Aggro Litrpg || Progression Fantasy

In next to no time, I was back at the beginnings of my village.

The Well – the Accumulation Pool, right? – was in the very centre of the cleaning, and beside it was positioned the Medical Hut. Lia was lying peacefully within it, still unconscious but not getting any worse. The interface reassured me that her vital signs were "stable," but she wasn't about to jump up and dance a jig. It was actually pretty sad to look at her like this. She wasn't even making much noise anymore.

"Not what you signed up for, huh?" I said. "Not sure I did either. I wonder how long the Elders will wait for you to come back before murdering your dad?" I wish I hadn't thought about that. It wasn't like I needed to stakes to be even higher.

[Quest Update: The Gambler's Debt]

Classification: Personal Priority Quest

Primary Objective: Assist Lia Jorgensdottir in clearing her father's outstanding debt to the Sablewyn lenders.

New sub‑requirement: Deliver verifiable proof of the Alchemist's death to the Sablewyn Elders.

Time Limit: 48 hours (​47:59:59 and counting)

Success Conditions

Proof received and accepted by the Elders

Lia's father's ledger marked "Paid in Full"

Neither you nor Lia die, default, or escalate the debt

Reward on Completion

+1,000 Experience

500 Gold

Reputation Restored

‑

Lia Jorgensdottir (+)

Empire ↔ [Unnamed Village] standing unlocked (Hostile → Tolerated)

Failure / Refusal

Lia's father will be eliminated ("sleeping with the fishes," per contractual clause)

Relationship with Lia set to Broken

Empire ↔ [Unnamed Village] Reputation shifts to Broken

Quest line locks; future debt

‑

related missions unavailable

System Advisory:

The clock is louder than the rain. Choose your courier, gather your proof, and move.

Awesome. Guess I had that coming, didn't I?

To avoid calling any more doom down on myself, I opened the Village Interface again. Even having gotten rid of the Environment Hostility, it was still all barebones, really. Quite literally, actually. A spindly layout of pixelated structures floated in my mind's eye: first the Well and the Medical Hut, and then a few others that I was not able to select—a Village Hall, a Hunter's Lodge, and a Storage Shed. 'Infrastructure' by the loosest definition possible.

Beyond the clearing, thin tracks spidered outward into the woods, some ending in blinking resource nodes I hadn't noticed before. I concentrated on one of them—a line curling towards the treeline—and my vision zoomed in slightly, and a second later, a low tug inside my inventory made me flinch.

I pulled up my inventory and immediately saw the cause: two of the bones I'd gathered earlier—the ones the System had so cryptically flagged as [Residual Bone Set – Unknown Origin]—were pulsing.

I hesitated. Not because I was worried. No, if Bayteran had taught me anything, it was that hesitation got you nowhere. I hesitated because it felt like once you start accepting help from the dead, you start down roads you don't always come back from. Still. Pragmatism wins wars. And right now, my war was a ticking down clock . . .

I selected the bones, mentally bracing for whatever fresh nonsense might follow.

They didn't burst into light or shatter in my hands. No, the transformation was almost lazy: the bones blurred, stretched like half-set clay, and then reappeared—outside my inventory and onto the field—reconstituted into two figures like shadows that hadn't fully committed to solid ground.

[System Notification: Worker Subtype Deployed]

New Worker Class: Shadowborn Labourers

Origin: Residual Threshold Echo

Status: Bound (Well of Ascension – Anchor Node)Loyalty: Absolute (Duration: Indefinite | Conditional on Anchor Stability)

Traits:• Accelerated Gathering Efficiency (+50% Wood per cycle)

Resistance to Environmental Hostility (Threshold-Aligned)

Minor Corruption Emission (Suppressed)

Immune to Fear, Exhaustion, and Conventional Morale Effects

Advisory: Shadowborn Labourers are effective but not neutral.

Excessive use may increase ambient Threshold Instability.

Current Risk Assessment: Acceptable.

Continue operations unless Anchor Stability falls below 50%.

