Divine Glitch: I Regressed With Endgame Knowledge

Sindanai was no ordinary gnoll. The creature towered over its kin, a hulking priest draped in tattered ceremonial garb, its long fangs gleaming with an unnatural shimmer. Each tooth seemed to carry its own faint halo of shifting colors, the telltale mark of a rare gift.

Ryan recognized it immediately. This was Sindanai's unique passive: Elemental Attack.

He glanced over the Guardian's active buffs and read through them carefully:

—

Elemental Attack: Sindanai is a special creature favored by the elements. Its strikes can randomly trigger various types of elemental damage. This effect can trigger no more than once every five seconds.

Shadow Attack: Each hit deals 320–450 shadow damage and restores 1000 health to the user.

Nature Attack: Each hit deals 280–300 nature damage and poisons the target, causing an additional 100 damage per second for five seconds.

Fire Attack: Each hit deals 300 fire damage and releases a shockwave, burning all enemies within twenty yards for an additional 400 damage.

Frost Attack: Each hit deals 200 frost damage and inflicts Winter's Chill, slowing attack speed by 20 percent and movement speed by 50 percent. The next frost hit against the target deals double damage. Lasts ten seconds.

Arcane Attack: Each hit deals 300 arcane damage and plants an invisible Arcane Seed in a target within twenty yards. Once triggered, the seed explodes in a twenty-yard radius, draining 300 mana and dealing damage equal to half the mana drained.

—

Just reading the list made Ryan hesitate. Against a creature with these abilities, every second in melee range was a gamble—and almost everyone he could call here on short notice was melee. His ranged allies were all tied up running level-twenty dungeon quests for gear.

Still, that was never his real plan. Ryan had intended from the start to use this Guardian as bait for the forums. Without wasting time, he began recording, capturing Sindanai's hulking form and the exact coordinates. Once he had the footage, he would pass it to someone in the guild to post online.

But as he filmed, something caught him off guard. Out of the corner of his eye, a shimmer of air bent unnaturally. The outline of a figure emerged from nothing—someone in stealth, moving in close.

It was Blade Runner.

She wasn't a guild player, nor part of the local warbands. Blade Runner had joined the game later, during the big population surge, and had made her way forward with quiet efficiency. She'd gotten lucky early, hitting level five quickly, leaving the starting zone behind, and picking up two gathering professions. By level twenty she had already amassed dozens of gold coins—worth several hundred dollars at current exchange rates—just from harvesting while she leveled.

That wasn't even her full potential. If she had focused entirely on gathering instead of splitting her time, she could have earned several times more. By the time she heard the neutral territories were overflowing with rare resources, she had been leveling comfortably in her faction's heartlands. Without hesitation, she accepted a quest that took her to the Arid Plains, hoping to cash in on the opportunity and make some extra spending money.

She hadn't expected the change. The once quiet region had erupted into open conflict, making every foray dangerous. Most players avoided the place altogether. But Blade Runner was a rogue, and stealth was her ally. She adapted, slipping past danger and heading even deeper into higher-level zones in search of rare herbs and ores. Her plan was simple: gather as much as she could now, then sell later when crafting professions caught up and demand exploded.

Blade Runner had barely set foot in the Bloodfang Stone Forest before trouble found her—or rather, before he did. She hadn't even picked more than a couple of herbs when a human paladin strolled in like he owned the place.

She hadn't planned on following him at first. Bloodfang Stone Forest was dangerous for a solo player, crawling with packs of warriors, priests, and elemental creatures. Most players who pulled more than one group ended up eating dirt unless they had an escape plan.

But this paladin was different. He cut through monsters as if swatting flies, his movements smooth and deliberate. Curiosity got the better of her, and she tailed him, stepping over the fresh corpses of the monsters he left behind.

Eventually, he stopped. That was when Blade Runner saw why—standing before him was something that made even him pause.

A Guardian.

Her heart skipped a beat. She snapped a screenshot without thinking, then circled for a better view. One look told her she had no chance against it, and neither did anyone she knew. It wasn't just big—it radiated the kind of danger that made even reckless players keep their distance.

The paladin hadn't moved for a while. Blade Runner figured he must be messaging his friends for backup. He wasn't displaying his ID, so she couldn't tell if he was guilded.

Still, she knew exactly what this could mean.

Featherlight's name had been all over the forums lately. The first and second epic items in the entire game had come from him, sparking no end of envy. If loot had been droppable on death, people would have been forming kill squads just to strip him clean.

The source of those epic items had been no ordinary foe—it was a level 20 Guardian, Fallen Illyria.

While most level 20 Guardians hadn't dropped epic gear, the one Featherlight defeated had been an Overcharged Guardian. His reasoning afterward had convinced almost everyone. In the starter zone, he'd gotten green gear from a level 5 Guardian. In Blood Gorge, rare gear from a level 15 Guardian. Then, from the Overcharged level 20 Guardian, two epic items. His deduction: a level 25 Guardian could very well drop epic gear.

As the only player to have taken down Guardians at 5, 15, and 20, his words carried weight. Soon, the entire player base had gone mad for the idea. Level 25 Guardians were being hunted everywhere, with the consensus that even if those in faction heartlands didn't drop epics, the ones in the neutral Arid Plains almost certainly would.

Blade Runner never dreamed she'd run into one here. She couldn't kill it herself, but she could sell the location—or make a paid post with the coordinates and rake in the gold.

Meanwhile, Ryan had been trying to figure out how to publicize the find without making it look staged. Most of his guild members had accounts directly tied to their forum IDs, and posting through them would look suspiciously self-serving.

"Do I make a throwaway account, or ask Molly to do it?" he muttered. His younger sister had started playing recently but refused to reveal her character's name. He'd let it slide at the time, but now she seemed the perfect candidate for the job.

Before he could decide, the forums exploded.

A paid post shot to the top, the title screaming across the screen:

Guardian of the Arid Plains Discovered—Monster Guaranteed to Drop Epic Gear!