Aggro Litrpg || Progression Fantasy

As soon as the group agreed to join the village, something in the air shifted. And I don't mean that in a poetic, mist-rolling-through-the-valley kind of way. I mean it literally shifted. It felt like the System had just clicked a checkbox somewhere in my Warden box and toggled a new status to Active: Now You're Responsible For People.

Interestingly, though, none of them came remotely close to me.

Not a footstep crossed the five-metre line around me. Not one accidental lean, not a single casual sauntering. They weren't making a big show of it, it wasn't like anyone was looking at me and intoning 'unclean!' or anything like that. But someone had clearly etched the boundary of my Aggro Magnetism into them and told them to stay well clear.

Or maybe they hadn't been told. Maybe they just felt it. The low-frequency thrum that hummed out from me whispered: Hit me. Look at me. Choose me. Hurt me.

I glanced at my minimap again, checking out the little cluster of dots. White. All of them and not one of them had any sort of faction tag. No Empire crest. No Rebellion stamp. And they didn't have a red glow like the Shadows either, which I guess was comforting in the short term. But neither were they weren't blue, like Lia.

Which was something to think about.

Did blue mean friendly? Properly friendly? Like "won't stab you in your sleep, even if they're sleepwalking" friendly? Was that why I hadn't set off a domino chain of murder attempts just by standing next to people back in Sablewyn? And, more to the point, did I want to be friendly with Sabelwyn? Lia aside, the vast majority of people I'd met who were on 'my side' were quite unpleasant. Mind you, I didn't think Balethor had scored many charm points with me either.

Putting all that on the back burner, though, what I wouldn't have given to have had a threat assessment minimap back on Earth.

I'd have seen Katya coming for sure. One glance at the red dot coming at me and the whole 'hello-stranger-on-a-train' bit would've played out very differently. One flick of the minimap, one ping of red, and I'd have known she was a terminal encounter waiting to happen.

What a tool it would have been. No more second-guessing people's motives. No more wrong reads. If I'd had that sort of clarity back in my last job, I'd have been unstoppable. I wouldn't have had to live off instinct and gut-checks. The whole world would've been a top-down strategy game, and I'd have been the guy with the developer tools turned on.

I stopped worrying about 'what would have been' and looked at the group of newcomers. I wonder what them being white signified? Pending verdict? Like the realm was still deciding what they were to me: allies or enemies. Maybe they were just waiting for a trigger. Maybe they were the trigger.

And if that was the case, then I needed to keep my damn eyes open. Because until that little colour shift happened, I wasn't going to trust a single one of them. I wondered what the consequences would be if any of them walked inside that radius before they turned Friendly Blue on my minimap? Odds were good they'd go full murder-hobo whether they meant to or not.

And, watching them, it struck me that these guys were a little too capable. These weren't people who were in desperate need of shelter and soup. Because, as soon as the guy with the scar gave a sharp whistle, the rest of the group peeled away from him with that same quiet professionalism you never, ever see in actual villagers. These weren't a bunch of lost waifs looking to plough a field and build a hut. They were specialists with skills. And I reckoned both of those came with a capital S.

Which raised an obvious question: what exactly had I just invited in?

One of them—a wiry woman in a battered cloak with a hood pulled low—moved toward the treeline, a bow slung over one shoulder and then just vanished. Two more joined the shadow-labourers at the Village Hall, not asking permission or directions, just doing. And not badly either. One of them even corrected a frame angle I hadn't noticed was off, which was weird, considering Bob the Builder Shadowborn had already fixed it once.

And, in a blink, the rest were gone. Into the forest, vanishing between trees like they'd been born from bark and leaf. Someone said something about a quarry. Someone else mentioned deer. And someone, I swear, used the word slew. As in, "There's deer just waitin' to be slew."

Who even says that?

Still, I let them go. What was I going to do, run after them and insist they fill out an onboarding form? This wasn't a job centre. This was Bayteran. And here, apparently, all it took for a Warden to hire a taskforce of ranger-merc-survivalists was a clearing, a Well, and the promise of not being murdered by either of the two dominant powers in the region.

