Aggro Litrpg || Progression Fantasy

The shot ripped me out of my memories like a door slamming on my face. White heat blew up behind my eyes, resolving into a meaty slap through nose and teeth. My eyes flooded, and my view of the street pitched as I staggered two steps and hit a shopfront. The window went to glitter and I slid down and through it to the floor, staggered. I rallied and I pushed myself up and out of the window frame, leaving a smear of blood all around me. My hands were stinging, and my mouth was full of metal and glass.

But not only that, the world had gone quiet in the wrong way. Not silent. Muffled. Like someone had put a blanket over London and tucked it in. I ducked and stepped back into the flow of people, hoping to lose my pursuer, and the flow bent around me. All of the people moved as if I were a bollard that had grown there overnight. No one looked at me or reacted to me being blasted through a shop window. Beside me, a black cab rolled through a puddle of fresh glass and did not lift off the throttle. A woman brushed my sleeve without seeing me and adjusted her scarf as if I were a blow of weather.

I took another step, and the street slid sideways. A man changed route mid-stride without a thought, eyes moving past me, feet already, and automatically, choosing a new line. The air around me felt scooped out, like I was in the middle of a small cone of space that nothing would cross. Or even recognise. Sound thinned at the edges of the field around me, traffic noise went flat, and voices turned to breath. It felt like I was moving inside a crowd and not in it, as if someone had cut me out of time and stuck me back in askew.

What's more, my Health had dropped a third and was holding – where was my regen? More pain arrived, and I spat red and glass onto the floor. I wiped my face with the back of my hand and blinked rapidly until the double vision stopped. Street names wouldn't stick, and the shop signs were reading like static. I forced myself into motion the old way, memories of years of training taking over. Left shoulder to the flow of people, count the beats to a junction, take a breath that hurts and then look again.

There. The alley on my right, all wet brick and bin steam. That was a mouth where light went to die. I fixed it, let the rest blur, and was able to focus on a shape stepping out of it that did not belong to London at all.

It was tall and proportioned like a man who only had to care about speed. The head was not quite a head in any normal way. Scales ran up a thick neck into a snake's skull with red, glowing eyes. A collar of dark metal sat where a gorget should be, and its right wrist carried a shooter with what looked like a hungry little pump linked to it that was hissing away. It fired another round at me, but this time I avoided it because Sidestep knew there was a threat now. I felt the air split, and the bus stop behind me turned to slag.

Nobody screamed. A woman at my shoulder said into her sleeve that she would be two minutes late for Pilates. Fruit rolled from a market crate. Whatever the bubble of unreality was that was surrounding me was, it was holding like a champion.

I cut left and bled through a sea of commuters that did not part so much as decide to be somewhere else as I moved through them. The pavement smashed at my feet as a series of shots stitched the ground around me as I moved. My threat feed came back online, but it was the only part of my UI I let back in. I didn't need to be overwhelmed by a sea of info right now. Not along with everything else!

I glanced back and a tag crawled over the serpent's chest like a brand.

[System Alert: Hostile Entity Detected]

Name: Pursuivant-Class Contractor
Level: 10
Disposition: Calculated | Contract-Bound
Notable Traits: Perception-bubble projector (civilian masking), anti-taunt warded gorget, wrist-mounted flechette rig, toxic expectoration, cross-realm tracking suite
Mana Affinity: Low – Null-Baffled (Ward-Inscribed)
Combat Style: Stalk-and-Shoot | Urban Crowd Pursuit

[System Advisory: High resistance to control/taunt effects detected. Rage Debuff deflected.]
[Contract Authority: Threshold Pursuivants' Compact | Contract: Active]
[Veil State: Local masking engaged | Civilian perception damped]
[Source: Contract Beacon – Pursuivant Node]

[Recommended Action: Break line-of-sight; disable gorget ward; force close-quarters; target wrist rig and ankle stance for collapse.]

Great. First day back, and I'd already made someone's list. And a Level 10 at that.

Winning.

I needed weight. I'd dumped my kit back into inventory when I stepped through the portal, which turned out to have been a big mistake. Carapace of the Defiant Line locked in with a deep click along my ribs. Plates kissed, straps tugged, and my spine suddenly felt hugged. The world steadied a notch as my Endurance ticked up. My mask slid down the bridge of my nose, the boots bit my heels and turned my steps from slap to thwomp, and the gauntlets swallowed my knuckles as the ring found its place and pressed bone.

No one looked. Whatever bubble this guy had hit me with had turned me into a ghost at noon. So, I went the whole hog, and my morningstar dropped into my palm. My wrist dipped, my stance balanced the ground, and my breath came straight for the first time since I'd been shot.

Aggro Magnetism went up out of habit, five seconds of Come Here on a ten metre leash. It rolled towards my pursuer - ignoring all the people around me, which was nice – but then broke over it like smoke over water. Which wasn't. Its gorget pulsed and threw my pull into a wall. Rage Debuff leapt to nothing, then echoed around nobody.

Damn it. This guy had counters.

I spotted a sign for the Underground and ran for the stairs. I didn't know the station, but right now, that didn't matter. The turnstiles splintered as I shouldered through them, but that didn't seem to bother anyone. The announcer's voice was intoning that a carriage somewhere was closing and that everyone should mind an open door. The serpent's feet were on the tile behind me, and I sensed him drop to a knee, lining up another second shot. I dodged to the left, and the flechette hit a map board and turned London into lace.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

I sensed he wanted me pinned in a hollow space, so I took to the platform edge, still with a little circle of nothing opened up around me, and threw out Zone of Authority like a net. The field stood, slow and ugly, and gave me five metres of hardened air. The snake's speed dropped as he approached the circle, not much, but enough to steal a step. Then he spat at me.

