Aggro Litrpg || Progression Fantasy

The scroll Katya had given me felt heavier in my hand than it had any right to.

I tried to let it drop to the floor, but it didn't drop far, just pinged right back up into my palm like it had a loyalty clause baked into the parchment. I tried again and again for much the same result. On the fifth go, I managed to wrangle it into my inventory where it buzzed like an angry wasp trapped in a voicemail inbox, its menace only slightly muffled by being offscreen.

I stared at where it had vanished, frowning harder than I meant to.

Katya. The woman had followed me across. Through the portal that had torn me from my world and stapled me to this one. Apparently, the universe had decided one assassination attempt just wasn't enough to spice things up. Now here she was, reloaded into a new world, perfectly functional, system-recognised, and bristling with familiar rogue talents given shiny new names. From what she'd said, her skills had ported in like some kind of paid expansion pack, while I'd landed in the mud with a broken stick and no clue.

She hadn't had to start again. She hadn't lost anything, whereas I had. All the years I'd spent learning how to vanish, how to think sideways, how to plan five moves ahead in a world that didn't care if I was clever—they were nothing now. I was the meat shield. The idiot magnet.

Could I take her?

The thought slithered out from under the others like it had been waiting. Could I win, if it came down to it?

I didn't know her level. I didn't know her limits. But I knew her hands. I knew her timing. And I knew how quickly she'd ended me when the stakes were lower and my guard was down.

So, who would come out on top for Round 2? I wasn't sure. That's what bothered me. I used to be sure of things. Now I wasn't even sure how much of me was still mine. The scroll hummed again in my inventory, like it had opinions on this matter.

Unsure what to do next, I turned back toward the clearing. Because on top of everything else, I now needed to decide if I was going to sell my soul to the Empire or risk facing the wrath of both sides of a war I didn't really know anything about. And that little deadline was on the exact same countdown as I had to get Lia back to Sablewyn to complete our Gambler's Debt quest. Which, in turn, I think meant that I needed to get our Medical Hut upgraded to Level 2 to start actually healing her rather than 'stabilising' her within that timeline, too. Which meant . . . which meant . . . which meant.

My word. I was beginning to look back at being chased by a wolf as a restful period of benign relaxation. All Frodo had to do was walk a ring up a mountain.

I moved to the Well and gave it a cold, hard stare: this thing was obviously King MacGuffin of all of MacGuffin Town. The rebel Alchemist we had been sent to murder had set up shop here; the veil between the realms was thinner here because of this thing; I could exchange my Health for various buffs via it, and my village manifestly wanted to grow up around it.

Cool beans.

Look at me and my free and easy access to unimaginable power. However, none of that was going to matter if two armies rolled in and blitzed me down to my constituent pixels.

To get things to where I needed them to be, I needed an awful lot more—more stone, more food, more... well, everything. I had to find some way to get the village properly fortified, but without supplies, I wasn't going to be getting anywhere, especially fast. And the only way that was likely to happen? Either 'pledge myself to the Empire' – and looking at the issues Lia was having being a member of that party, I was not willing to go down that road - or somehow figure out a way to scrounge up enough resources to keep going on my own.

Neither option felt like a winner, right now.

"Damn it, Lia!" I said, wandering back over to my Medical Hut. "This feels like the sort of choice a grizzled, cynical Level 7 Warrior would probably have some insight into!" Her slow, steady breathing was, sadly, her only reply. And if I didn't do something soon, she might wake up to find there wasn't a village left to defend.

I tapped into the village interface, scrolling through the options. However, nothing seemed to be all that different. The Village Hall still wasn't done, although that was creeping towards completion. Interestingly, though, there seemed to be a new option available.

> Assign Builder.

"Builder?" I said, clicking on the option that had popped up without explanation. I half-expected nothing to happen, but as I watched, something shifted.

One of the Shadowborn labourers, the one who had been awkwardly hauling half-formed beams in the corner of the frame, stopped mid-stride. Its outline quivered, and it seemed to dip briefly back into the Veil. Then the black edges of its form began to pulse, and then it started to change via some sort of immediate evolution. It was like watching a memory edit itself in real time.

Its arms and legs grew denser, less like ethereal smoke and more like something forged out of darkness. Its shoulders straightened and its spine elongated. It reached for a ghostly hammer that hadn't existed a moment before and adjusted something in the frame of the Hall like it had always known how. Even its glow had changed, deepening to a dull bronze, not unlike it had banked forge-coals under skin.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

[System Notification: Worker Specialisation Initiated]

Unit: Shadowborn Labourer [#002]

Status: Evolving

New Designation: Shadowborn Builder

Specialisation: Construction-Oriented

Upgrades Applied:

– Build Speed +30%

– Structural Integrity +10% on completed projects

– Project Oversight: Automatically corrects errors in framing or alignment

– Passive: Aura of Stability (minor boost to morale in 5m radius)

System Commentary:

One builds to endure. The others just build.

