Aggro Litrpg || Progression Fantasy

"You're sure we can't persuade you to hang about for a bit?"

I looked up from my preparations to leave to see Roderick leaning on the trestle table. I could tell he already knew my answer, as he was preparing my exit portal already. Coils smoked in polite little threads around him, reeking of hot rubber and boiled barley sweets.

The Hunt's war room (war field) still looked like a church jumble sale after someone had armed the Women's Institute. Deckchairs still ringed the sagging gazebo, the tea urn hissed, and the fold-out table listed on a crate of Irn-Bru. The OS maps were trying to escape the wind and were being bullied flat under jam jars and rocks. The whiteboard, propped on a milk crate, was sweating out its Post-its with curled edges and tea splatters.

The portal scars from our return were making the weeds lean the wrong way, and half a folding chair was left smoking where reality had widened and not quite shut. Somewhere behind the hedge, sheep bleated with passive-aggressive menace while Max snored under the table in his high-vis GOOD BOY vest, one paw over his nose, dreaming of being a lion and thumping his tail when the field breathed.

"I can't," I said, shaking my head. "You know I can't."

"It's just, now you are standing up again," he said, "it does seem sensible to give it a little bit longer before getting back into it. It's not thirty minutes since you were looking like someone had poured wet cement into your bones."

"If you spend enough time around me, you'll realise that's something of my default position after a fight. I'm less Vini Vidi Vici as I come, I get battered, and then I outlast the other guy."

"Cheerful."

"Look, I had a nice little nap and now I'm bouncing back. I am very professional."

He looked past me to where the rest of The Hunt were still debriefing on what had happened in the power station. Apparently, this seemed like a fairly normal day out at the races. Iris was shuffling around with a blanket over her shoulders, long plait down her back like a line drawn straight by a patient hand. Kenny stood by the board with a marker cap in his mouth, scribbling the adds we had defeated and also the order of battle the Chord had taken up, and while muttering about pressure gradients like he was pricing bananas.

The air had that feeling after a storm when the sky has more to say but has decided not to make a scene. The rift was closed; that much was true. But I didn't get the sense that anyone was viewing this as an especially significant event. More like the latest task being ticked off a very long to-do list.

The atmosphere in the field was not buzzing, more like an expectant murmur. All the hairs on my arms that had stood to attention during the fight were finally lying down like sensible citizens, but the sense that something new was coming was already in the air.

This was a non-stop Crusade, and if I didn't keep my wits about me, I could see how easy it would be to become sucked into fighting it.

"Everything seems to be generally holding up as we could hope," Kenny said without looking around at me. "The Threshold's numbers have stopped falling and returned to whatever approaches normal these days."

I nodded. "Good. I would love for this place to remain in one piece for a little while longer."

"Well, you certainly did your bit," Roderick said. "Thanks to you and a very tired mathematician with chalk in her hair."

I could still feel the last pulse of the thing we had slaughtered as a buzzing echo behind my eyes. The Chord had taken some battering to give up the ghost but, eventually, it was good to see that the bag of tricks I'd developed in Bayteran still got the job done.

ANCHOR STABILISATION: PROVISIONAL

The pane shimmered into view and then vanished immediately. Well, nothing like getting a good and hearty 'job well done' from the system, was there? I sighed, and my ribs complained in a polite way and stopped inflating. I knew my recovery from the battering I'd taken – and invited myself to take - was already better than it had any right to be.

Stubborn Constitution doing what it said on the tin, probably.

Roderick watched me test my shoulders. "I still can't believe you're all right," he said, a little wonder in it. "We knew Wardens were hardy, but…"

"Trust me, I'm a little annoyed about it too."

He raised a frown, so I continued.

"Being 'all right' immediately after a kicking makes people expect even more from you. I was looking forward to being pathetic for at least an hour. Maybe getting a biscuit carried to me. A foot rub or two wouldn't have gone amiss either."

He reached behind him, found a custard cream, and flicked it at my head. I caught it without thinking and munched down. The field was quiet in the way that follows good work done quickly. With relief. They had gone to war and had not lost anyone. Things don't get much better than that, do they?

The System chimed again, a dry little throat-clear in my ear.

ATTRIBUTE CHANGE
Charisma −1

I stared at the empty air where the pane had been and opened my hands like I might catch the point as it fell off me. It did not help. Something in my face settled an inch closer to danger.

"Oh, come on! Are we just arbitrarily making my life harder now?" I yelled at the air. "My prize for saving a power station, kicking hell out of a monster creature from the dark dimension and generally being the hero is becoming even less desirable company!"

Kenny wandered over. "What happened?"

"My sole reward – my only one – for that battle was to lose a Charisma Point. I'm not being funny, I got better rewards from rolling around in the woods with a Wolf at Level 1 than that! What gives?"

Roderick squinted at me. He had the decency to look as offended as I felt. "That does seem somewhat harsh," he said. "Especially as your personality is already… how do I put this… an acquired taste."

