Aggro Litrpg || Progression Fantasy

I sat down beside the Medical Hut, the ground wet enough to soak through the seat of my trousers almost immediately. Not that it stopped me. By this stage, comfort wasn't really the point. I'd conjured the structure into being with a handful of gathered debris and the same kind of focused desperation that had seen me survive safehouses, ambushed conveys, and a very ill-advised stint in a drainage tunnel beneath Bishkek.

But it had worked. It had 'stabilised' Lia.

But now I needed to figure out what more there was to it. If this was going to be my route home – and I did want to get back home? Didn't I? – then the Well of Ascension felt like it was going to be at the heart of it. I squinted at the air above the newly created Medical Hut like it might share some answers under scrutiny. But no. Nothing. No soft glow. No reactive glyph springing to life when I looked at it hard enough. And no UI asking for my credentials and two-factor authentication.

Just yet more rain on the timber roof and the quiet rustle of a wounded woman trying not to die too loudly inside.

I leaned back, letting the damp soak into my gloves. "You didn't build that hut by accident," I said to myself. "Something recognised the request as an option I had as a Warden. Something routed it."

The Well of Ascension.

It hadn't just been the centre of the clearing. It had been the fulcrum. Not in the metaphorical, hey-look-it's-the-epicentre kind of way, but in the literal, metaphysical, physics-bending sense that Aunt M would've annotated in red biro with the words crucial junction – do not overlook. This was where the Veil had cracked and where the skin of the world had flexed and failed. And it was where Balethor had chosen to make his push.

And now that push had been stopped—violently, viscerally, and very nearly at the cost of two lives—the Well still pulsed. Because it wasn't a well, was it? Not really. I thought it was a lockbox. A junction.

Aunt M's voice dropped into my thoughts like a stone into still water. Not a memory, this time. More like she'd hidden these words in my bones just waiting for the right frequency to shake them loose. "You must not drift. You must anchor. Fix yourself in place."

I must not drift. I must anchor.

This was the thing Aunt M had been preparing me for all along, wasn't it? Not with spells or swords, but with bedtime stories. Metaphor-laced tales disguised as lullabies. Parables wrapped in old ink and dry humour. Back then, I'd thought Pilgrim's Progress was just a weird old book she liked to read aloud because it reminded her of grammar school and Protestant guilt. But now?

Now I remembered one of the pages she'd always linger on. She'd read it slow, with that note in her voice that meant pay attention even if you don't know why yet:

"By this you may see that, notwithstanding the Devil's best efforts, the work of grace will never be extinguished.'"

She'd closed the book on that line once, looked right at me, and said, "Remember this, Elijah. You have to keep the flame going, even when it doesn't want to burn."

Back then I'd nodded solemnly, mostly because it felt like the right moment to nod solemnly. Now I got it. She'd been talking about this. About Thresholds. About standing in the breach and refusing to fall.

About lighting a candle in a wind that's trying its very best to blow you out.

And she wasn't the only one who'd wanted me to hear that message, was she? What was it Forsyth the Wizard had said? "The Guardian must stand where the Threshold is thinnest. You must place yourself so that those who wish to enter your world cannot escape—both of our worlds depend on that."

I guess the Well of Ascension was that place. This felt like it was a stitch-point in the Veil. A fault in the weave. The only reason it hadn't ruptured wide enough to swallow Bayteran whole and take Earth with it when the Alchemist had pulled on it was because someone—me—had stood in the breach and said, Not today.

That was the role Aunt M wanted me to play, wasn't it?

Stand where it's thin.

Stand where others might flinch.

Hold.

Because if I didn't—if the Warden didn't—there wouldn't be anyone else who could.

So yeah, the Well mattered. It mattered a lot. It was more than just a power source or a map marker. I figured that, right now, this was the hinge between worlds, and it was mine. Anchored. Bound to Halfway Hold across a faultline between the realms.

I let out a slow breath, feeling the rain start again in light needles, soaking the moss and stone around me. My back was wet. My hands were cold.

But it didn't matter.

Because the moment I'd dropped into Bayteran, the System hadn't just tagged me with a Class—it had tagged me with a function. And the Well was part of that function now. Just like Aunt M had said.

So when I reached out to it—mentally and intentionally—it wasn't as a curious explorer or a desperate civilian trying to open a management screen.

It was as a Warden. The one who stood. The one who anchored. The one who wasn't going to let the monsters come through. From either side.

And if that was true, then I wasn't just a squatter in this clearing. I was going to be its operator. Its Warden. Which meant if there was anything to access—any interface, any toolset—it would be tied to the Well. I imagined that the System would want intention in order to carry out the required mental handshake.

Stolen novel; please report.

So I reached out., although not with my hands. With mental purpose. With the authority of my role. With everything that Aunt M had drilled into me over cups of bitter tea and increasingly mad-sounding stories.

I latched onto the feeling of standing at the edge of the Veil. The pulse I'd felt during the fight. The weight of it. The inevitability. And I asked—not aloud, but with full internal clarity: If this is to be mine, show me what I can do with it.