Low bar, sure.

But I'd take it.

"Your people seem to know what they're doing," I said to the man with the scar.

He grinned back, the poorly stitched tear tugging whitely at the corner of his mouth. "We've been surviving out here long enough to know what needs doing. And it's not every day you come across a Warden, is it? People want to make an impression."

"Yeah, about that . . ."

"Look," the man said, locking eyes with me in a way that was somehow both comforting and deeply, deeply weird. Like he was trying to read the shape of my soul through my retinas. "I've no idea who you are. System says you've got some mythical titlesure, but with all due respect, son, you're giving off 'overwhelmed' vibes, which, I've got to be honest, doesn't exactly scream 'local saviour' to the rest of us."

I shrugged. Fair. Rude. But fair.

"However," he continued, "the Harbinger came calling and you didn't immediately fall to your knees and start pledging eternal loyalty to the Empire—"

The Harbinger? Oh, Katya. Of course she gets a cool, ominous-sounding title like that.

"—so that gets you a cautious pass with us, for now," the man went on, seemingly unaware of my internal sulk about title hierarchy. "And you helped kill the Alchemist. That's not nothing. That's a big deal. Huge. We lost more people to his little experiments than in a whole month running from Imperial scouts after the Easthold fell. So, yeah, credit where it's due."

He paused then, tilting his head a little, like he was still weighing me up. I got the sense this was a man who didn't make bets unless he liked the odds. And right now, I wasn't sure I liked how he was calculating mine. And he was standing a very clear five metres away from me.

"I've also got a negative Charisma," I said. "If that helps explain why you're feeling a bit iffy about me."

"A negative Charisma? Why would you . . .? No. Don't tell me. I don't want to know. I know you're asking what actually makes us think this might be the kind of place we could stop running... what makes us think this clearing might just about be somewhere we could rest our heads without keeping one eye open..."

He stepped back slightly and swept an arm around at the unfinished Village Hall, the Medical Hut and the Well. "It's this. All of this. You're trying," he said. "Might not be polished. Might not even work. But you're building something. And you're pushing back against the Threshold. After the year we've had, that feels like a miracle."

I didn't answer. Mostly because I was beginning to suspect Scar might be the kind of guy who didn't really need other people in his oh-so-important conversations. If I was giving off "overwhelmed" vibes, this bloke had clearly never met a spotlight he didn't try to seduce with a smouldering glance and a tragic backstory.

Don't get me wrong—he wasn't doing it on purpose. Not exactly. He just had that kind of presence. One which filled a room even when there wasn't one. Like, there was probably an epic theme song playing faintly behind him, only no one else could hear it.

And it was in that moment, as he gestured around my sad, soggy proto-village like he was unveiling the plans for a utopian republic, that I realised who he reminded me of. Not in the face. And not in the voice. In his aura. Scar had Grif energy.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

He had the same unshakable belief that he could stare down a disaster and make it blink first. The same maddening confidence that made you want to trust him and punch him in equal measure. And I didn't know what that meant. Not yet. But I figured Bayteran was going to give me all sorts of opportunities to find out.

Apparently, I'd been silent a bit too long, because Scar was now looking at me with that expression people get when they think you've missed a cue. I figured I was supposed to make an approving noise so he could get back to narrating the saga of How We All Survived The Bad Times thanks to his personal magnetism.

"Sorry, I missed what you said, mate."

"I said, do you know why I think it's worth the risk us coming here?"

"Because I'm just that good-looking?"

"No. It's because you've just gained access to vast cosmic power, and your first thought was to build a Medical Hut. That tells us – me – a lot about you. More than any legendary title from the Age of Heroes could. We all think you've got potential, little man. And we're willing to give it a go to help bring that out of you."