"I prefer forthright. But I guess that will do."

"Obviously, that is not a reflection on how we feel about you," Kenny said. "You know that, right?"

"I do," I said and thought about things for a moment. "I guess I could see it as not a punishment? In a way. The way my Class works, there are benefits in me having a low Charisma score. Just not, you know, many fun ones."

Roderick came close enough to study me like I was a puzzle on a Christmas cracker. "Any pain?" he asked.

"Only in my pride. And possibly in other people when I try to flirt with them and fail."

He clicked his tongue and looked over at Iris, who was taking an interest in all the male bonding we had going on. "Theories?"

"Always," Iris said. "One, Iron Provocateur baseline bends social sliders toward abrasive. The lad's kit has always turned him into a burr under the saddle. As he suggests, it could well be the System is helping to lean into that because it keeps idiots from wasting his time."

"I could simply tell them to leave me alone," I said. "I don't really need the points reduction."

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"Two," Iris went on, "we could be looking at some sort of shadow exposure after-effect here. Elijah was elbow-deep in a rift. Sometimes the personal sheet moves to match the work. You adapt to pressure, and the person you are on paper drifts to match the person you are in a fight. Do you have any sort of Skill or Trait linked to Shadow?"

I nodded cautiously. I liked this idea far less than I did the System was giving me a cackhanded reward. "Do you have any theories not based on something bad happening to my soul?" I said. "It's just I like trying to keep my morning chats light."

"Three," she said, nodding, "this could be a normal Warden process. You are entirely radioactive to Shadows and to anything with a thin skin on reality. That, pretty inevitably, means that 'normal' people read you as wrong. Just being in the presence of someone whose role is to keep the herds safe from unspeakable horrors will make stomachs try to leave the building, without them knowing why. So, it could just be your Charisma has ticked down as a function of that. Because your interactions with the rest of us are becoming… let us say bracing."

Yeah, I liked that one even less. All of those sounded possible, and yet none of them really made me feel all that much better.

It was Roderick, though, who came up with the answer I decided to go with.

"Never overlook the Law of Sod," he said. "Margaret used to swear by it."

"Thank you," I said, deadpan. "How very helpful. I lost a Charisma Point either because it was helpful to my kit, because my soul is poisoned by the rift, because other people are in such awe of me, or it's just one of those things because the world hates me. I feel much better now."

Max thumped his tail. I sensed he approved of all laws that could be explained with one syllable.

"Look, I'm going to say it again, but you know you could stay with The Hunt," Roderick said. He put it down in front of me like a mug of tea. "We have four more sites going strange in the near future that we could use your help with. Woking is playing up again, and Norfolk is still soft in the middle. And there's a line of the map up by Swansea that's looking like it wants to become a hellmouth. We could surely use a Warden on hand while we run those."

"Tempting," I said, because it was. Triage suits me. I was used to holding doors closed that other people could not see. Old-job work where I'd pick the exit, set the tempo, and make sure the person I was shadowing didn't walk away breathing. It would be just flexing the same muscles here. I'd set the rhythm, solve the thing in front of me and then the thing after. I'd keep people alive with a good plan and a stubborn body.

I could have stood in The Hunt's door for a month and not complain.

Just when I was considering that, the field tilted around me. Not really, but the world did its quiet shift where the System notices you thinking you might be happy. A panel ripped open in the centre of my vision.

QUEST UPDATE
Personal Quest reasserted.
Veil Link: Active
Countdown: 36:00:00

There was a second line under it that made the skin at the back of my neck stiffen.

SYSTEM ADVISORY
London Tether under stress
Delay in completing Quest is increasing the risk of a local thinning event

Roderick saw me react. "Bad?"

"Let's say there's a time limit now on me getting my original quest sorted," I said, watching the timer for me to find Griff start to tick down..

Kenny put the cap back on the marker and leaned his forehead to the board for a heartbeat. "Honestly, we could really use you," he said again. Not a plea, more of a fact reported. He had a dog with all sorts of magic tricks, but he did not have a spare Warden.

"I know," I said. "I am sorry. I'd stay if I could, but I think I'm being led somewhere else."

"Margaret once said to me, ' Do not apologise for going where the fire is hottest,'" Roderick said. "I think she would be disappointed if her nephew did not do the same thing."

"That's some truly terrible life advice," I said. "Honestly, I'm starting to worry whether my Aunt actually had my best interests at heart."

"She had high expectations of you," he said. "Also, if you do not turn up in London soon, you will spend the rest of the week pretending not to read that countdown while you clean our mugs and fail to win Max's respect."

The dog opened one eye at his name and let out a small whuff, which might have been agreement or gas. It was probably gas. After a second, it became clear that it most definitely was gas.

Roderick moved around the table to my side, keeping his elbows tucked and handed me a card laminated to within an inch of its life. It had a scribble of marks on one side and a prayer on the other.

