Terror Sprites

After running a good distance, I slowed my pace as I began to see some familiar landmarks. Some colorful butterflies flit around patches of vibrant blossoms. The air was filled with the sweet smell of wildflowers and honey.

"Aha, there are you little shits."

I dove into a nearby bush the moment I saw the butterflies. I was foolish and ignorant the last time I encountered these bugs, originally thinking that they were nothing but insects. It was only later that I realized that they had a magical aura that would cause nearby creatures to fall asleep. Those little fucks were Terror Sprites. At night, they transformed into carnivorous fairy-like monsters, shedding their cute, colorful insect-like bodies for something that looked like a tooth fairy with teeth that could easily tear flesh off the bone. I fell asleep because of these things once, but was saved in the middle of the night because Punisher happened to be on night watch.

"Just gotta follow the Terror Sprites. Status window."

Out of curiosity, I called out the status window and navigated to view the scoreboard and the objectives that earned points. I was curious as to whether the same objectives that I had seen in the past were here again.

Season 1 Scoreboard

Alorae: 4,302

Veldan: 3,812

Humanity: 872

Season 1 Slayer Objectives

Slay Thornheart Creeper: 1 point

Slay Terror Sprite: 1 point

Slay Sludge Bettle: 1 point

Slay Murkcap Mushroom: 1 point

Slay Moss-gnaw Rat: 1 point

Slay Direfang Wolf: 3 points

Slay Bramblefiend Shambler: 3 points

Slay Thornheart Stalker: 3 points

Slay Emberbeard Behemoth: 50 points

Slay Frostbark Treant: 50 points

Slay Thornheart Queen: 20,000 points

Slay Brakenshade Collosus: 30,000 points

Slay Verdant Leviathan: 100,000 points

Season 1 Sponsored Objectives

[God of Slaughter sponsorship] 

50,000 points for every player who kills over 5000 players of a different race by the end of the first season.

[God of Laughter sponsorship] 

1 point if you don't kill anything by the end of the first season.

[God of the Hunt sponsorship]

50,000 points for the player who kills the most Direfang Wolves.

[God of Wind sponsorship]

10,000 points for the player who travels the most by the end of the first season.

[God of Pain sponsorship]

25,000 points for the player who takes the most damage by the end of the first season.

[God of Scales sponsorship] 

100,000 points for killing the Rank 1 player on the leaderboard if they are not of your own race.

Leaderboard

At'tok Krosfah [Veldan]: 470 points

Losha Feivoni [Alorae]: 307 points

Korralis Bayspo [Alorae]: 296 points

Haliani Jaie [Alorae]: 287 points

Keke Keke [Veldan]: 282 points

I was shocked to see that the sponsored objectives had changed from the ones that I had seen in the past. The God of Scales never made a move during any of the seasons in the past. In fact, I had never even heard of the God of Scales until I returned from the final season, thanks to the contract. Whoever the God of Scales was, they were seriously about to make things dangerous for me if I slew the boss monster.

"The other gods didn't change their sponsored objectives… Maybe only the God of Scales knows that I went back in time? This is so confusing; there's no way of telling how many gods do or don't know that I went back to the past."

It was pretty evident that these gods were the ones behind humanity's entrance into the Five Seasons. There were a lot of theories people had as to why, but in the end, many just assumed it was for the sake of entertainment. It reminded me of the ancient Romans and how they had gladiators fighting for their lives in the Colosseum, all for entertainment. These gods were exactly the same.

After closing the status window, I continued to search around the surrounding area for another landmark that eventually came to be known as the Faerie Glade. It was a tranquil glade where a sparkling, crystal-clear pond existed and earned its name from all the Terror Sprites that were concentrated in the area. No one visited this area because the concentrated sleeping aura in the glade was strong enough to force anyone under level 20 to take a nap in under a minute. Fortunately, my stats were already comparable to those of someone who was level 27.

It took another fifteen minutes, but I had finally found the glade. Hundreds of Terror Sprites were littering the area, but thankfully it was daytime, and they only fed during the night. Right now, they are harmless if you don't take their aura into account. The glade was beautiful, but it hid a nightmare that no one discovered until the last week of the first season in my past life.

Once humanity was able to claim some of these nearby areas from the Veldan, we discovered the glade had remained largely untouched. The Veldan were not interested in fighting the weak Terror Sprites, so they never properly explored the glade. By luck, a random player stumbled into this glade and startled the Verdant Leviathan by farming some of the Terror Sprites in the area. The massive concentration of sleep aura served to help the Verdant Leviathan stay dormant, but once they are removed from the area, things get a little crazy.

The gods must have planned for this monster to stay undiscovered early on. If he wakes up and you don't have a literal army ready to fight this thing, you will be dead. I was far from matching up to an army, but what I lacked in numbers I could make up for with experience. I had been fighting monsters like this for over four years, and the Verdant Leviathan was nothing compared to the boss monsters that I had to fight in the seasons to come.

"Let's do this shit."

These Terror Sprites were not the kind of monster I wanted to have on record as my first kill in the Verdant Abyss. They were nothing but a nuisance, and killing even a single one would ruin my plans. I wanted to find out if the system would give me an achievement for killing a boss monster at level 1. I reached back and unclipped my secret weapon that I had clipped to my pack for this very occasion.

"It's time to scare away some annoying bugs."