Aggro Litrpg || Progression Fantasy

In the blink of an eye, I'd swapped out my gear sets and felt the comforting rush of my numbers climbing back to normal. I shouldered Mooney behind me and spooled up to hit every cooldown I owned… but then noticed two things.

Firstly, the Shadow Demon behind the desk hadn't twitched. He was still just sitting there, marinating me in a long, unblinking stink-eye. And secondly, his dot wasn't actually showing as red on my mini-map. It was gleaming gold.

So, this guy pretending to be a gangster in a well-defended lockup wasn't actually an enemy, then. He was some sort of quest-giver. Well, that was weird.

And then my System finally identified what this thing was.

Designation: Lugat-i-Hijeve (Shadow-Lugat)
Level: 10
Disposition: Methodical | Infiltration-Oriented
Notable Traits: Null-reflection profile; "wind-rider" micro-displacement; habitat imprint on sunless structures (wells/cisterns/archives); contract-binding resonance (besa-adjacent)
Mana Affinity: [Moderate – Shadow-Aligned]

[System Advisory: Subject prefers covert exchange to open conflict; resilience to attritional pressure remains abnormal.]
[Source: Threshold Distortion – Uncatalogued (Balkan vector)]
[Veil Integrity: Tense | Anchor Node: Monitored]
[Critical Risk: Lugat proximity to Accumulation Pool (cistern/well equivalence) may initiate shadow-current cascade.]

"Undershaft! What's going on?" Mooney said from behind me, no doubt wondering how, and why, I suddenly looked like I was about to cosplay the fall of Helm's Deep.

"You can all leave," the shadow thing said. "Everyone except the Warden."

Niku and the kid evaporated almost incidentally, and Mooney was already oozing to follow after them. He was a man whose whole metabolism had evolved specifically to respond to the phrase you can all leave. I caught his elbow mid-escape and reeled him back.

"No. He stays with me."

This wasn't compassion or worry for his well-being. This was just good old-fashioned pest control. I wasn't protecting Mooney from what might be done to him by the guys outside so much as limiting his available square footage to stab me in the back. With Mooney, loyalty was a mood and opportunity was ethics. Left unsupervised, he'd be in a stairwell selling my location out to Griff and, probably, a lock of my hair to the first available goblin. Kept at my shoulder until I was ready for that to happen at least I'd know when the knife was coming. And from which jacket pocket.

He gave me a wounded look that said, 'how dare you anticipate my sudden and inevitable betrayal,' which was very Mooney. I tightened my grip anyway.

"So be it," the boss said and then gestured, closing the door with a blast of power.

"Undershaft! What is going on! Why are you suddenly dressed like that? And is that a… a morningstar?"

The creature behind the desk still hadn't moved, although shadows spilt out from him like cigarette smoke as he had doubled in size. He was wearing an immaculate charcoal suit and a Saint Nicholas medallion around his neck. His hair was close-cropped with his beard line barbered to a ruler.

"Mirë," he said, nodding. "I accept to speaking as a three. But he is your responsibility, Warden. Besa is for those who understand it."

"Besar? Is that like mezze?" Mooney asked, licking his lips.

"It is not."

I was pretty interested to see his gold dot glowing on my HUD like a ring dropped in oil. I don't think I'd come across a shadow being that wasn't flagged as hostile. Even the Big Friendly Shadow-Ogrin who'd given me my morningstar had shown up as a dark red dot. But not this guy. He was, apparently, a quest-giver.

"So, what do I call you?" I asked.

"I could not care less, Warden. I'm having this conversation as a favour. As the fulfilment of an old debt. Once we're done, you can slap me on the arse and call me Susan for all I care."

"Not sure I will, to be honest."

The Lugat's attention flicked to the ceiling, like he was listening to a drip only he could hear. "It should hardly come as a surprise, but I am charged with telling you that something terrible is happening to this world, Warden. The Veil is thin and becoming thinner. Threads first. Then cloth." He pinched the air, and it didn't look like a trick. "It is wet where it thins. Old cisterns. Canal mouths. Places with memory. And where it is thin, breaches occur."

"Are you talking about … climate change?" Mooney said.

The Lugat didn't even bless that with contempt. He reached into a drawer and set a cheap desk fan humming; its blades stuttered visibly each time they crossed his shadow.

"I've heard this story before," I said. "And I'm doing my best to stabilise things. I don't know if you get the latest updates from being the veil on Shadow TV, but I pretty much owned the Maker back on Bayteran."

"I really, really think it would be better for me to wait outside, Undershaft."

"Be that as it may," the Lugat said, staring intently at me and studiously ignoring Money. "But, and mark well my words, He has now found a way to return. He has been here before, of course, but He was pushed back before He could fully establish a hold. But now, He has found someone prepared to reopen the door."

"What are you talking about?" I asked.

The Lugat's smile thinned. "Mark well my words, Warden. There are worse things across the realms than you have encountered thus far. Margaret understood this. Perhaps better than anyone."

