Aggro Litrpg || Progression Fantasy

Actually, the rain hadn't so much started as arrived. One moment, the clearing had been still, and the next it was being softly needled from above. It wasn't an especially dramatic downpour, but rather one of those steady, creeping showers that soaked without ceremony.

Water pattered off Lia's ruined armour and caught in the folds of the bandages I'd wrapped around her, and gathered in the tiny rivulets at the edge of the tree. Some of it mixed with her blood and thinned the red out into branching veins from her body, which meant dark lines carved through her bed of moss like a gorily vivid Vitruvian Man.

My brain flashed back to a similar sight in Manchester. A week or so ago. Different clearing. Different teammate's blood. Same rain.

It had been, on paper, a routine assignment. Simple pick-up and drop dead-letter post in an urban variation. I was to collect a package from a contact at a textile warehouse in Cheetham Hill and take it to a secondary site in a Kingsway car park. Sixty minutes from start to finish. Standard low-risk courier run. The sort of thing I could do half-asleep.

Except the pick-up contact was late. Then dead. The drop-off never showed. And by the time I looped back to the staging point, my backup was on the ground behind the loading bay, bleeding out into the muck under the trees. Half his face was gone. Eyes open. Gun still holstered. Pro tip: that's never a good sign.

Oh, and the package was empty. I wasn't sure if it had been lifted from me – again, not the sort of thing you really want uncertainty over - or sabotaged before I even touched it. Either way, this was a complete operational failure. Total wash.

I'd immediately tried to call it in but hadn't gotten past the first encrypted relay point before my signal was cut. Which was the moment I knew the op hadn't just been a bust. It had been burnt. Torched from the top. And it seemed I was the one who was going to be left with soot on my hands.

Three jobs in as many months had gone completely sidewise. And I understood that sort of calamity wasn't going to be seen by anyone as a coincidence. It would be viewed as a notable pattern, which clearly made all sorts of the wrong people nervous. And these were nervous people with private security and satellite phones and access to people to make their nerves go away . . .

I'd stood there in the rain, by my backup's body – Steve? Stuart? I wasn't sure - trying to come up with a version of the story that wouldn't get me black-bagged by morning. But there hadn't been one. Not really. Not one that I thought would stick. So I ran. First to Camden. Then, once I'd received that letter, to Halfway Hold.

And finally – although this had been a bit involuntary - to Bayteran.

Here I was again. Same rain. Different world. And another fallen teammate.

The blood in the moss wasn't showing any sign of slowing or thickening. Lia was pale and going paler. That familiar pattern of running blood. Same as it had looked back in that Manchester clearing. Turns out that blood in the rain looks the same. Everywhere.

And that's what really hit me where I lived. It was all happening again. Different team. Same pattern. Griff's words echoed back at me, years too late: "You don't always have to be the last man standing, Eli. But if you are—you'd better be able to explain why."

Rain ran down my face, catching the edge of my fringe and dripping straight into my eyes. I wiped it back with one hand—damp hair slicked against my scalp—and let myself sit. Not collapse, mind. Not flop. Just… sit. On the edge of the well that had nearly been the death of us both.

The first thing that I noticed was that the stone was colder than I expected. And the second thing was that the System pinged.

[You have discovered an Accumulation Pool: Well of Ascension]

Would you like to claim the Well of Ascension and establish a village?

→ Yes / No

That was it. No fanfare. No fancy scrollwork or banners. Just a stark binary.

Yes.

Or No.

I waited for more options to appear. A Help icon, maybe. Glossary definition? Tooltip? Something that might explain what the hell claiming even meant. But no. The prompt didn't elaborate. It just hovered there like it wasn't even slightly aware of how much I was not mentally equipped for civic planning.

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Was this Well linked to the Threshold? To whatever Balethor had been trying to tear open? The Veil had bent right around the well and I'd felt it when I stood in the breach: the pull of something vast and ancient pressing against the skin of the world.