System Commentary: You woke the bones. You shaped them with will alone. Now they remember who they serve. Build carefully. The shadows are still watching.

I watched them for a minute—my new Shadow Workers, busy at the treeline—except busy wasn't really the right word, was it? They didn't swing their axes the way I remembered from childhood trips to logging camps, or even the mechanical hacksaw rhythm you'd expect from something animated. No, they worked like they were eroding the trees, sinking their axes in with slow, grinding inevitability, like glaciers carving valleys.

The sound was actually worse than the sight. Each strike made a low, wet scraping noise that made the hairs on the back of my neck want to sit up and start running drills. This was weird, wasn't it? I'd tied a few dead bones to the Threshold Anchor, and now the forest was bleeding itself into neat little resource piles. Slivers of wood, polished and almost too straight, slowly flowed inward toward the Well like iron filings dragged to a magnet.

A pile was growing in the centre of the clearing, and the Wood counter in my Village Interface ticked up slowly, acknowledging the change.

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

> [System Notification: Resource Generation Established]

> Wood accumulation detected near Threshold Anchor.

> Current Visible Stockpile: [Wood: 8 Units]

> Advisory: As settlement stabilises, future resources will auto-assign to construction, upgrades, or manual retrieval. Manual oversight recommended for optimal development.

My workers' forms flickered like they hadn't fully decided how solid they wanted to be. Or maybe the Well hadn't decided for them yet. Either way, the little bone-forged workers didn't seem to mind the rain. They didn't slow, and didn't even look at what they were doing, they just worked.

Okay. So, progress. I needed some more of that.

I needed to get my whole 'village' thing up and working properly, didn't I? I had no doubt that I could generate enough resources to make that happen eventually, but that 48-hour ticking clock was concentrating my mind some.

> 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

> Current Resource Intake:

> • +8 Wood / cycle

> • +0.5 Stone / cycle

> • +1 Food / cycle

Was a cycle an hour? I didn't know, but it didn't seem like a bad assumption. If so, I wasn't going to be throwing anything else up immediately. There'd be no rapid expansion here, would there?

My two new shadow-born workers were steadily ticking the Wood resource up—one slow, scraping cut at a time—but that wasn't going to be enough. Wood alone wasn't going to get the job done. Not if I wanted a Village Hall. Not if I wanted anything stable enough to survive the next shadow-creature that decided to come sniffing around.

Stone and Food, though? That was a whole different problem.

The Stone I'd used earlier to build the Medical Hut had been scavenged blocks from the collapsed wall that Balethor's tantrum had helpfully demolished. Recycling battlefield debris wasn't exactly a long-term strategy, and I hadn't found a proper quarry yet. I hadn't even seen so much as a loose boulder outside the clearing. And now, with the Settlement Management menu open and glaring at me, it was painfully obvious that if I wanted real development, I needed stone.

Would I be able to create more workers when I found a source? Would those weird, flickering bone constructs extend their reach automatically? How many dead things was I going to end up pulling into this village if I kept following this line?

And Food—God, Food was its own problem, wasn't it? The System said foraging was viable, but that didn't tell me anything useful. Did that mean berries? Game? Mushrooms with a fifty-fifty chance of turning my settlement into a vomiting festival? Was the forest even safe to hunt in? Could I even hunt, and if so, would there be deer? Rabbits?

Or would I find myself hunting something with more teeth than legs?

The resource panel in the interface blinked up again:

Wood: [Rising steadily]

Stone: [Stagnant]

Food: [Drifting downward into unsustainable]

Yeah. Real sustainable growth there.

Then I took a breath. I wasn't going to drown in this. It was just logistics. Plain, ugly and manageable, if I moved early enough and kept my head clear. I let the old calculations spool up automatically in the back of my mind, the ones Griff had hammered into me during long, cold nights in places where losing track meant losing a lot more than pride. Prioritise resources. Minimise exposure. Push only when you've secured the ground behind you.

