Aggro Litrpg || Progression Fantasy

I let the station expel me gently, carried on the warm breath of the tunnel, and a final 'mind the gap.' I drifted behind the small crowd that stepped off with me, keeping one hand free and half a pace to the side so I could slip clear if anyone changed their mind about not being a threat. I didn't think anyone who got off was after me, at least not anyone I couldn't deal with. A lad in a beanie tried to match my pace, reconsidered, and developed an urgent relationship with a vending machine.

As far as I could tell, my minimap was reasonably chill, and the hurricane of notifications had slowed to something I could live with, but they were still drifting and melting away before I could read them. Nothing was spiking red, though, none of those around me were lit up like trouble, and the little arrow that is me kept pointing at the exit.

Good. I could get on with Mooney's job.

The street outside Walthamstow Central was actually rather cheerful. The afternoon light was polishing the neat shopfronts, young mums drove prams like tanks, and a kid trotted by astride a very patient dog pretending to be a horse. There was a shout that momentarily caught my attention, but it was just someone arguing with a parking meter that had wronged his family.

As I walked past it all, my new numbers moved under my skin comfortably. Ten Strength and nine Agility felt nicely balanced, and the extra Speed made me feel a touch less clumsy. Even the crowd slipstream felt easier to read, with little gaps opening in between the press.

I took the long crossing over the zebra crossing with the rest of the herd, hands wedged deep into my pockets, doing my best to look inconspicuous. I watched the red man blink to green and let the cars grumble themselves still. Mindful that this needed to be a reasonably undercover operation, I was keeping my head down and my shoulders small. Well, as small as I could, but I don't think I was nailing it, though.

People saw me coming and drifted aside alarmingly. A dad did a gentle steer to put his toddler behind his legs. A woman with a tote chose to walk in the curb rather than pass by me, inventing a sudden need to stop and check her phone. I guess big, hairy man in a hoodie is avoidable in any language. I tried a friendly half-smile. It did not help.

In next to no time, I was in the park, which was actually more a large rectangle of grass pretending to be countryside, ringed by railings and a committee of benches. A playground bell clanged somewhere to my right, and someone's Bluetooth speaker fought a losing argument with the wind, all tinny bass and brave optimism. Joggers were doing laps while council sign listed twelve rules and a plea about barbecues.

I followed Mooney's directions toward the pickup point, letting my minimap do the steering. It drew me off the gravel path to three dots, close together, marked red and unfriendly. I sighed. In my recent experience, red rarely meant straightforward parcel collection. They were tucked by an oak tree that had survived everything this borough had thrown at it. Storm. Dog. Teenager. The bark was scarred and shiny in places, with roots pushing up through the dirt. It might have just been me being paranoid, but the shade under it felt a little heavier than shade should.

Something made me jump. A football came from nowhere, skimmed my knee, and a ten-year-old shouted 'sorry' without meaning it. I scanned my destination again. The three red dots had held their position.

My instinct was to do the sensible thing and get dressed for action. However, summoning my armour and rocking a morningstar in the middle of this many people would cause comment. Probably the kind that would end in police horses. Also, I couldn't help but feel that Mooney would complain if his contacts ended up as paste because I went full Warden in a family park. I was supposed to be doing him a favour, after all.

I left the path, swapping gravel for mulch and moved toward the oak tree. It was clearly older than anything here, a knot of history pretending to be shade. Under it, two tall teenagers had perfected a look that invited no comment. The older man behind them had a jowly face that shone like a glazed ham. He had three phones laid out on the bench like trophies and when he saw me, he smiled without teeth.

"You Eli?" he said. "Mooney's boy?"

Awesome. Nothing like having your name on everyone's lips, was there. "Not really. I'm a volunteer on a zero-hours contract," I said. "Kind of a one-and-done thing. I was told there'd be a bag for me to collect."

"A 'bag,'" one of the lads said, as if delighted by the extent of my vocabulary. They took half a step to widen their stance. The older man spread his hands and made his ugly smile again.

Up close, I could see that all three had the drug pallor, faces that had become impossibly thin, along with massive pupils. The jowled man's greasy hair was catching the light, and his grin twitched, like something under the skin wanted its turn. I was just taking this in when my minimap suddenly pinged. There was something moving above me, a cold prickle in the leaves.

"Well, you see, this is a bit of problem. You see, Mooney owes money," Jowls said. "Mooney talks big, but doesn't have the pockets. And we do not work for Mooney."

"Ah, that is a shame," I said, distractedly, trying to work out what was lurking in the tree. "I was hoping for a competent supply chain. You see that sort of thing so rarely nowadays."