Something told me this Well wasn't just a water source with delusions of grandeur. No, I thought what I was sitting on was more like a fault line. I say, 'something told me,' but let's be honest, it was Aunt M again.

As soon as that notification faded away, I heard her voice, just as it had sounded on the gramophone back in Halfway Hold, but this time in her lecture-hall mode It didn't feel like a memory, not exactly. It felt triggered. Like I'd hit a node, or activated some system-recognised checkpoint, and now her words were playing back as clearly as if she were sat next to me with a cup of aggressively steeped tea.

"The Well of Ascension is not a place, Elijah," her voice said, "It's a convergence vector. A point where the skin of reality is thinnest—where waveform collapse gets... negotiable. You must remember, that in most ways, Bayteran isn't like Earth. It doesn't sit stably beside the threshold like my cottage does. Rather, as a world, it is interlaced with the Threshold itself. This means you cannot afford to allow yourself to drift when 'in country' as it were. No. In order to facilitate your return, you will need to establish an anchor."

She'd paused, then, like she could hear me rolling my eyes. "If you are hearing this, then Halfway Hold is now yours. This will give you a stabilised subdomain intersecting Earth-space and the edge of the Threshold. But now that you have crossed into Bayteran, you will need a corresponding axis in order to keep yourself aligned. If you are to survive as a Warden—if you want the System to consider you to become the Guardian of the Threshold—you'll need to establish an anchor point there as well. Not just a waypoint. A declared node to build around."

The clearing was quiet now. No more shadow creatures. No more Alchemist threats. Just the wind, the wet hush of rain, my teammate circling the drain and the persistent, humming presence of the prompt hanging in the air. So, yeah, for me, the quiet was pretty full.

Aunt M's voice had been a System-triggered echo, hadn't it? That wasn't anything like meeting her in Sablewyn or hearing other whispered fragments. I thought that information had been encoded into whatever mechanism was tied into my Title and into the requirement for me to protect the Threshold. Aunt M must've known I'd end up here. Must've planned for me to hear it only here. Only now. That was just so Aunt M.

I glanced again around the clearing. The cracked Well. The half-dead woman bleeding out. And the System prompt, still hanging there like a spider waiting for a fly.

Right. I got the message.

This was what she meant. This was the place. And it was time to claim it.

Claim the [Well of Ascension] and establish a village?

Yes / No

We'd nearly died to stop this place from falling into the wrong hands. Maybe claiming it was the only way to make sure it didn't stay open? Maybe this was what the System had been nudging me toward since that first flicker of Warden Protocol.

I focused on Yes. The screen flickered. And the notifications began to roll in.

[System Notification: Village Established]

Congratulations, Warden Elijah.

You have successfully claimed an Accumulation Pool: [Well of Ascension]

> New Settlement Founded: [Unnamed Village]

> Location: Edge of Threshold

> Sanctuary Status: Pending Stabilisation

> Settlement Type: Threshold-Aligned Holding

Title Pathway Updated: [Warden Channel]

> Threshold Anchor Assigned: [Well of Ascension]

> Connection Established: Halfway Hold (Earth) ←→ Bayteran

> Anchor Status: Stabilising

> Breach Susceptibility: Reduced (Temporary)

> Warning: Veil remains fragile. Continued support required.

Village Status: Level 1

- Local Fame: +50

- Global Recognition: +10

- Resources Available: [2 Wood] [5 Food] [1 Gold]

- Territory Claim: Legal but Unrecognised

- Empire Reputation: Hostile

- Rebellion Reputation: Hostile

Iron Provocateur Class Modifier Applied

→ Charisma Penalty active: [-1]

→ Settlement residents will view you as unfriendly, untrustworthy, or vaguely unnerving

→ Advisory: Consider delegating diplomacy.

System Advisory:

This is not the beginning of a grand utopia.

This is a clearing in the woods, a girl bleeding out, and a stone well still humming with consequences.

But every Threshold needs a foothold.

Every Warden needs a place to stand.

You have chosen yours.

Carry on.