Aunt M had handed me the skeleton of something real here, but being a Warden wasn't going to carry me forward. No, making this work was going to be my job. I needed to stop thinking like a lost tourist marvelling at the local landmarks and start thinking like a Warden who intended to be breathing, armed, and anchored a week from now.

Preferably with something a little sturdier than a leaking shepherd's hut to show for it.

And if Lia didn't improve enough to be able to get back to Sablewyn and clear her father's debt, then there were obviously going to be all sorts of consequences. And even if I didn't care about taking a reputational hit with Lia, which I did, I felt that my reputation with the Empire becoming 'broken' was likely to make being a Warden even harder.

There had to be a way to push things forward faster. The thought itched at the back of my mind, refused to sit still. I moved without really deciding to, walking across the clearing until I could rest my palm against the Well.

It thrummed under my fingers. Not like it was made of stone, more like it was something alive. Like a pressure vein threatening to split if I tapped it wrong. Which was probably not an unlikely thing. This Well wasn't just scenery, was it? It was the anchor point. The fulcrum Aunt M had warned me about.

It wasn't just a map marker or even a power source. It was supposed to be a hinge between worlds. And it was mine, tied to me now by blood, grit, and whatever stubborn thread the System had seen fit to weave between my soul and the Veil.

I closed my eyes, braced myself, and focused. Not just on the stone or the water, but on the space. The junction point. On the fact that as a Warden, I wasn't here to sightsee.

For a few seconds, nothing happened.

Of course it didn't. I was trying to negotiate with a glorified sinkhole surrounded by battle-damaged moss.

But then, just as I was about to pull away, a ripple pulsed through my hand, like the Well had finally noticed me noticing it. A spark of light bloomed across my vision, and the System chimed.

> [System Synchronisation Detected – Accumulation Pool: Well of Ascension]

> Warden Status: Verified

> Anchor Engagement: Confirmed

> Threshold Stability: Partial – Fluctuating

> Accumulation Pool Abilities Unlocked

You may now channel residual Threshold energy to empower your village.

Resource cost applies. Sustainability not guaranteed. Use with caution.

Available Functions:

Well of Power – Infuse local structures. Boost production rates by 50% for 30 minutes.

Resource Surge – Double passive resource generation for 30 minutes.

Worker Surge – Animate latent echoes to temporarily create +2 additional Workers for 1 hour.

> Warning: Accumulation Pool has limited reserves. Reckless use may destabilise Threshold Anchor.

I opened my eyes, a grin tugging at the corners of my mouth despite everything. Now that was more like it. The Well wasn't just a burden to defend or a faultline to worry about. It was a damn lever. If, of course, I was smart enough—or desperate enough—to pull it.

I skimmed the options quickly, weighing them up. I didn't have the luxury of time to build up my resources slowly and patiently. Lia was hanging on by a thread and resources were crawling in at a pace that could be charitably described as geological.

What I needed wasn't just more wood and stone trickling into my stockpile.

I needed hands. I needed more Workers. And fast.

Without wasting another second, I jabbed my focus toward the third option.

> [Worker Surge Activated]

> Cost: 1 Residual Mana Core (Well of Ascension)

> +2 Temporary Workers (Duration: 1 Hour)

> Deployment: Immediate

A low rumble crawled up from the Well, spreading under my boots and through the clearing like a heartbeat trying to find its rhythm.

Immediately, my two workers stuttered, then multiplied. More shadow sprites blinked into existence, each one identical to the others, but all moving with a new sense of pace and purpose. Hundreds of the little guys fanned out, scouring the surrounding area for resources, gathering wood and stone at an accelerated rate, like locusts on speed.

The resource counter began ticking up faster until I had more than enough to create the Village Hall. Big whoop. I'm sure you expect me to have activated the construction queue immediately, don't you?

Yeah. I probably should have mentioned the other important detail that occurred. Apparently, the Accumulation Pool comes with a cost. As my HP flew down to zero, I had just enough time to think that I'd be wise to try to start reading some of the small print in this new world . . .