Versatile: Alternate World

The shadow dragon's odd behavior is quite peculiar as I have not seen this entity do this in my entire time being with this weapon. Having itself waddle on the puddle of blood just made it a bit more mysterious to me. It didn't stop until the whole puddle of blood dried up and all of it are mysteriously sticking into the body of the shadow dragon. It's not coming off in every roll and instead, it seems to be absorbing all of the blood that it took a few more minutes to dry up the pool of blood.

And when it's done, it started licking before it retracted itself back to the Versatile Weapon. However, the moment it entered the Versatile Weapon, the Versatile Weapon itself changed. The blade of the Versatile Weapon has a grayish black color tint on it but now, it gained blood-red color with some of the edges seeming to look like it was covered in blood. I tried to wipe it off but the blood color did not come off,

The shiny glint of the blade also looked different as well.

"Bladeheart? Are you here? Let's go and continue on our way, there are no enemies on the road, and it's quiet. I suggest we should take advantage of you to get out of here," the voice of Guts echoed outside the place Atlas and I entered earlier.

"We are here!"

"Oh, then let's go if you guys are done with your business over there. The faster we are done with this, the sooner you can reunite with your team."

...

...

Atlas and I left the room where the Pendragon was sealed and where we killed it. We didn't bother to tell Guts that we killed a monster without him. I can tell that he might start nagging at us about why we didn't call him when we are fighting it.

"So what did you guys find there? It seemed you all took a bit of time staying there."

'"Nothing. We just explored around there. It was quite a big room so it took us quite a while before we finished exploring it and when you called, we were just about to leave," I lied.

"Really? I think that room was a bit smaller from what I remember but perhaps it changed when I was not there?"

My eyebrows furrowed when I heard what he just said.

"Huh? You have been there before? I thought this was your first time climbing here?" I frowned.

"Oh, uh...I took a peek earlier which is why I thought it was smaller. Yeah, that was it."

"Hmmmm..."

Guts sighed and he stopped chatting with us as he continued to walk behind us. Atlas then contacted me with a telepathy conversation while we are walking to make sure Guts do not notice.

"Master, this guy is clearly lying."

"Yeah, I know. It's clear that he knows something from it and he was there before. Even I don't know how big the room is just by peeking inside since it was wide when you tried to look. It only looked small once you are fully inside and has fully explored the place you will feel it was a small location."

"Are you going to interrogate him?"

"No. As much as I wanted to do so, we also lied to him, so it's just fair that we shouldn't push any further."

...

After a few hours of the climb, the surroundings have been swallowed in darkness which means the night has already fallen outside, and the light that is shining on the ice and making the surroundings underground glow has already set. It's already dangerous to continue climbing in the dark so we decided to camp out.

"Well, I will go back to my cave and wait until the morning comes. I don't think I like camping that much," Guts said and he was getting ready to depart.

"Huh? You are going back even though it was already so far down before you returned to your cave?"

"Haha, no worries. I can teleport back to my base with no problem. One of my abilities is allowing a sort of save point where I can use it to teleport back to that place anytime, anywhere."

"Huh, that is convenient. If that is your case, then can we also teleport back there too?" I asked.

"Unless you have the same ability as me, then the answer is no so unless you don't want to go back and climb up again from my cave back to this point, you better stay here and camp the night out. Anyways, I will be going, let's meet again later this morning guys!"

And with a single blink in our eyes, he disappeared from our field of vision, leaving only me and Atlas on our makeshift campground.

"Master, are you sure you want to trust that guy? He is quite so shifty and seems very suspicious. He is strong, yes, but he is also quite very suspicious that we don't even know if it was safe for him to be around us or not."

"As much as I am on the same boat as you, we don't have much of a choice, do we? With strong and close to impossible enemies to defeat, I doubt we can even fight back without the giant risk of dying miserably from the monsters around here."

Atlas can only scratch his head. As much as he wanted to deny it our situation is indeed not a good way. With all the monsters being close to impossible in defeating with our current equipment and level, we are all sitting ducks here and Guts filled into our main attacker, dealing with the close to impossible enemies to defeat.

"Oh yeah Master, by the way. After the puddle of blood from earlier was dried up by the entity of your weapon, it seems like your weapon of yours has undergone a very big change. I can immediately tell that it seems to have gotten quite a lot stronger than how it should have been."

​ Now that Atlas mentioned it, I haven't checked the stats of my Versatile Weapon. It changed a lot and I don't know what changes might have happened after the Shadow Dragon started to waddle on the Pendragon's pool of blood but based on the look of the weapon, it seemed to have absorbed quite a lot for it to even change the look of the weapon's regular look.

The blood red marks are still there and it is quite an eye-catching sword now compared to how it looked before especially if it was transformed into a regular sword. Although it can change its looks anytime I want and whatever looks it can as long as it has devoured it, I rarely change its looks and I am sticking most of the time to the regular look of the Versatile Weapon which is the greyish black tint color.

Now, it doesn't look like that anymore. The blood-red color tint of the weapon remained and I tried changing its form. Before, it completely converts itself into the form the weapon originally has. Now, it also has the blood-red color tint that was added. It doesn't look odd, but it is now quite an eye-catching weapon due to how it added more style to the dull-looking weapon I have. Perhaps it is also time for me to change the looks of the Versatile Weapon so that it can at least lessen the way it catches the eyes of others.

"How does the feel of the weapon, Master? Did it somehow seem strange to you all of a sudden?"

"Strange? I don't think so? It felt the same as it was before. Aside from the looks, it didn't have anything that seemed to change anything."

"Can I take a look at that, Master?"

"Sure."

Atlas received the Versatile Weapon and inspected it from every nook and corner of its blade to every detail of the handle and everything that is engraved on it. He is silent while doing this and I think he will take some time before he is done so I decided to cook food while I am waiting for Atlas to finish his current analysis of the weapon.

It took at least an hour before Atlas finished his inspection and he sighed after doing so before handing it back out to me.

"It was a fine weapon. Thank you for letting me inspect it, Master."

"So how is it? Did you somehow gain some kind of insight into the changes in my weapon?"

"Yeah, a little bit. Though it was purely my speculation this time around so please just take it as a grain of salt and don't take it too seriously since I also don't know if what I am going to say is also the real thing."

"Well, go on."

"Okay, it seems like it just the Pendragon's blood did not just change the weapon's look. It had already changed and evolved the weapon into something else. Perhaps you will have to see the status of your weapon to know it exactly."

I did as I was told and my eyes could not believe it. The normal name of the weapon before was Versatile Weapon, now it is called Blood Covered Versatile Weapon. And the changes seems to have not just stopped there as the weapon has now changed completely even the description itself.