Aggro Litrpg || Progression Fantasy

I was a bit leery about leaving Halfway Hold - this was a clear, direct link back to Bayteran, after all - but I knew hanging around Wendmere before I'd properly dealt with Griff would be a fool's game.

Rule one: if someone wants you dead, you don't loiter around the spot where they last attempted a hit. You don't worry about tidying up behind you. And you don't pop down to the Co-Op for biscuits. You get moving. Fast.

Movement buys you confusion. Confusion buys you time.

While I was very much not on 'Team Griff' anymore, there was no denying that this piece of advice was pretty solid. If I were in Griff's shoes, I'd be mobilising each and every asset he had in this part of the world to converge on this cottage sharpest.

That meant I needed to get out of Dodge asap and, ideally, find a way to London to plan out my next steps. Not only did I have a quest – and I was interested in seeing how the System would work for me on Earth – but I was not going to have any peace until I squared that circle. However, I needed to do that two hundred or so mile journey following no obvious patterns and making use of no routes of return, he might already have people watching.

So, the train was out.

Which meant I'd needed a car. Or rather, I needed to steal a car. Which meant I needed to go somewhere people left their cars.

The bag I'd packed when I came here was still lying unopened in the living room, so I was at least good to start my trek, but I was worried about all my armour. Well, more how I looked wearing my armour.

My current silhouette was very appropriate to life in Bayteran, for sure. It gave off exactly the right tone to make my enemies nervous and my allies confident. But in England, especially rural Worcestershire, I was giving escaped Larper with a personality disorder.

For a bit of camouflage, I persevered with trying to drag a jumper over the top of my breastplate, but had absolutely no joy. It stretched, whimpered, and then tore in half somewhere around my collarbone.

As I was doing this, I caught sight of myself in the hallway mirror and burst out laughing. With my mask of the Reluctant Apex on my face, Gauntlets of Earned Scorn gleaming on my hands and Boots of the Reluctant Vanguard tucked neatly over my jeans, I was looking quite the sight.

And that was before I realised how much bigger I was.

Apparently, levelling up in Bayteran had added about half a foot to my already not inconsiderable frame. And if Beth had been right that I'd put on a few pounds of late, then all that had burned off now and become pure muscle. I was broader and denser at the chest than I think I'd ever been.

All of which – the height, the bulk, and the armour - meant I very much was going to find sneaking around on Earth trying to hotwire a car quite a challenge.

Of course, if I actually managed to reach Camden, I'd blend in just fine. Even in my armour, I'd probably actually come across as underdressed. However, I wasn't in Camden yet. I was in the backworld of nowhere, where massive Viking-looking strangers with reinforced boots and facial obscuration might, just possibly, raise questions that would end with a police helicopter and a SWAT team.

I sighed, opened up my inventory and unequipped everything.

Carapace of the Defiant Line: gone.

Mask of the Reluctant Apex: gone.

Gauntlets. Boots. Ring. Morningstar. One by one, they flickered, shimmered, and dissolved into my cool, not-quite-there pocket of inventory space.

I was left standing in the hallway bare-chested in my 501s, feeling like I'd just ripped off half my personality. Especially when I realised a not insignificant portion of my Endurance had dropped away the moment the gear vanished.

No Shared Burden Protocol. No passive stamina regen. No ambient Threat buff to make enemies take notice. My Aggro Magnetism had slumped back to its base version - shorter duration, fewer targets, no morale suppression – and I'd lost Hold the Line from the ring. No dodge recovery from my boots and no counterstrike bonuses from the gauntlets.

And no Anvil Break lurking under my health bar, ready to explode if I hit the floor.

Basically, it felt like a large proportion of my newly gained edge had vanished.

[Set Bonus Removed: Anchorfall Line – Vestments of the Defiant.]

[Endurance: -9]

[Max Health: Reduced.]

[Max Stamina: Reduced.]

[Status Resistance: Reduced.]

[Knockback Resistance: Reduced.]

[Ability Unlocked: Civilian Self-Loathing.]

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

No, it didn't really say that. But it felt like it could've. I felt lighter, for sure. But also... less. It was like slipping out of my own skin and realising how much protection it'd actually been giving me.

I quickly redressed myself in the actual clothes. I stretched out a T-shirt over my chest, slipped on my oldest hoodie, and added on a battered overcoat I imagine Aunt M must have used for gardening. Obviously, none of this had any stats, but at least now I didn't look like I'd just walked out of an alternate timeline.

As I shut the door of the cottage behind me, I gave Halfway Hold one last look.

I didn't expect anything dramatic in response - a blue shimmer, a voice saying "see you soon, Warden" - but I gave it a respectful nod all the same. I'd take care of business and then come back and work out how I was going to find my way back to Bayteran. If Aunt M had been right, there were all sorts of problems coming down the line.

But I could only address one problem at a time.

And Griff, right now, was it.

