Aggro Litrpg || Progression Fantasy

The aftermath of the Sub-Boss fight had a strange, jangling silence to it—less triumphant than I'd expected. Not quite victory. Not quite relief. Just... background noise. Weapons were being stowed, bags opened, potion corks popping, all with the weary rhythm of people doing their job and getting on with it.

I couldn't shake the image of the slaughtered body of Ivor hitting the wall. The sound of his body connecting with stone stuck in my head like a bad chorus. What was weird, though, was that, considering I presumed the others knew him well, I seemed to be the only one remotely mourning him.

Kal was whistling as he opened his own individual prize box. A silver bow materialised and zipped into his inventory with a happy chime. "Nice, a rare drop!" he said, grinning. Elise was knelt beside her open box, and had retrieved an amulet and a polished orb that shone like molten amber. She rolled it in her hand once, then tucked it into her pouch, humming something tuneless. Lia had retrieved hers in silence, checked the stats on her new sword and sighed.

And beside all of them, unclaimed and unopen, was Ivor's loot box.

No one moved toward it.

I watched for a long second, the hush starting to press in. Then, without ceremony, the box blinked, shimmered, and vanished in a swirl of data. At the same moment, the mage's body vanished as well.

[System Notification: Party Info]

Loot Assigned to Deceased Party Member: Ivor Resten – Mage (Lvl 3)

Routing to Default Account: #CITY-TITHE-2431 – Sablewyn Revenue Office

Taxation Applied: 100%

Confirmation: City Levy Processed

Gone. Like he'd never mattered.

"Great job, mate!" Kal said, clapping me on the back. "The way you used Elise's staff to create a distraction for Lia to bring it home was genius—proper old-school. But how did you know she'd set up a failsafe cantrip to blow it up if it was touched by someone else?"

"Just lucky, I guess."

Kal laughed. Elise did, too—an inappropriate sound, considering her dead teammate had just dematerialised from next to her. Her eyes lingered on mine a little too long. There was something there I didn't want to unpack.

I'd worked with people from all over. And yeah—different cultures handle death differently. Some get loud. Some go quiet. Some go drinking, and some go for long walks in the woods. But I didn't think I'd ever been part of a team that lost a man and just… carried on. Like it was a logistical challenge to be overcome. Just from my short acquaintance with him, I assumed Ivor hadn't been universally beloved, but he'd been one of theirs. One of us, I guess. And now he was gone.

And nobody seemed particularly fussed.

Maybe it was cultural. Maybe it was how death worked on Baytera. Maybe if you burned through party members often enough, perhaps you stopped seeing them as people and started seeing them as resources? Or maybe people literally didn't care. I didn't know which option was worse.

What I did know was that I didn't like it. And I was glad that Lia hadn't joined in the banter.

Ignoring the cooing over rewards, I looked at the notification that had appeared when the Mauler had dropped.

[System Alert: Combat Phase Cleared]

Party Status: Reduced (1 loss)

Dungeon Room Cleared: [Cavern B – Sub-Boss Encounter | Alert: Shadow Corruption Detected]

[System Note: Encounter classification exceeds standard parameters. Entity origin—Unconfirmed. Veil Integrity: Compromised]

[Warning: Guardian Authority—Not Detected. Thread Lock Failed. Anomaly persists.]

Calculating Loot…

You have one (1) unopened reward package.

Classification: Individual

Type: Combat & Support – Tier 1

[Note: Loot is bound to player. Trade disabled. Equipment compatibility restricted by Class: Iron Provocateur]

[Secondary Alert: Reward Generation occurred within unstable domain. Item traits may be affected.]

I looked around, but no one was paying any attention, so I reached forward and touched my own box.

[System Notification: Reward Package Opened]

Item Drop: [Boots of the Apprentice] – Common

Endurance: +1

Binding: None

Item Condition: Scuffed but Serviceable

Matched set detected with Gloves of Practical Disdain. 2/5 Vestments of the Reluctant Anvil

I stared at the boots. Brown. Lumpy. Fastened with an awkward strap system that somehow managed to be both overengineered and completely ineffective. I thought that if these boots had a motto, it would have been adequate, technically.

"Awesome," I said. "With these gifts, the loot goods are really spoiling me."

