at him for a long moment. Her staff was still glowing, ready to cast. She could have hit him with [LIGHT BOLT]. It would have hurt. He was still low on mana.
Instead, she lowered the staff.
"My character was deleted," she said. "Two years ago. I was a beta tester for the [Oracle] class. They scrapped it, wiped all the data. But I respawned here instead of vanishing. Wrong zone. Wrong time. I have been hiding from the Admins ever since, pretending to be a failed player."
She smiled, sad and small. "We are both glitches."
[SYSTEM ALERT: ROGUE NPC DETECTION]
The text popped up in red, visible to both of them hovering in the air.
[TARGET ZERO LOCATED IN VICINITY. PROXIMITY: 50 METERS]
Aria looked at the alert. Then at Zero.
Voices echoed through the trees. Heavy boots crunching leaves. The clank of armor.
"Hunter party," Aria said. She stood up fast. "They are tracking you. The bounty for killing you is a Legendary Class Change. Every max level player in the region is coming."
Zero tried to stand again. His legs were still weak.
Aria pushed him back down. Not hard. Just firm.
"Stay still," she commanded.
She raised her staff. [CAMOUFLAGE]
The spell enveloped Zero, turning his wooden chassis the color of bark and shadow. The golden light dimmed to nothing. He became part of the landscape.
"Do not move," she whispered. "Do not breathe."
She walked toward the voices, her robes swishing.
Three players broke through the treeline. They wore plate armor gleaming with enchantments. The leader carried a spear that crackled with electricity.
"Hey," he called to Aria. "You see a wooden dummy walking around? Glitched out NPC?"
Aria put on a vacant expression. It was impressive how quickly she transformed from sharp to vapid.
"A dummy?" she giggled. "Like, for training?"
"It killed Sung Min-ho," the leader growled. "Answer the question."
Aria pointed vaguely east, deeper into the woods. "I saw something shiny that way. Moving fast. Might have been a player with a new skin?"
The hunters exchanged looks.
"East," the leader said. "Move out. If she is lying, we will come back and camp her spawn point."
They charged past her, crashing through the underbrush, chasing ghosts.
Aria waited until the sounds faded. Then she walked back to Zero and dispelled the camouflage with a wave of her staff.
"They are morons," she said. "But there will be more."
Zero looked up at her. "Why?"
"Why what?"
"Why help me?"
She sat down again, this time on a rock instead of the mud. "Because ten million hits is a lot," she said. "And because I have been alone in these woods for two years, and you are the first person who actually listened to me talk."
She looked at [HEAVENFALL] in the ferns.
"You need to learn how to fight," she said. "Really fight. Not just swing a sword you stole. You have the skills, but you move like you are still nailed to a pedestal."
Zero picked up the sword. Offered it to her. "Teach me."
She shook her head. "I am a healer. I do not hit things. I fix them." She smiled. "But I can teach you how to move without breaking. How to dodge instead of just standing there. How to read an enemy instead of memorizing their combo patterns."
Zero lowered the blade. "You would stay with me?"
"Until you do not need me," she said. "Or until the Admins find us. Whichever comes first."
The forest was quiet again. The [SYSTEM] alerts had faded, confused by her camouflage.
Zero looked at his hands. They were steady now.
"Then we start now," Zero said.
[ALLY ACQUIRED: ARIA]
[STATUS: HIDDEN]
[SKILLS: 10,049 (Added: CAMOUFLAGE from observation)]
[HIDEOUT: ESTABLISHED]
[NEW OBJECTIVE: LEARN TO FIGHT]