Knives appeared in hands, and the two lads set their feet like the internet had taught them. Jowls kept smiling. At the same time, my minimap bloomed a fourth dot, a much bigger red one, off the axis, apparently perched ten metres up in the oak where I suspected no one should be. A system chime crept in, a thin scrape of code.

SYSTEM WARNING:

SHADOW-ALIGNED ENTITY DETECTED [UNSTABLE]

RISK PROFILE: UNKNOWN

PROXIMITY ALERT: 8m

I frowned, and then it was like the oak tree inhaled softly. The shadow in it changed shape, and a string of dark beads suddenly tugged themselves into something that might, charitably, have been described as a person. I saw a shoulder, then the idea of a face, then nothing at all. The teenagers, of course, noticed none of this. They had an audience of one and thought they were delivering today's theatre.

"We've been having a bit of a chat, me and my boys," Jowls said. "And we've decided that we're going to take the bag, your phone and anything else you happen to have on you. We'll probably need to give you a bit of a kicking too. Nothing personal, you understand, but Mooney needs to learn."

"Counter-offer," I said. "I take the bag, we keep to the deal, and everyone gets to go home with the same amount of blood inside as they woke up with. Sound fair?"

Something fell down from the tree with a hiss and a crack of air. I felt black fingers stroke my shoulder as if they were testing the fabric, and I stepped back, my new Speed doing its job, as my coat sleeve tore open in a neat line. The teenagers flinched at the noise, then found courage in the wrong place and came on.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

I did the simple job first, just as Griff had taught me. Closed Circle is built into how I stand now, so I let the first lad stab air even as Sidestep took his wrist past my hip, and a tap to his elbow sent his knife away. In a blink, I'd dropped my heel to his ankle, smashed my shoulder to his chest, and he was out for the count. The second lad tried to stab me in the gut, but I just took the blow, which bounced, and then smashed him into the bench.

Jowls lunged for me, but I slapped a hand onto his ear, and he joined his boys on the floor and found a noise that suggested dental invoices.

But this was all a false victory. I'd have been more than a match for these guys last week, before all my System enhancements. To be honest, I'd have probably prevailed while still in school. But it was whatever was lurking in the tree that was going to be the real issue. Then something hit me from above and behind with the weight of a falling axe.

My knees hit the dirt and white flashed across my vision as my teeth clicked together hard enough to ring. I turned and caught sight of it for a heartbeat. For a moment, it was human-shaped, but then it was very much not. It was long and slick and very wrong. It had hair that lay flat, then rose as if listening to a frequency I could not hear. And its teeth had clearly grown tired of patience.

SYSTEM ALERT: HOSTILE ENTITY DETECTED

NAME: MIDNIGHT LURKER (ROGUE-CLASS VARIANT)

LEVEL: [MASKED]

DISPOSITION: INVASIVE | PREDATORY

NOTABLE TRAITS: UMBRAL BLINK (SHORT-RANGE PHASE STEP) | ABERRANT REGENERATION |

PUPPET-THREAD DOMINANCE (NEURO-MARIONETTE CONTROL)|UMBRAL LOCK (EQUIPMENT SWAP SUPPRESSION |ARBORIAL ANCHOR (TETHERED TO ROOT/MYCELIAL SHADOW-NET)

MANA AFFINITY: HIGH — SHADOW-ALIGNED

COMBAT STYLE: AMBUSH | BACKLINE DECAPITATION | RAGE-BAIT RESPONSE (MODERATE)

SYSTEM ADVISORY: ENTITY NOT REGISTERED IN LOCAL

REALM

PARAMETERS

SOURCE: UNKNOWN | THREADPATH: CORRUPTED | VEIL INTEGRITY: FRACTURED

WARNING: ENCOUNTER DIFFICULTY EXCEEDS STANDARD BOUNDS

ERROR: CLASSIFICATION LOOP — UNABLE TO ASSIGN CR RATING

It moved, and the air bent wrong, as if the space between us had quietly taken up smoking. A cold prickle crept from the bark to my wrist as the thing smiled without lips and then snapped at me with soft, wet click of teeth.

Behind me, the three I'd already put down sat up in a perfect choreography. Their heads turned to face me, and their hands suddenly found their knives with a new focus. The Luker had some sort of shadow strings connected to them. Was it here because of me? Or was there something else going on here. The Hunt had suggested the Veil was thinning; was this thing a manifestation of that? Or…

But then I needed to concentrate on the task at hand. I saw the threads, smoke-thin, running from the tree to the drug pushers. Even so, I didn't really want to kill these guys if I didn't have to. It would be like squashing flies. I stood.