Still, +1 Endurance was +1 Endurance. And gods knew I needed every scrap I could get.

I knelt to swap them out, tugging off the boots I'd arrived in. But as I pulled them free, something… clinked. Not thudded. Not rustled. Clinked. Like teeth in a jar. I frowned, turned one of the boots upside down, and shook it. A set of bones fell out.

Small, clean and almost human, and yet not quite. They clattered onto the stone like dropped dice.

[System Alert: Unidentified Remnant Retrieved]

Category: Residual Bone Set – Unknown Origin

Item Status: Non-Hostile | Non-Tradable | Soul Binding: Pending

[Note: The bones remember where you've been. Possibly where you're going.]

I looked around. No one else seemed to have bones falling out of their loot.

I used the tip of my stick to poke the pile. Nothing happened. No glowing. No whispering voices. Just the bones. Thinking bonely thoughts. Well, that's not ominous at all.

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

And then, resigned, I slid the new boots on.

[System Alert: Set Bonus Applied: Vestments of the Reluctant Anvil]

Each point in Endurance now grants:
– +1 Max Health
– +1 Max Stamina
– +0.5% Status Resistance (cumulative)
– +0.5% Knockback Resistance (cumulative)

I wiggled my toes. They pinched. The leather creaked ominously. But they fit. Mostly. And the bones? The bones had vanished into my inventory where they did not take up a slot. Which was, frankly, a touch concerning.

I concentrated and pulled up my character sheet.

[System Character Sheet: Class-Modified | Integration Status: In Progress]

Name: Elijah Meddings

Class: Iron Provocateur

Level: 2

Title Pathway: [Warden Channel – Pending Recognition]

Subclass: Unavailable. Pending recognition

Threshold Anchor: Unstable

System Integration: Irregular | Delayed | Loop Error – Retry Later

Core Vitality Metrics

Health: 40 (+3 gloves/boots)

↳ [Base: 22 | Class Bonus: +8 | Set bonus: +7]

Health Regeneration: 6/hour

↳ Stubborn Constitution (Lvl 3) effect applied]

Stamina: 37 (+2 gloves/boots)

↳ [Base: 18 | Class Bonus: +10 | Set bonus: +7]

Stamina Regeneration: 4/hour

↳ [Resilience trait synergy applied]

Mana: 10

Mana Regeneration: 1/hour

↳ [Origin trait detected. Purpose: Unknown.]

Primary Attributes

Strength: 3

Agility: 2

Speed: 1

Endurance: 7

Intelligence: 4

Wisdom: 3

Charisma: 0

Luck: 2

Unassigned Progress Points: 6

Abilities

Aggro Magnetism – Lvl 2 (Active Aura)

Effect Radius: +5 (base range)

Duration: +2 seconds (base range)

Rage Debuff applied (Lvl 1)

- -15% Dodge / Endurance

- Chance to misapply abilities

- Ends on crit or expiry

Traits

Stubborn Constitution – Lvl 3 (Passive)

Resistance to knockback, stagger, and panic effects

Enhanced pain tolerance

Minor bleeding and fatigue effects suppressed

Skills

Closed Circle (Combat | Hand-to-Hand) Lvl 1

Bonus to grapples, disarms, close-quarters control

Increased damage with fists, elbows, or improvised hostile items

Weighted Argument [Combat | Blunt Weapons] Lvl 2

Bonus damage when wielding branches, clubs, staves, or other persuasive planks.

Increased stagger chance. Reduced elegance.

Improvised Javelin [Combat | Thrown Weapons] Lvl 1
• Bonus accuracy when throwing spears, staves, or similarly balanced items

Increased critical hit chance when target is distracted, staggered, or unaware

Instinctive trajectory compensation applied (based on ambient motion + panic impulse)

Inventory Modifiers

Expanded Inventory Slots: +12

↳ [Class Modifier: Durable Backbone | Item Carry Bonus]

System Advisory

You have become more than you were.

The System is still deciding what, exactly, to do with that.

Your body is adapting to carry what your mind refuses to shoulder.

You are not what they expected.

But they're watching now.

Carry on.