"Okay. Well, cheers for that. Glad to... you know. Not be evil. Oh, and to give you the chance to make me a better person. Looking forward to it. Should be a hoot." I wasn't really sure how to explain to him that I hadn't exactly thought about things like that. Lia was hurt, and I could do something to help, so I did. It wasn't exactly like I made some massive self-sacrificial gesture, was it? I mean, what else was I supposed to do?

Which made me think about the massive elephant in the room. "Erm, you do know who is actually in that Medical Hut, don't you?"

"Sure," Scar said, eyes shifting to look at the rough outhouse-like building, which continued to hum pleasantly. "Lia Jorgensdottir."

"And you're okay with that?"

"By the Maker, no. That's Lia Jorgensdottir. She's literally the stuff of our nightmares. We tell stories to our kids around the campfire of her to keep them in line."

That didn't seem ideal. "So why are you happy to help me keep her alive?"

"I don't like repeating myself. But as this is the first time we are talking, I will give you the benefit of the doubt. Just this once." My word, Scar thought a lot of himself, didn't he? "I say again, you had the opportunity to take control of colossal world-bending powers, and instead, you decided keeping Lia Jorgensdottir alive was your primary option. We respect that. We don't like it. Given complete freedom in the matter, I'd rather smother her with a pillow and be done with it. But if you chose to save her, and the Maker in his infinite wisdom stayed his hand, then we can too. For now."

There he was again with the whole 'colossal power' thing. Like I'd stood on a mountaintop, thunder crackling overhead, and screamed a righteous no into the void.

Except I hadn't. Not even close.

I'd mostly just flailed through some interface screens, accidentally triggered a Worker, refused to bleed myself dry a second time, and then stood around awkwardly while a polite murder-ogre handed me a morningstar and then the girl who murdered me turned up with an ultimatum. So, unless the Well was now issuing medals for 'unintentional restraint' or 'low-grade panic', I wasn't sure I'd earned any points for rejecting anything.

Still… when I thought about it—really thought about it—maybe there had been more going on.

Balethor hadn't come to this clearing just to hide out or build a backwoods laboratory. He was drawn to where the Threshold was too thin. Even I could feel it now, that low hum beneath the skin, like the world itself was breathing just a little too fast.

And if what I'd pieced together about Aunt M was even half-right… she hadn't been just a Warden. She'd been the Guardian of this place. Of Thresholds. Which meant her job hadn't been to play diplomat or librarian—it had been to stop things from crawling through the gaps in reality and tearing everything to shreds.

She hadn't just watched the Well. She'd stood between it and everything that wanted to breach it.

And now, somehow, that job had landed on me.

Scar was talking again. What a surprise. "Besides, if you want this village to last, you're going to need more than Shadowborn, aren't you?"

I decided to park the metaphysical considerations for another time. I seemed to be doing a lot of that lately. As Beth was want to note, emotional admin was not my strong suit. Still, good to know I was falling back into my old groove of burying my head in the sand and pretending the world wasn't on fire. It's nice to have hobbies, isn't it?

And Scar was right. About a lot of things, uncomfortably. Most immediately, about how his crew were working literal rings around my shadowy lads. The Shadowborn were still plodding along, bless 'em, but Scar's people? Whole different work ethic. In the time it took me to rub sleep grit out of my eyes and check the interface again, they'd slammed together real, honest-to-God walls on the Village Hall. Twenty minutes to go, and the place might even qualify as a building instead of a suggestion.

And then, because apparently we were speedrunning Civ II, the Storage Shed had gone vertical. No fanfare, no dramatic musical sting—just one moment there wasn't anything and then there very much was.

> [System Update: Construction Underway – Storage Shed (Level 1)]

> Structure Type: Resource Management

> Estimated Completion Time: 00:12:19

> Health: 250/250

> Structural Integrity: 100%

> Storage Categories Enabled: Wood, Stone, Food

> Base Storage Capacity: +200 Units

> Bonuses Applied:

> – Shadowborn Builder Oversight Detected (+10% Structural Integrity)

> – Manual Labour Synergy Active (+10% Completion Speed)

> Advisory: Structure proximity to Well Anchor stabilised. Local Veil turbulence reduced.