A pause.

A hum.

And then:

> [System Menu Unlocked: Village Management – Tier 1 Access Granted]

The corner of my mouth twitched. Not a smile, exactly. But close. Because now I had access. Which meant I could start.

***

This was the centre of this whole metaphysical mess, wasn't it? This was the spot where reality had gone all wobbly, and Aunt M's voice had played on a System loop like I'd activated a hidden quest flag. The thing the prompt had called—what was it again?—an Accumulation Pool.

That didn't sound like a water source. That sounded like a power node.

I closed my eyes and reached for it mentally. I tried to recreate that sensation I'd felt during the fight with Balethor when the Veil had shivered and the System had noticed me not dying in front of a gate to hell. The Well had responded then, hadn't it?

Maybe that was the key? Maybe I didn't need to be looking at the hut. Maybe I needed to look at the thing the village had been built around. I reached out, not with my hands, but with whatever part of me the System liked to call "Warden," and let those thoughts align with the Well. Let the village centre itself in on that buzz. Let the impulse land, direct, and deliberate.

[System Notification: Village Interface Activated]

> Welcome, Warden Elijah. You are now managing: [Unnamed Village]

> Current Status: Threshold-Aligned Holding (Level 1)

> Anchor Node: [Well of Ascension]

> Connection: Active (Halfway Hold ↔ Bayteran)

Population:

- Total: 1 (Injured)

- Growth Potential: Suppressed

- Advisory: Threshold environments are not conducive to passive population expansion. Stabilisation required.

Resource Generation:

> Current Cycle Output (Per 24 hours)

- Wood: +0.5 (Environmental Hostility Detected – Output Reduced)

- Stone: +0.5 (Threshold Disturbance Present – Output Reduced)

- Food: +1 (Foraging Viable – Sustainability Uncertain)

Note: Resource gain is limited due to unstable Threshold field and incomplete village stabilisation. Consider construction of Storage Shelter or Signal Cairn to improve sustainability and attract auxiliary support.

System Advisory:

You have established a foothold, but footholds do not hold themselves.

Your presence has stabilised the breach—for now.

But the Well remembers what it almost became.

And the land is watching.

You are not here to lead armies.

You are here to stand in the breach.

You are here because no one else could.

Carry on.

I concentrated and managed to pull the Buildings tab back up again and skimmed over the options. A few new ones had appeared, most of them greyed out, most notably something called the Village Hall, which was highlighted in red. Below it, a message blinked:

> Requirement Unmet: Basic Infrastructure Incomplete

> Note: All available resource flow currently allocated to [Medical Hut – Lvl 1]

> Resource Production Severely Restricted – Environmental Hostility Detected

> Advisory: Consider stabilising Threshold bleed prior to further construction

Right. So the environment was against me. Plus ca change. I guess the Veil was still thin around here. Killing Balethor hadn't sealed the breach, it had just bought a little bit of quiet. A cracked plaster over something deep and infected that linked both of our worlds.

I didn't regret building the Medical Hut. It was crude, yes, but it was the only reason Lia was still breathing. What I hadn't expected was how completely it'd choke everything else. Resource flow was now a drizzle at best, like trying to replant after a chemical spill. The infection hadn't gone. It had just curled deeper in.

I looked again at the interface and dug deeper into the submenus. Basic Structures. I hit the expansion tab.

> Basic Structures Available for Construction:

> • Village Hall – 50 Wood | 50 Stone | 50 Food

> • Storage Shed – 30 Wood | 50 Stone

> • Hunter's Lodge – 60 Wood | 40 Stone

> • Signal Cairn – 20 Wood | 30 Stone

All greyed out. Of course.

> Current Resource Intake:

> • +0.5 Wood / cycle

> • +0.5 Stone / cycle

> • +1 Food / cycle

Barely a trickle. I guess I would be able to build something eventually. Once Lia recovered, the stars aligned, and entropy gave me a day off. Still, this wasn't a failure. It was what Griff would have called 'a constraint.' I knew all about constraints. You don't push past them, you put pressure on them. You prodded, tested, and waited until something gave. "Patience isn't passivity," he'd always said. "It's reconnaissance."

I wasn't pulling the Medical Hut down just to throw something else up. That'd be criminal negligence. Lia was stable, which meant it was doing its job. Now, I needed to do mine.

This wasn't about forward momentum—it was about developing a bit of structure. If I wanted to root here, to anchor properly as Aunt M had warned, I'd have to dig in and solve the problems the right way. Which might just mean the slow way.

The skin of the world still felt fragile with tension running along the grain. Like something massive had been forced through and the tear had only halfway sealed. That shadow Balethor had conjured? He hadn't made it, had he? He'd simply let it in. And the ground here still remembered the horror of it.

So. Step one—identify the leak.

Step two—seal the rupture.

Step three—build something that wouldn't fall down once I turned my back.

I'd start small. Watch the cycles. Monitor the land. Run diagnostics if the System ever got around to offering them.

I didn't need to push. I just had to hold the line.

And when the time came—I'd be ready to build forward.