I dismissed the screen, then looked anew at the labourer-turned-builder, who had already sunk into his new role without a pause.

"Okay... well, I guess that's neat," I said. "But why you and not the other one? And why now?"

I looked over at the others, but neither of them had prompts. I had a brief moment of panic where I worried I'd just sacrificed something, and I brought up my stats real quick. Health? Fine. Mana? Still rubbish. Charisma? Still sitting at a proud -2.

So, no cost this time. No soul fragment handed over and, as far as I could tell, no points deducted. Which meant this wasn't part of the Core Exchange mechanic like before.

It just… triggered. Okay, well, let's not worry about the 'how' for now.

I watched as the Builder labourer - Bob. I'm absolutely going to be calling him Bob - moved immediately towards the middle of the schematic of the Village Hall and started being especially industrious, particularly when it came to ordering the default Shadowborn around. Ah, so Bob was management. I quickly checked out the Village Hall construction bar, and it was definitely moving a bit faster to completion than previously. Just under an hour to go now.

So that little upgrade was worth it, then.

I still couldn't see what had happened to trigger the Builder option, and it was greyed out for now. It did suggest, though, that I would be able to specialise my Shadowborn workers from the 'default' to something else. Presumably, the new guy who out there cutting down trees could become a Woodcutter or something like that?

Under an hour until I had a Village Hall. Good stuff. I was sure that would come with some new options for me to play with – even if it didn't on its own meet the prerequisites I needed to speed up getting Lia back up on her feet. I was beginning to suspect I'd need to have both the two remaining 'basic' buildings to be able to level up the Medical Hut.

And I didn't have anything close to enough resources for either. Let alone both.

Still, the emergence of Bob felt like it was a step in the right direction. But I couldn't shake the sense of doom hovering over me. Every minute that passed, I was reminded that the Empire was waiting for my answer. And the Rebellion outriders - was that what Kayta had called them? - were on the way.

Reputation:

Empire: Hostile

Rebellion: Hostile

How had I ended up in the middle of this mess? And how was I supposed to choose sides in a war I didn't even understand? My self-pitying moppy train, though, was derailed by the faint sound of footsteps approaching.

I spun around, half expecting another messenger coming to deliver some cryptic message. Instead, though, it was a small group of villagers. Real people, not any version of a shadow.

They were looking at me nervously, their eyes flicking between me and the Well. One of them, an older man with an ugly scar running down the whole left-hand side of his face, cleared his throat and stepped forward.

"We got a notification about a village being established around these parts," he said. I could be wrong, but there was more than a trace of a Nottinghamshire accent in his speech. "We've been travelling through the woods, staying hidden from all the soldiers. But thought we'd come and have a look at what was what."

"You've been hiding from the Empire?"

"And the Rebellion. We've got no love for either of them."

That was interesting. From what I'd seen of both parties thus far, I wasn't exactly keen myself. When you were being offered the wonderful, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to choose between hitching your wagon to the Creepy Wolf or the Grinning Skull, I could imagine other options being available being pretty attractive.

Even if that option was a Medical Hut and a half-built Village Hall . . .

"Well, it's early days right now, I'm afraid. But soon," I slapped the roof of my Village Hall, "this bad boy can fit so much RTS fun in it."

The man with the scar didn't react to my attempted meme, and I was once more struck by the sense that when I said things that didn't compute in this world, the system just made it sound like something else. "Well, we don't want to tangle with either side in the war, and we've increasingly got nowhere else to be. Hard to make a living amongst the trees, if you get what I'm saying."

I did. A Neutral village. Somewhere for people who didn't want to be involved with either the Empire or the Rebellion. The attraction was clear. "Look," I said, rubbing the back of my neck. "I don't want to sell you a bill of goods here. I'm not exactly running a Centre Parcs, and from what I understand, the Veil is especially thin here. I'm going to level with you: I have no idea how to get this place properly going. Also, in the cause of full and frank open transparency, both sides are breathing down my neck, so I don't think this is likely to be much of a refuge."

"We can help with your set-up," the man said. "We know how to survive in these woods. All of us can gather food, hunt, and build. Whatever you need, really. All we need is a place to call home that doesn't owe allegiance to the Emperor or the fucking Rebellion."

I glanced back at the Medical Hut, where Lia lay, unconscious and unaware of the choice I was preparing to make. She was absolutely on the side of the Empire – even if I sensed she wasn't exactly ecstatic about it. However, there were some real people here – actual, live, breathing people - looking to me for help. And if that wasn't the sort of thing a Warden - who was hoping to be upgraded to being the Guardian of the Threshold – should get up to, then I don't know what was.

"Okay. You're on," I found myself saying, watching as the small group clustered behind the man pretty much sagged in relief. "But I have to tell you, we're going to be bang up against it."

"I think you'll find," the group's leader said, grinning widely, "that when the chips are down, we're a pretty useful little band of merry souls to have around."

I wondered what he meant by that.