> System Note: Expansion of logistical infrastructure improves long-term sustainability. Build with intent.

Nice to see the System was still writing press releases like it was pitching to Kickstarter backers.

The incoming numbers on my resource display had ticked up hard, too, probably a combination of my newly appointed Builder and the gang of real-world survivalists.

"Don't get too excited about that," Scar said. "By accepting us into the village, your support costs will spike massively. Not yet, we've got a bit of a honeymoon period. But after that? You'll need to start feeding people. Clothing them. Giving them shelter. You know. Basic decency stuff."

Sure. Raise the stakes again. See if I care. "So, uh, you've done this before?"

"We've had our fair share of 'relocations' over the years. Empire raids. Rebellion skirmishes. You learn to build quick when you've got no choice."

That made sense. But it also made me wonder what kind of life these people had led before finding their way here. "So, what's the deal with the Storage Shed?" I asked, pointing at the half-constructed building. "I'd not seen that as a priority. Why the rush? Surely food would be next," I said, thinking of the Hunter's Lodge.

"Without a place to store what we gather, we're pretty much wasting our time. Food, stone, wood—it'll all rot or get scattered if we don't have a place in which to secure it. Your Shadowborn can only carry so much about with them, but with this shed, you'll be able to store resources for when you really need them."

I nodded. Okay. So that was logical. I hadn't even thought about the storage limit before, to be honest. Clearly, these people knew the game far better than I did.

Feeling a bit like a spare cock at an orgy, I walked over to what I was beginning to think of as my 'Reflection Log'. But I'd barely sat down before the wiry woman with the bow came to join me, sat just outside five metres, of course. She caught my eye and gave me a grin which was very much like a predator baring its teeth. It was a bit weird having her sit next to me in silence, so, after a few minutes, I opened the conversational gambit. "So, you're a hunter?" I asked.

"More like a gatherer. Of… opportunities."

Her cryptic answer didn't help the gnawing thing pacing around in my gut, but I let it slide. She nodded toward the Storage Shed, where the last few beams were sliding into place. "It's nearly done. That'll buy you some breathing room, resource-wise. But this place?" Her tone flattened. "Still too soft. Still too open."

I opened my mouth to give her some kind of reply—something suitably sardonic, maybe—but the System beat me to it.

> [System Alert: Hostile Entities Approaching]

> Faction: Rebellion

> Unit Type: Outriders – Light Reconnaissance

> Intent: Probative Assault

> Estimated Contact: T-minus 07:49

> Advisory: Prepare defensive action or seek cover.

Well, that shut my gob in record time.

I looked toward the treeline, where the fading light made the edge of the clearing seem deeper and closer than before. What used to look like a tree line now looked like teeth, and hungry ones at that. All that warm, fuzzy energy from watching the village grow fizzled right out of me like spit on a firebrick.

On my minimap, red dots had started to bleed in at the edges.

Scar was already moving. He jogged over from the Hall. "Rebels," he spat. "It's always the outriders first. Light cavalry. Scout behaviour. They'll want to see how you react before they commit."

"And if I react badly?" I asked, already opening the Village Interface and hoping for a miracle labelled Instant Defences: Press F to Survive.

"Then they come through you. Hard."

Cool. Love that for me.

The Village Hall was still a while from ticking over to full completion, and the Storage Shed was already live, but neither of those was exactly a fortress. No guard posts. No traps. No ballistae loaded with flaming justice. Not even a sharpened stick on a rope. Unless the rebels planned to trip over some unfortunate construction debris, we weren't going to be winning this one on tactical superiority.

Then a horn cut through the air. Not a comic toot. Not a trumpet announcing a parade. This one was All Doom. All The Time.

Scar turned to face the trees, hand resting on a wicked-looking hunting axe that had appeared from somewhere I didn't want to think about. "They're coming," he said. "And you're not ready."