Divine Glitch: I Regressed With Endgame Knowledge

The new dungeon, Forest of Decay, had just opened. When Ryan woke up and logged into the game, the news reached him almost instantly.

The night before, during the Flight Point Battle, his small guild—backed only by a handful of independent players—had managed to capture the Flight Point while being swarmed by over a hundred Dark Horde members. Their improbable victory had quickly spread across the server.

Ryan had logged off right after the battle to rest, while others went back to grinding at the Elemental Portal. It was an efficient spot: not only did it yield a large amount of experience, but it also produced plenty of Elementium. By the time he returned, the guild's reserves had climbed past fifty stacks. With two hundred pieces in a stack, that meant more than ten thousand Elementium. Impressive, but still nowhere near enough to outfit a full forty-man raid.

"Not long after you logged off last night, someone tracked down the level 30 Guardian," AJ told him in a private message. "It was the Reaper's Call guild, from the Undead faction. They kept it quiet and took it down themselves. We only found out because they posted the news on the forums after the dungeon appeared. If they hadn't, we still wouldn't know."

"Forest of Decay is out already?" Ryan muttered, eyes widening. Then, to AJ's confusion, he clenched his fist and grinned like he'd just hit the jackpot.

He had been planning to hunt the Guardian today, but this news was far better than any drop the monster might have offered. The dungeon itself was what he had been waiting for.

Wasting no time, Ryan stocked up in Astral City, then set out toward the Arid Plains.

If only he had known where that level 30 Guardian was yesterday. He would have gone after it right after the Flight Point battle, tired or not.

Even with all his years of experience, the exact spawn points of many rare monsters remained obscure. In his previous life, Ryan had rarely bothered with Guardians at all; he hadn't cared for the trinkets and gear they dropped, unlike most players in the later stages of the game.

The only reason he could kill so many of them now was because of how widely those battles had been publicized in his past life. The chatter, the videos, the endless forum threads—they had etched the Guardians' locations into his memory whether he wanted them there or not.

The Forest of Decay dungeon lay deep within the Toxic Pools, a swamp crawling with poisonous creatures. The area came with a nasty twist: anyone inside suffered a thirty percent reduction in accuracy.

Ryan cut his way through the Pools, dragging a train of monsters behind him, and stepped into the dungeon portal.

The Forest of Decay required level 28 to enter, and hardly anyone had reached that yet. Most who had were in Ryan's guild, thanks to endless grinding in anomaly zones and the Elemental Portal. That meant the dungeon entrance was empty, and Ryan was the very first player to cross the threshold.

The moment he entered, the music shifted. Low, unsettling tones filled the air, broken by sudden howls that made the skin crawl.

Ahead stretched a wide three-way path, shrouded in shadow. Towering trees with strange, twisted branches wove together overhead, blocking out most of the sunlight. Only faint, broken rays slipped through to dapple the ground.

The path itself was carpeted in rotting leaves, soft and damp underfoot. Just stepping on them slowed movement by five percent. Worse, those leaves hid something more dangerous: monsters waiting just beneath the surface.

A careless player might charge forward, relieved to see no enemies at the entrance, only to learn too late what waited under the ground. The dungeon punished impatience swiftly, and brutally.

These subterranean monsters would respawn at random with every reset. Even veteran players familiar with the layout had to move cautiously. One wrong pull could drag half a dozen groups up at once, and that was how raids got wiped.

Ryan advanced carefully, weaving in a zigzag pattern. Within seconds, the ground burst open beneath his boots and a cluster of creatures clawed their way out, snapping their forelimbs at him.

—

Decaying Humic polyhedralis

Level: 30

Health: 1910

Type: Giant Insect

—

They weren't elite, just standard monsters, but they always spawned in packs of ten or more. Individually weak, but in numbers, they were dangerous.

Which was exactly why Ryan was here. He had put together a special set of gear: high armor, low attributes, built to soak hits. Each strike only shaved off about 170 health.

That was nothing compared to the level 25 elite scouts outside. In fact, these "normal" Insects hit harder than those elites. A full pack could strip two thousand health from him in an instant.

But Ryan had something they didn't account for: an artifact he'd pulled from a level 15 dungeon.

—

Flexible Slime Ring (Ring)

Binds on pickup

Level: 15

Quality: Rare

Effect: When you take physical damage not exceeding 200, there is a chance to negate the attack.

—

Forty percent of incoming hits under 200 damage simply didn't land. Every two or three strikes, one just… vanished. Against high-level bosses, it was situational. Against hordes of weak monsters? It was broken.

No wonder it was hailed later as a divine artifact for low-level tanks. Pair it with a Paladin's area heals, and even soloing the Forest of Decay was possible.

And that was exactly Ryan's plan.

From the entrance to the first boss, the forest looked eerily empty, but in truth thousands of Insects lurked just beneath the rotting leaves. If someone accidentally pulled them all, the resulting swarm would bury the entire party alive.

Each Insect gave solid experience. If Ryan cleared them all, the total came to nearly three hundred thousand points. With his stats and skills, he could round up two or three groups at a time and wipe them out in seconds.

The only real slowdown was hunting down the hidden spawn points. Even so, within fifteen minutes he had crushed more than seventy packs, his experience bar surging by over two hundred thousand points.

That worked out to nearly nine hundred thousand per hour—faster than grinding anomaly zones, and far more efficient.

The dungeon did have limits: each reset cost fifty stamina, and he could only enter twenty times a day. But five hours of this was more than enough. The rest of the day could be spent on other goals… or on getting some actual rest.