"Just a common-or-garden pocket ward," he said. "But it will hold a corner of reality steady for a minute or two if you need it to. I know you've got all sorts of stronger stuff to call on, but this has pulled me out of the fire more than once or twice."

"Appreciated," I said, and slipped it into my inventory.

He took my hand then. "For Margaret," he said.

"For Aunt M," I said, and did not let my voice go anywhere complicated. He knew how much I owed her. He also knew I would not say it out loud because, even before losing another point of Charisma, I was not built for moving speeches.

Kenny coughed into his fist. "Before you go," he said, "one more thing. The way you recovered. That is not nothing. My numbers had you down for six hours on your back – even taking your build into account. You were making jokes at ninety minutes."

"I am a fast healer," I said.

"You are a stubborn man who does not like to be horizontal when there is work to be done. That is not the same thing. You should be worried about where all that healing is coming from."

"Call it a perk of the class," I said. "Iron Provocateur heals like a spiteful oak."

"That is not how oaks work," Kenny said.

"It is how this one does."

He hesitated, then nodded. "Fine. But take care with it. One of the things I do know is that those who have a quick recovery get tempted to put them in front of things they should not."

"One is my limit," I said.

"You lie very politely."

Roderick's hand was still on mine. He squeezed once and let go. "I can send you anywhere," he said. He said it like an offer and not a power. "Anywhere at all. Name it and I will make the door."

"Although you are not allowed to choose Tenerife," Iris said. "We have a booking system and I'm next."

I smiled at her, but noticed that she flinched and turned away. It was not a big reaction. Just a little recoil, a skin twitch, a hint of the animal at the back of the human brain that knows when a thing in the room is not perfectly aligned with the rest of the furniture. It was not her fault, I knew. My Charisma had gone down, and my presence was increasingly drawing a line in the air like a wire.

People were going to feel they could cut their fingers on it.

"Sorry," I said, by instinct.

"No, it's me, I'm jumpy, sorry," she said too fast.

"Numbers," I said to Roderick, not looking away. "They take and they do not ask permission."

"They also give," he said. "You are alive to be grumpy about being alive. That feels like a fair trade most days."

"Most."

He touched the air, and a portal opened. The shine thickened into a thin film, then a proper skin, then a sheet with depth. Light pooled like milk under glass within it, and the sound it made was not a sound. It was the absence of one, like the hush in a church when a door closes and everyone remembers why they came.

"Hold on," Kenny said. He walked up, uncapped his pen again, and made a quick chalk mark on my forearm. "My own contribution to trying to keep you in one piece. It's just a temporary charm, but if a Shadow tries to grab you, it will not enjoy the conversation."

"I hate that you have a charm for that," I said.

"We've been doing this for a long time," he said. "And Margaret taught us well."

Max got up and came around the table in an amble that had dignity. He pressed his head to my thigh and leaned until my balance had to include him, or I would slide. I scratched behind his ear, and he went still with joy. He seemed good at that.

"Good boy," I said.

"Level six," Kenny said, proud.

"Get him to seven," I said.

The panel in my eye pulsed again, not angry, but becoming increasingly firm. The countdown ticked. The advisory reminded me of the way the Thames smells when the day is about to go wrong.

QUEST: ACTIVE
Countdown: 33:59:13
London Tether under stress

"Do not pretend you cannot see it," Roderick said, seeing my attention switch to it. "That was one of the most important things your aunt taught us."

"I do not pretend," I said. "It is not my style."

He nodded. "Then go."

"Thank you for not keeping me," I said. "You could have tried, with rope and a firm voice."

"We do not keep people who have places to go," he said. "The Hunt will still be here if you want to come back to us."

I looked around the field. At the chalk. The trestles. The wire baskets with cables curled like sleeping snakes. Iris's notes. Kenny's lines. Max's left ear with a tiny nick. Roderick's little scars that never get a proper look. It felt like a place I could leave something of me without worrying it would be thrown away. I tried on a smile again and did not make eye contact with anyone.

"Keep your heads down," I said.

"Keep yours lower," Kenny said.

Roderick tilted his head. "You will call when you land."

"Probably not," I said.

"Figures."

He stepped back then and adjusted a coil of wire with his thumb. The ring brightened, and the membrane took on depth until it looked like a window into an empty room that was not quite empty at all. I could feel the other side.

I could feel the city already, all its little edges and rhythms, the too-loud buses and the too-quiet stairwells and the way a corner can hold its breath when two men in coats walk round it without looking at each other. I could taste it.

"Anywhere you want," Roderick said again, one last time, because he obviously believed in stating choices at the exact moment they narrow. "Name it."

I took the laminated card out and put it back, for luck. I rolled my shoulders, which, for once, did not crunch. I checked the timer and did not swear. I touched Max's head and felt him sigh.

"London," I said.