Well, I guessed couldn't complain about how my Health and Stamina was coming along. My gear might have been objectively less swish than anything anyone else had, but a set bonus that effectively doubled the impact of my Endurance? Yeah, I'd take that.

Mind you, it would help if I could get more of a handle on how everyone else's character sheet looked. That way, I could size up how my stuff was progressing in comparison. Now didn't seem like the time to ask, though . . .

"Alright, everyone," Lia said, speaking over the post-battle buzz, "we're not through this dungeon yet. This is as far as the Elders said the last group they sent down made it, so I'd have thought we can expect what comes at us next to be even trickier. We're down a DPS," she looked back at where Ivor's body had lain, "so it's going to need even more of a team effort."

This world really didn't have any ceremony around mourning the dead, did it?

No rites, no burning, no dragging the corpse to the surface. Just a glance and a one-line mention before we moved on. Ivor hadn't even been gone long enough to get cold—well, metaphysically speaking. It was all just so... brisk.

"I don't like it," Kal said. "That mauler thing wasn't supposed to be in there. Lia, you said this room had a portal beast. That wasn't a portal beast. That was a bloody something-from-the-Veil special, and it very nearly wrecked us."

"It certainly wasn't natural," Elise agreed. The corruption on it was wrong. That wasn't just shadow-touched. That was full-blown Veil breach."

"I've heard rumours that the Shadow's been leaking through more and more," Kal said, not hiding the note of rising panic. "And if that's so, then that's not just going to be a dungeon issue. That's a city-on-fire level of problem."

"Which is why we need to turn back," Elise said. "We've got new gear, XP, and a story the Elders need to hear. We only just got the Sub-Boss done! Being a DPS short means we've got no chance of finishing. Let's call it quits."

I opened my mouth to agree—but Lia had already turned her back on them and was moving towards the newly opened exit from the chamber.

"No one's going back," Lia said as she walked. "We've signed a contract. You leave now, it's an Abandoned Penalty on all of our records. I'm not eating that because you two got jumpy."

"Jumpy?" Kal snapped. "You watched Ivor get pulled apart. That thing wasn't even supposed to be here. It was Shadow-aligned—Aspect-class, maybe worse—and it knew we were coming. What if the next chamber's worse?"

"I said no," Lia repeated. "I'm the Party Leader. I do not release you."

Silence dropped like a curtain.

"Seriously?" Kal said. "That's how we're playing this? You don't release us, so we're bound? Even with that thing back there? Even with one of us already gone?"

"I will not be letting you leave," Lia said. "I want us all to stick together so that we can finish the run as we have been contracted to do. Once we survive, then we can argue."

"You really think this is about arguments?" Elise said. "Because to me, it feels like you're gambling with our lives, so you don't take more of a financial hit. And we all know why! That's not fair!"

"You want to talk about fair? Fine. Then talk about what happens when we all fail this instance and the corruption spreads. Do you think Sablewyn's going to be safe if we walk away now? Do you think the Elders didn't know something was off? They sent us in any way. So we finish it. We do the job."

"I'm not sure I signed up for a suicide mission," Kal said

Lia was standing by the exit now. "We move now. Anyone not ready will be left in here. I doubt that thing has a respawn timer, but I certainly wouldn't want to be around if it does."

So, onwards we went. The only sounds were the shuffle of boots and the too-loud creak of leather. We passed through the exit and entered a narrow passage that even Lia had to duck down to pass. The ceiling dropped down low, stone pressing down like a closing jaw. I had to hunch so much that my head was almost on the floor.

Then the walls began to curve downwards.

Not just bend. Curve. Spirals tightening around us. The corridor twisted and narrowed, like we were being funnelled into something that didn't especially care for the concept of geometry. Light from the glowing fungi behind us dimmed fast, and soon, the only real illumination came from the ambient hum of Elise's staff. I was glad to see I hadn't broken it.

And still, Lia pressed forward, as if nothing about this warranted concern.

But I was concerned. The feel of this was off like spoiled meat in a sealed room. Every step forward sent static up the soles of my boots. Shadow corruption, they'd called it. A Veil breach. I didn't know the terminology well enough to understand the implications, but the vibe was clear: this dungeon wasn't behaving like it should.

And I suspected it was supposed to be my job – eventually – to sort that out.