The Lurker flickered left and clawed at the air where I'd just been. It made a sound that was all throat and, deciding I needed to put it down as soon as possible, I brought up my gear swap… but got a flat red box for my trouble.

EQUIPMENT SWAP FAILED

STATUS EFFECT: [UMBRAL LOCK]

SOURCE: MIDNIGHT

LURKER

DURATION: REFRESHES ON CONTACT

"Of course you do that," I said as the first teenager stabbed toward my ribs. Sidestep flowed once again as I caught his wrist, turned it, and smashed him once again into the bench. Jowls came in low with a grunt, but Opportunistic Counter let me find his jaw with a quick punch. He joined his minion in leaving the conversation.

The Luker blinked again, and I felt the impact of some not-insignificant damage. I took two steps back into a triangle formed by bench, bin, and tree and tried to plan out my next steps. Zone of Authority would have helped, but I wanted to see whether I could take care of this thing without throwing my whole toolbox at it.

Instead, I let my hands talk and my feet decide. It came from the side, in a blur and a hiss, and I ended up throwing a Crash Tackle into the empty air, only catching its spine with my shoulder as it reappeared, and hammered it into the trunk. Wood shook and leaves fell, and its bones made a noise like gravel stirred by a stick. The Lurker slid away and stood up and… healed.

The divot my shoulder had made in it bulged and smoothed out. It grinned as if to suggest we could do this all afternoon, and it would get bored last. Then it blinked out again, slashed my face, My debuff timer ticked back up and my gear swap was still locked. I tried to track it, but then the dealers came on again with puppet patience. I broke one of their noses and said 'sorry,' then parried a thrust and put another one down by sitting him, as gently as I could, into a shrubs bed. The Lurker rolled along the trunk and raked at me again.

I was about to pull Controlled Catastrophe out but then put it back. There were too many civilians within range, and Aggro Magnetism would yank the wrong eyes. I herded the fight further back from the main path, past a maintenance gate with a lock that did not remember duty, and into the scruff behind the oak where the park kept its wheelbarrows. Every time the Lurker tagged me, my gear lock refreshed.

While I was distracted, a knife got through and kissed the meat of my thigh, and actually punched through. It appeared that the Lurker was doing more than just puppeting them. It was boosting their strength too. The breath of a boy who had not brushed this week was suddenly in my face, sour and small and triumphant. He leaned in to finish me off, but I caught his wrist and turned his own knife to press under his jaw. I paused, then blunted my intent at the last moment and drove the hilt up into the nose. He went slack and I kept the blade.

The Lurker came low on the left, but this time I fed it steel. Straight up through the palate when it opened to hiss. It recoiled, I kicked it hard, then slammed its face into the bark of the tree. It blinked away and then hit me from nowhere and put my teeth into my tongue.

It was linked to the tree. That was the shape of it, wasn't it? The shadows ran down into the roots, and it stayed much stronger under its branches. I needed to kill the power source or, alternatively, move its power source.

Time to branch out. As it were.

I dragged the third dealer by the scruff of his neck and threw him behind me as I risked an Ability.

AGGRO MAGNETISM — ACTIVATED

RADIUS: 10m

RAGE DEBUFF APPLIED

The Lurker felt it and then was coming at me, pulled past prudence by Rage. The three dealers leapt upwards, caught by the same debuff, and locked on me with empty eyes. I met them halfway. Choke slam for the nearest, palm on larynx, lift and down. Crash Tackle into the second, shoulder to chest that put him into a tidy somersault that parked him out of the fight. I let the Lurker blink attack me once more, felt the pain as it stabbed through my stomach, but then used its own momentum like a towel to snap it head-first into the trunk.

Its neck turned with a pop and it hung for a second, twitching, and then the bones began to think about reversing their choices.

Scrape. Tick. Pop. The thing began to reset itself. I had seconds before it was back to its fighting weight. I did the one thing obviously available to me.

I hugged the oak.

My arms closed around it, cheek to rough bark, feet set, ten Strength coming into its own. Then I heaved, and the groan started deep, with wood complaining and soil tearing, stones pinging free. The whole world moved an inch and I moved with it. The tendons in my arms sang and my thigh tore fire around the knife hole. I took a second step and a third, a deadlift through history, and the oak came up, roots hanging like wet hair and the shadow ripping loose in long black bands.

The Lurker howled as its strings of connection snapped. I turned with it, all leverage, hips and back, and brought the tree down flat. The trunk hit the Lurker in the middle and pressed until it went splat. The bark of the tree split and sap sprayed with a sweet green smell.

Teeth. Bark. Blackness. All of it, one noise.

I kept pushing until the ground let the roots bite again. Then I let go.