"You knew Aunt M?"

The Lugat huffed a bitter laugh. "Why else would I be speaking to you here, rather than tearing your face off? Yes, I knew the Guardian of the Threshold. Or rather, I owed her a debt. This warning is to be my payment."

"I don't understand," I said.

"No. You do not. Perhaps it would be better for me to show you."

And faster than I could possibly dodge, he wasn't a man behind a desk anymore. The Lugat poured, chair still rocking, suit still immaculate, spilling out of the shadow towards me. His palms bracketed my skull, and the gold ring around him on my HUD dilated to an iris and snapped shut.

Mooney made a noise that started as "hey—" and finished in silence. My hand never got as far as his sleeve.

The Lugat leaned close enough for the Saint Nicholas medal to kiss my cheek. "Mos harro," he whispered, and somehow I understood what those words meant. Don't forget.

I braced to shove him off, but it was like the room tipped and I went over the rim. Not falling down so much as falling back, through the wallpaper, through the paint, through every older colour this office had worn. Staplers became beetles, paperclips became fishhooks, the carpet unrolled into a slick canal at midnight.

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Cold climbed me from the ankles, and the light thinned to a projector-flicker. Somewhere far away a machine gun cracked and kept on cracking, a memory of a memory. My heartbeat was a lift cable paying out into a shaft with no bottom.

The Lugat's hands weren't on my head anymore, mostly because I didn't have a head anymore; I was a lens being turned. I tried to breathe and got water's memory instead: iron, algae and the aftertaste of coin.

"Good," the Lugat's voice said, not in my ear but somewhere deeper. "Now we look back to the moment where your realm was nearly lost the last time He came through."

The stairwell turned again, revealing a battlefield I never wanted to know, and for a heartbeat I saw the Lugat as he truly was, standing at the end of it with a knife made of missing time… and then I wasn't in my body at all.

[System Intrusion: MEMORY-VECTOR SHIFT]
[Host: LUGAT | Parallax: Shared]
[Warning: Emotional bleed-through likely. You are riding his head, Warden.]

Grey-green figures fanned through smoke, wearing coal-scuttle helmets and field coats slick with dew and other people's blood. There were a bunch of bicycles laying in a ditch to my right, their frames stamped with a boar's head. An enamel road sign pointed nowhere useful. A little chapel behind me burned with a domestic little whoosh, the glass in its lancets puddled on the step.

I felt the Lugat's hunger as if it were part of me as we moved together through the wreckage. A draft of shadow attached to a battalion that didn't know how to react to the forces alongside them. Officers were wary, tugging on cigarette tips that winked like fox eyes. A Captain posed with a captured flag while a private kicked a dead man's helmet to see if it made a different sound.

"Schau," someone said, gloating, as a knot of prisoners were herded to a hedgerow. "Die Kleinen sind fertig." Somehow, I knew what that meant. The little ones are finished. Apparently, I could speak German in this memory.

One of the prisoners was hauled forward, his knees muddy and his lips cut. He wore a torn armband with that boar's head and the stubbornness of a man who'd done his best to delay tanks with a roadblock. An SS-Sturmbannführer with polished boots stepped in close.

"It really would be best if you were to tell us where to find your commander?" he said in passable French. The prisoner kept his mouth shut. The Sturmbannführer smiled and nodded for another kicking to be administered. "Your King is gone," he said, once the beating had ceased. "Your army is folding. It would be best for you to be sensible. There needs to be no more deaths this day."

The Lugat rose behind the German like the inverse of smoke. Men didn't notice, but the dogs did. There was one under a troop truck, whimpering into its paws. All around us, similar things uncoiled: thin creatures made of dark, women with hair that moved against a wind that hadn't started yet. These things of the night clung around the Wehrmacht like mould.

And then He came forth, and I felt myself stiffen in fear, even as I knew this had all happened a long time ago. The terrible Shadow had the outline of a senior SS officer without actually having the courtesy of a face. Wherever the Shadow stood, sound seemed to check its watch and step back. Even the Sturmbannführer's grin went respectful.

The Lugat, my Lugat, bowed straight to the floor. Devotion slid through him like oil. We serve. Not you, Warden, the Lugat's thought pressed into me. These are not your hands. They were mine. He lent us to these men because our goals aligned.

"Goals?" I thought. "I don't understand. Why are you showing me this?"

"Hush. Attend."

The Shadow's voice rippled across the men. "Break the chapel," it said in a language that tasted of dried leaves. "Now! I want this well poisoned. Bind this ground to the Veil. I want the Threshold breached here."

At his words, sappers charged to drag a crate forward. The lid came off, and inside was a velvet-wrapped length of iron older than the uniforms that handled it. The Lugat responded to the shape, and then I knew what it was to. It was a spike meant for anchoring. He – whoever 'He' was – was seeking to create something like Halfway Hold here on the battlefield. The Sturmbannführer supervised all this with the excitement of a boy who was allowed to hold the hammer.