Although it was not spit. It was something green and hot, and it burned like anything when it splattered against me. My Shadow Marked trait, though, simply yawned at the effort and nullified the first poison of the day. One of my better investments there.

But if I hoped my feet of amazing poison-defying prowess was going to buy me some time, I was to be disappointed. He opened up with his wrist-mounted device, and another shot took me in the chest, turning my Health into flashing orange. Stubborn Constitution stepped up to stop my panic and kept the shakes in their box, but this wasn't going very well…

I turned and fled, bouncing out through a service door that had no right to open, passing bleach and dust, a row of mops, a ladder, and a sign that said Authorised. It's nice to feel wanted and appreciated sometimes.

Ahead was a corridor that ended at a metal stair. I followed it up and into an alley full of bins and stamped cardboard, and then I was sprinting into the market lane beyond, which was bright and packed with cover. Well, it would be if everyone didn't simply move out of my way and make it blooming obvious exactly where I was!

I spotted the serpent taking the high path above me along the tops of the stalls. Then he prepared for another shot. I dove to the floor as banners snapped, a steel shutter dented, and a child walking past with a balloon was suddenly loudly sad about the pop.

I needed this guy on the ground and in melee range. Now.

I ripped a Way Out sign and sent it spinning. Improvised Javelin learned the line in the air and let it kiss the hinge of his wide jaw. It caused barely a stagger, but stagger is a doorway if you know how to use it. I made a big play of cutting into a narrow run where scaffold crowded the sky, and all the split bin bags turned the ground into a chessboard. He paused, reading me as making a panicked dash, then loped after me, because hunters always follow their prey when the end is near.

But this wasn't my first rodeo on London's streets. I have used this little trick on debt boys, plainclothes, and gangbangers who thought they owned a postcode and Griff needed teaching different. Sure, I've never tried it on a snake-headed assassin with a perception filter, but I reckoned the basic principles should still hold. Let him think you are running away in fear. Give him a lane, then take it away.

I flashed Tactical Provocation in his face. He let it in, the gorget flared, and it bounced like a rubber bullet. The collar was becoming personal. While he watched the ward eat my trick, though, he didn't notice the part that was going to matter. That I had stopped running away and turned straight back towards him.

Surprise!

I put my shoulder into his head – Closed Circle properly coming to the party – and let his forearm catch air, then slid low under his chest to lift him into the air. He overcommitted in his defence by a hair, and his wrist rig came through my space, which I fed with a smashing bin lid in return. Metal screamed. He screamed. I screamed. Then I piledrove him into the ground and stamped on his ankle. The flinch told me where the knee would be, and I pummelled the bin lid there too.

I dropped the crumpled lid and started swinging my morningstar because we'd arrived at that point in the conversation. I'd been the guy with the gun chasing a target through busy streets, and I knew that rule number one was always 'if you've got a gun, don't ever end up in a knife fight.'

I reckoned that counted double for a guy swinging a massive ball of metal around.

Weighted Argument put plenty of oomph into my shoulder and gave my strike plenty of motivation. I landed it in his sternum, and he folded. Not as much as I might have hoped, but I still caught the panic on his serpenty face. The collar flared to keep him upright, but I reckoned that had taken more out of him than any of his hits on me had.

Sure, he was probably better on paper. Level ten to my eight. Counters to my kit. And he'd caught me on the hop. To be honest, things had been a little more of a close-run thing than I might want to pretend right now. But that didn't matter anymore.

Because he was lame, on his knees in front of me and…

Controlled Catastrophe.

The cost tore through me. Health and Stamina ripped down to pay for a clean five seconds of chaos. Light went white around us. Blind. Stun. Disorient. Slow. Not a promise. A roll of loaded dice. Despite the perceptual filter, the market behind us shuddered. Banners tore. A stall frame jumped. But still, the bubble kept mothers pushing prams and men in suits drifting past like we were a bad smell and nothing else.

My morningstar split his head open like the ripest watermelon in the shop. His jaw opened sideways and then did not exist as a jaw anymore. His spine tried to argue a little, but I ended that conversation with a second strike that turned him into mush. His scales stopped shining, and that damned collar burned and cracked and went dark.

Almost immediately, the bubble thinned and then popped. Sound came back as heat and chatter, and the nearest stall owner bent down to pick up a bruised mango. A gull laughed at me from the roofline. Or probably at the dead snake, to be honest.

My Health was blinking at me in a way that suggested sitting down would be sensible. I did not think this was the right place for a break. Where there was one bounty hunter, I was sure there might be more.

I checked my six and waited for a second shooter that did not arrive. Maybe today was my lucky day after all? I had a moment when I thought I might like to loot that anti-taunt collar, but it fell away into ash at the same time as the assassin's body vanished. The wrist rig's display cracked and died too. I kicked it once for luck.

The notification came in hard and big.

System Update

Target Neutralised: Cross Threshold Pursuivant [Level 10]

Contract Authority: Threshold Pursuivants' Compact

Field Report

Conditions: Urban, Civilian Mask Active

Evaluation: Solo Elimination of Higher-Level Opponent

Reward: +5 Progress Points

Loot Rights: Partial, Marked [Contracted Asset]

Reputation Change: Threshold Pursuivants' Compact — Observed → Hostile

Flag Applied: Marked as Interference, Priority Watch

Advisory: Additional Contractors May Be Dispatched

I closed the box and listened to the city pretend nothing had happened.

Then I put the morningstar away because carrying it in daylight was a choice I was not making with the Met. I rolled my shoulders, swallowed blood, and picked a direction that felt like up. I needed safety, a plan, a friend, all of it in that order. And, apparently, I needed to make room in my day for more snakes.