Daniyal sat on the ground, his back leaning on the tree behind him, and his hand resting on the golden leaves burying the forest ground. He had been walking for hours on end without a moment of rest.

He glanced at the golden tint of his skin. If he looked hard enough, he could even convince himself that he was human. The greenish color denominating his goblin heritage was completely hidden.

Good. The amulet was still functioning. The fall from earlier hadn’t damaged it much. The worst thing that could happen was for it to cease working when he was so far away from any goblin territory. If anything were to happen to it, it would require a high orc’s magic to repair it.

He still couldn’t figure out how the human had sensed him, nor how he figured out that Daniyal wasn’t a human.

Daniyal winced as he lifted his sleeve, the torn edges sticking to his congealed blood. He would need to tend to the wound. He looked around. He would need to find some herbs to apply to it to prevent any infection from settling in.

In a while, he thought. He was still exhausted from his narrow escape. He still could feel the pain as the sword’s sharp blade cut through his skin.

The half-rotten leaves creaked as he buried his fingers deeper until he could feel the coolness and the softness of the moss underneath.

In a while.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

He just needed to rest for a bit.

Daniyal’s chest burned as he took a deep breath, committing the sharp pine scent to memory. He glanced at the floating black leaf as it rotated and pointed in another direction, the faint bluish glow surrounding it indicating the diminishing effect of the tracking spell. He would soon have to recast it. Usually, a tracking spell was a goblin’s perpetual nightmare, it consumed lots of mana and only powerful high orcs could perform an accurate one. In the last war, there were warriors whose sole purpose was to track enemies. They would take turns casting the spell and do nothing but rest till their depleted mana was replenished, and then they would recast it again.

While Daniyal never had the opportunity to measure up to any of those warriors, he was known as the best amongst his peers in the academy with the ability to cast a tracking spell more than three times successively.

Maybe that was why the sage had chosen him. Not that Daniyal was privy to her list of candidates.

As far as he was concerned, it was more of a hassle than the honor the sage painted it to be. Why did he have to endanger himself, kilometers away from home, looking for some long-lost heir to the throne?

He put his hand over his chest, breathing deeply as he felt the amulet’s warmth through his shirt.

Well, at least he got something out of it.

Thanks to the amulet, he got to see more than any other goblin did in the last decade.

A small part of him, a part well hidden inside his chest, hoped that the heir wouldn’t be found anytime soon. He still wanted to see the world. The more he saw, the more he wanted to see.

He took a deep breath, braced his hands against his knees, and struggled to his feet.

He better carry on his way. He didn’t know whether the human had survived the fall, nor did he want to confirm it. It would be better if he didn’t, though. The less who knew about him, the better.

With shaky legs, Daniyal followed the nearly-fading spell.