VERSATILE: ALTERNATE WORLD

I am losing my mind right now. I am totally underestimating the losing sanity mechanic of the [Seance] that even though I am proud to have endured various pains in my life, I managed to survive and continue living. However, this might be the most painful thing I have ever felt in my life. My mind felt like a mess and everything I see felt like they are all distorting. Even the faces of Queen Tanya and Lucia in front of me seem to be melting the only way for me to endure it is to clutch my head and pull my hair as I grit my teeth.

"Master! What is going on?! Your Majesty, what is happening to Master?!" Lucia panicked.

"I don't know but I think this is the side effect of the skill he just used. But based on his reactions, he needed some quick fix," Queen Tanya approached me and although I still can't recognize her seeing her distortion in my eyes, her voice is very clear to me.

When she is close enough to me, I suddenly felt a sharp pain in my abdomen I felt all of what I have eaten had been mixed and hurled in one go. That's when all of what I am seeing suddenly disappeared and everything suddenly went back to normal as the pain I am feeling in my head suddenly got transported to my stomach.

"Oh. Would you look at that, it seems he has recovered. Nothing can top off on a wallop to the gut for an all-purpose cure."

"Huh? That actually works?" Lucia started opening and closing her fist, thinking of doing a wallop as well in the future.

"Gah, stop, stop. Don't do any wallop again, gah, that's painful as f*ck... I am fine now."

I slowly stood up while still rubbing the painful part of my stomach since the lingering pain from the previous wallop of Queen Tanya still lingers.

"Just what happened to you for you to act earlier? Am I right that it was due to the skill you just used? You looked like you were robbed of your soul when you were using that," Queen Tanya inquired.

"You are right, the skill takes my mana continuously while it was active and the longer the skill remains active, the more I lose sanity and will have the big risk of going crazy if I didn't recover immediately."

"So that was a thing? I didn't know that would happen to you, why you didn't tell us that you have a chance to go crazy if you used that skill? You just said it will be helpful but you didn't tell us what are the side effects. If we have known, we wouldn't have risked it," Lucia scolded me."

"But at least we got valuable intel, right? And I think that was great. If I didn't do what I did, then we wouldn't know many things at all."

"Still Master, that was risky. What if you got crazy for real and Queen Tanya was not here to give you a wake-up call?"

"I am sorry, but it's for the greater good."

Queen Tanya sighed and shook her head.

"Alright, that should be it. Next, we needed to destroy this machine now. We already got the permission so we don't need to continue to debate if we destroy it or not. Unless you still object to it, Lucia-chan?" Queen Tanya then glances at Lucia.

"No objections here. Since Sandro gave his permission and we don't want to have wars happening due to this, then disposing of it would be the most logical thing to do."

Queen Tanya then turned to look at me.

"Bladeheart, I trust in your skills to make big explosions successful. My abilities to wreck things might not be that effective here."

"Hmm, don't expect too much but I will still try."

Pulling out the blueprints, I tried making remote-controlled bombs that will trigger the dynamites that will be added for the demolition of the machine. Just having the dynamite would risk us being still in the ruins for it to be lit up. Having one explosion to trigger everything is good enough.

With the design done, the materialization of the trigger and the bomb followed next. As for the dynamites, I materialized them as well and it came out nice.

"Alright, time to deal some big damage to this machine that this place will collapse. Lucia, do you want your friend to be buried here as well? Or do you want me to bury him outside?"

"Let's carry him out, Master. At least we should have his final resting place outside this place."

I was about to grab his bones and put him in the inventory to store when someone suddenly someone swooped in, grabbed the corpse from my grasp, and immediately landed not too far from us.

"What the heck? Who are you?!" Lucia is the first to react and immediately conjured flames in her hands.

The figure who grabbed the corpse didn't seem to care about us and just searched the corpse's body. When it didn't find whatever it was looking for, it angrily throw away the skeleton of Sandro and blasted it with flames, effectively "cremating" his remains.

"Tch, I guess I got here too late," the person then turned around, looked at us, and revealed themself to be some sort of a masked individual. Based on this person's body build, I can safely assume this masked individual is a woman. Of course, I could be wrong but based also on the voice as well, I can actually say she is indeed a woman.

"A trespasser? But how? No one should have gone past my soldiers without them noticing!" Queen Tanya also assumed a battle stance.

"Hmph, those men of yours are not capable of detecting me whenever I go in stealth mode, it's pretty pathetic on their part but that's just how it is. And based on what I am detecting, one of you possesses what I am looking for. Therefore, you all needed to either give that up or die."

Lucia didn't care what the person said to us, she blasted flames from her hands in the direction of the person and angrily attacked the woman who suddenly appeared out of nowhere.

The masked woman seemed to have anticipated the attack and easily dodge the attacks Lucia that she looked like she was just playing on her just now.

"I see, you all refuse to comply with my demands. Well, you just made things easier for me. DIE."

She then proceeds to attack us and target Lucia first. But I am not just letting her do what she needed to do.

PENG!

My Versatile Weapon clashed with her daggers and tried to parry them but before she can do so, Lucia fired off multiple [Fireball] in her direction, forcing her to back off.

I didn't want her to recover immediately and dash off, attacking her with my Versatile Weapon in rapid succession. Even though I did it that way, she easily blocked all of my attacks and stopped them from actually hitting her. Still, I can see her struggling to keep up with my attacks as she desperately tries to back off from me but Lucia does not even want her to recover and once my barrage of attacks is over, she immediately takes over and shoots flames at her which kept her on the defensive.

Just when we thought we are about to corner her, someone else blocked Lucia's attack and rescued the female masked individual.

"Why are you even struggling at these dregs? They don't even look that strong," the new guy who appeared out of nowhere is also a masked person but this time, it seems to be a man.

"Looks can be deceiving, these two are quite fast at trying to suppress me from doing anything. The man wearing a wolf mask is too dangerous, I can tell that if I didn't block him perfectly then his weapon will easily cleave me in half."

"Then he must be a-" Before he can continue speaking, I interrupted him by shooting in their direction using my Versatile Weapon's gun form. I don't care about what he was thinking. If they are here to kill us, then I don't have time to listen to their dialogues and just go straight at fighting them.

"How dare you interrupt me!" the masked man got infuriated by my actions and attacked me using his metal claw gauntlet. Seeing him fight in a gauntlet, I also changed the form of the Versatile Weapon and changed it to the Weapon of Greed Gauntlet, clashing his supposed attacks with my own attacks as well.

Lucia on the other hand engages in a fight against the masked woman. Queen Tanya is observing the surroundings and making sure her men were okay in case an attack suddenly happened as the people who attacked might not just be them but a few more hiding in the darkness and waiting for the right opportunity.

One thing is clear, the people attacking us are not just normal people trying to f*ck us up, it seems they are somewhat related to something in this place.