Divine Glitch: I Regressed With Endgame Knowledge

The Arid Plains stretched far and wide, dotted with flight points that acted as crucial hubs for both travel and pursuit. Forty-eight internal points and a hundred and fourteen external ones formed a vast network across the region, each serving a purpose depending on its proximity. For Ryan, they now meant danger rather than convenience, because the very NPCs tracking him relied on those same points to hunt him down.

The moment Ryan's kill count reached fifty, the Druidic Order would dispatch scouts to eliminate him. Their pursuit always began at Verdant Spire, the town at the very heart of the plains, before spreading outward in an ever-expanding circle.

If he was spotted at any particular location, a detachment would immediately be sent to intercept him, cutting off his progress. Defeating them was hardly a solution, since the slain NPCs would respawn in pairs every two minutes at the same location. Each kill drew more pursuers, each skirmish painting a larger target on his back.

The danger escalated further because those fallen NPCs weren't truly gone. Each one established a magical tether to Verdant Spire, effectively drawing a boundary around the location of their death. The Druidic Order would then lock down the entire zone, controlling it from the inside out. If Ryan wandered into one of those sealed circles, an overwhelming force would be teleported directly onto him. Escape would be near impossible.

The only real option for a player at that stage was to keep moving toward the outer edges of the map. Out there, the Order's control no longer spread, but the wilds were far from safe. If Ryan avoided further kills, the Order would eventually stop reinforcing their pursuit. But if he continued, crossing the next threshold, the cycle repeated with stronger and stronger forces. Inevitably, the hunted was driven farther and farther into the periphery, where death came either by the Order's blades or by the monstrous beasts that roamed the borderlands. Worse still, dying during this quest meant losing everything—the rewards, the progress, all of it.

The quest itself wasn't freely available. It triggered at irregular times each day, though savvy players had already pieced together enough of its rhythm to anticipate its appearance. Meeting its requirements, however, was another matter.

The first condition was raw strength. The Arid Plains weren't a beginner's hunting ground. Even if a player wasn't the absolute strongest, they needed to be above the average adventurer of the region. Any character over level thirty, though, was disqualified from ever receiving the quest.

The second condition was secrecy. A player could only accept the quest in remote places far from watchful eyes. Even if an NPC offering the quest appeared in a busy marketplace, the option would vanish under the crowd's gaze.

And finally, the rewards. They weren't measured by how many enemies a player killed, but rather by how many waves of pursuers they outlasted. Defeating more Order scouts increased the payout but came with a cost: every kill eroded the player's standing with the Druidic Order. The higher the toll, the sharper the penalty.

Failing the quest was brutal. If a player died before reaching fifty kills, or couldn't even withstand the first scouts, the reward amounted to little more than pocket change—some experience and a few coins. The loss of reputation, however, was crushing enough to make even veterans wince.

Once a player crossed that fifty-kill mark, the Order began its measured escalation. At first, a lone level twenty-five scout appeared. At sixty kills, two would arrive together. Every ten kills beyond that added two more to their number. At ninety kills, the Order fielded five scouts in unison, and once the hundredth kill was claimed, the chase intensified. An elite scout—still level twenty-five but far deadlier—would take the lead, backed by his five common counterparts.

Beyond the hundredth kill, the difficulty rose mercilessly. For every additional ten kills, the Druidic Order dispatched another elite scout, until the count reached one hundred and forty. At that point, Ryan would be facing a squad of five elites, each supported by five common scouts.

At one hundred and fifty kills, the challenge turned nightmarish. Only a single pursuer appeared, but it wasn't just any pursuer—it was a level twenty-five boss with more than sixty thousand health, brutal attack power, and skills designed to crush players outright. Against something like that, no one of Ryan's tier could hope to last. Which was why he had already set his limit: one hundred and forty kills. That was the ceiling. Push beyond it, and he'd be walking into a death sentence.

Preparation mattered just as much as raw strength. Anyone taking this quest had to think through every retreat in advance. Moving across the map wasn't just about finding the best pockets of potential victims; it was about ensuring there was always a way out when the Order's scouts appeared, or worse, when hostile players joined in.

In time, enough reckless players had tested the quest that an unofficial "ultimate map" circulated. It detailed kill zones, escape routes, and safe rotations for anyone daring to attempt the challenge. Ryan wasn't ashamed to admit that he leaned on this work of trial and error—it gave him a framework to push his own limits further.

After racking up forty-nine kills, he didn't linger at the Eastern Summoning Array. He cut straight toward a narrow valley near Verdant Spire, where level twenty-four monsters roamed. It was risky being so close to the Order's center of power, but few players dared quest there, making it the perfect ambush ground. His next target—a minotaur shaman—fell quickly, and with its death, the first wave of pursuers triggered.

The scout who appeared was laughably weak, no tougher than the local monsters. Ryan cut him down with ease before retreating deeper into the valley. A minute later, the shaman respawned at the spot of his death, clearly bewildered. At first he thought he had simply been unlucky, struck down by someone who looked human but might have been another monster. But when he saw more and more scouts from Verdant Spire materializing around him, suspicion dawned.

He reported it immediately to his guild channel. The minotaur belonged to a small guild, and at first his claims were brushed off. But when he pointed out that he hadn't lost anything beyond a corpse run, others began to listen. Soon another guildmate chimed in with the same complaint, and before long the Dark Horde's regional channel across the Arid Plains lit up with chatter.

Some players recognized what was happening but kept their mouths shut, not wanting to jeopardize their own runs of the quest. But a few connected the dots. Whoever this mysterious killer was, he wasn't one of their own. He had to be from the Alliance of Light.

Ryan pressed on, building his kill count with precision. By the time he reached one hundred and ten, an hour and a half had slipped by. Only thirty minutes remained before the quest would end, and the pressure mounted. Could he reach his target before time ran out?

Word of his spree was already spreading. Some of the slain minotaurs, tipped off by careless chatter, realized exactly who was cutting them down. They began tracking the rumors, piecing together his movements, and steadily tightening their pursuit.

Finally, with a hundred and forty kills under his belt, Ryan found himself at the farthest, most dangerous edge of the Arid Plains. No ordinary players ventured here. The weakest monsters were level twenty-nine Toxic Slimes—creatures strong enough to devour anyone unprepared.

And time was running out. Six minutes remained until the quest ended.

Across the wasteland, a group of Druidic scouts locked eyes on him. Ten of them in total, their cloaks whipping in the wind as they advanced with grim precision.