Or the magnifying glass over the ants.

The Belgian officer finally spoke. "C'est une église," he whispered. "Please."

"'Please,'" mimicked the German, then chuckled. "I think we are somewhat beyond please."

I reached for the man without hands to reach with and found nothing to move. Horror flared uselessly, but the Lugat's calm smothered it. Observation only, Warden. I promised I would show you this if the time came. And now it is the time.

A shadow creature slid into the chapel, moving through the wall and being indifferent to brick, and I suddenly felt the cool suck of the cistern beneath. Old water which had hoarded centuries of prayers. His plan was obviously simple. To drive the spike into the wet dark and to use the power there to rip a hole in the Threshold.

"No. I don't think so, actually."

The voice wasn't loud. But then again, it didn't need to be. Every living - and all the unliving - on that verge heard it without quite knowing why they'd turned. I recognised the speaker well before the Lugat allowed me to know.

It was Aunt M.

She was much younger here. Maybe mid-teens. Her hair was pinned back, her cheeks were wind-bitten, and she was wearing the coat that, I realised with a smile, would later become her gardening coat. She was getting off a bicycle, which she carefully leaned against a milestone with its wicker basket full of bread. Just an ordinary-looking woman who had never once in her life been ordinary.

She walked forward without a care, stepping between the prisoners and the chapel as if she were merely crossing a slightly busy road. The Sturmbannführer started to laugh at the strangeness of the scene, but couldn't quite finish it; the sound curdled in his throat and went out like a wet match.

Then the terrible Shadow turned to face the approaching woman - girl, really - like a deep river taking the weight of a new current. The whole field held its breath, and then the first of the night-things broke from the Wehrmacht's shade and rushed her in a black, glittering hush.

Aunt M lifted one hand and drew a line in the air.

Everything that was shadow stopped, stuttered, and then came apart. There was no smoke, no ash, just the absence you get when you rub out a wrong sum. One by one, they popped into nothing, leaving only the honest cold behind.

Rifles came up with a clatter along the hedgerow. Aunt M gave them a look I well recognised. The one that meant you were beginning to try her patience.

"No," she said, and every bolt, slide and safety failed. Steel sagged, triggers forgot their jobs and then guns sagged to the mud with a clatter.

"Sleep," she added, almost kindly. Though not too kindly. These were Nazis after all.

The men dropped where they stood. Helmets hit soft. Cigarettes tumbled, hissing out in puddles. But still the terrible Shadow loomed, stretched, tried to make itself more.

"Not this place," she said. "Not these people. And not today."

Aunt M tipped her head, considering the terrible Shadow. "You're not the thing you think you are," she told it. "And this is not the place for you. I think it would be best if you went home."

The terrible Shadow advanced, and frost bloomed in the grass with each not-step. Reality wavered a fraction, and the Lugat hummed in my bones. Eager. Loyal. Awful. She cannot—

"Oh hush," Aunt M said, not to me, not to the Lugat, but to the part of night that believes itself inevitable.

She pinched the invisible thread between thumb and forefinger and knotted it. That's all. A small domestic act, practised a thousand evenings with rubbish twine and balling yarn for my next jumper.

The chapel's flames took a step back from the door and reconsidered being flames. The spike in the sapper's hands went as light as a tin toy and as useless. The cistern down in the cool earth remembered being a baptism before it remembered being a mouth. Something old and patient shifted its weight in the water and faced up.

"Now, go back through," Aunt M said. "Go back and don't try my realm again!"

The knot held, and with it a circle no chalk could smudge: a little circumference of No big enough to cover a hamlet and, for a day, a war.

The terrible Shadow withdrew a fraction, then another. He didn't flee. But he was banished. The Lugat felt the leash connecting them snap and staggered away, memory-drunk, loyalty confused and suddenly very heavy to carry.

Across the hedgerow, a German private began to cry quietly, cigarette burning down between fingers that couldn't remember how to flick. The Sturmbannführer suddenly looked sallow and human and motion-sick.

Aunt M turned her face and looked straight through the Lugat, which is to say through me. She saw us both.

"He's trying this again, Eli," she said. "And he made sure I was out of the way first. You're going to need to get involved, I'm afraid. I believe in you."

She returned to the bicycle and kicked it off its kickstand and pedalled away, chain making that small comforting sound chains make when they have been recently oiled.

The world stuttered.

[Anchor Released. Memory stability: failing.]
[Host: LUGAT — Vital sway: spiking. Emotional spill: shame → resolve.]

The field unstitched into smoke and then into office varnish. The desk fan re-found its rhythm. I had weight again, and knees, and the feeling of having borrowed a life and returned it not quite where I'd found it.

The Lugat's hands were still bracketing my skull. They were shaking.

Mooney was plastered against the door, eyes blown wide, trying to pretend he hadn't just watched a woman with a bicycle tell a war to wait outside.

"What," he said hoarsely, "the hell was that?"

"A promise," I said. "And a deadline."