I'd barely made it a few steps down the track that would lead to Wendmere proper before I saw someone coming the other way on my minimap. Fortunately, that seemed to work just fine here, too. The dot turned out to be a short, stooped figure in a flat cap and coat the colour of wet gravel. He was weathered, wiry, and the kind of old that I thought probably got described as "spry."

The man had a face like cracked bark and hands the size of garden spades, one of which was clenched around a stick that may have once been a walking cane, though now clearly had ambitions of being used for non-local person crowd control.

I didn't think I recognised him, but it had been years since I'd spent any time here. Long enough that anyone under sixty back then had probably either died or sold up. However, I didn't think he was likely to be a Griff-sent assassin either.

The man stopped dead when he saw me coming down the drive of Halfway Hold.

I nodded. Polite and neutral. He narrowed his eyes and squared up to me. Which felt like a bit of an escalation.

"That you, then?" he said. "Come creeping out of Margaret's like you bloody own it."

I'd recently fought corrupted paladins and a giant Minotaur, but nothing really prepares you for being challenged by a pensioner wielding a stick.

"Hey! Chill. I used to live here," I said, being careful to make no sudden moves. "I'm Elijah Meddings. Aunt M has left me the cottage in her will."

"Was, is, was. Funny how folk only turn up once the decent ones've passed. What do you want? There's nothing left worth nickin'."

Apparently, taking my Charisma-sapping gear off had not just made me more squishy, it hadn't even made much of a difference to the quality of my interpersonal relations either. Great.

"I'm not here to steal anything," I said. "Just sorting things. Personal business."

He took a step closer, sizing me up. "So, you're her nephew?"

I nodded. "Yeah, that's me. Did Aunt M talk about me?"

"Hmm."

That noise wasn't exactly a ringing endorsement. It was more as if he'd already decided I was trouble and now had the name to prove it. "She mentioned some. But you don't look right," he said. "Too big."

"Occupational hazard."

"And what occupation's that, then?"

"I do something in logistics."

"Logistics, is it? Funny, I've never seen a logistics man who looked like he wrestles deer."

I couldn't really argue with that.

The man leaned on the stick and looked me up and down some more. "Your Aunt used to let the postman in for tea," he said. "She'd walk out every morning, rain or shine, and put seed down for the crows. Talked to them, like they were folk. You know that?"

"I did."

"They ever talk to you?"

I smiled, not quite sure where this was going. "Now and then."

He looked me over again. "You're not right, are you, fella?"

"I've had a rough couple of months."

"Rough'll do that."

"Listen," I said. "I'm not here to cause any problems. I just needed somewhere to crash for a bit. And I'm off now."

He stared at me. Then, to my surprise, he stepped to the side. Just a little. Enough to signal that I could pass. Cheers, Gandalf.

"But you should leave sooner than soon," he said. "Bad things come to these old places. Especially when the wrong people turn up at the right time. Your aunt kept that house closed. For a reason."

"I hear you. Nice to meet you." I gave the old man a respectful nod and slipped past.

He didn't follow me. According to my minimap, he turned back toward the lane and kept walking, like he'd delivered a parcel he didn't want the receipt for.

I kept moving, hoping he wasn't already pulling out an old mobile phone and calling the village gossips. Griff would have called this "blowback." The moment when a persona starts to fray at the seams, and the locals catch a whiff of something that doesn't match the scenery.

It didn't say anything good about my chances of sneaking back to London that I'd already failed to finesse my way out of a conversation with an old farmer.

I cut through a gate and followed the lane that curved east toward the railway crossing. The road was narrow, flanked on both sides by hedges fat with rain and things that rustled at my passing. Somewhere behind me, a pigeon was having a breakdown in a tree. Did Aggro Magnetism work on things like that? That could get gnarly.

I kept my head down and my steps brisk. The System's ambient overlay flickered in my peripheral vision, the minimap expanding just wide enough to give me thirty metres' warning if someone popped out with a shotgun. That was much less than it was in Bayteran. I wondered why.

I'd barely made it halfway to the bend when I heard it.

Low at first, a tremor in the background, like distant thunder with somewhere to be. Then louder. Angrier.

A motorcycle.

I slowed out of instinct, and the sound grew.

Closer.

I flicked my eyes to the minimap.

A red dot.

Fast. Vector locked. Hunting me down.

[Hostile Detected – No Affiliation]

The System didn't add helpful context like probably just a coincidence, or maybe they're lost. Just that single dot, glowing like a warning flare.

I picked up the pace, alarmed at how quickly my Stamina started to drop.

This was the new me, raw and unarmoured, dragging my recently-improved frame down a winding country lane with too much history and not enough cover.

The hedgerows blurred as I moved faster now, trying to keep my footfalls quiet while still putting distance between me and the roar behind me. My heart pounded in my ears, louder than the engine.

I could feel it closing.

Red on the minimap. Still red. Still closing. Not friendly.