The team got into the nano-universe of Nul, and since this tiny universe solely featured a big body of saltwater, the entities didn’t leave the four of them alone until they woke up. Water could be deadly against an unconscious person, especially saltwater, they could all easily drown! The entities felt morally indebted to help these guests survive the post-entrance experience, and all they had to do was keep their heads above the water, really, it wasn’t a tiresome task.
Once the four of them woke up, the entities left right away, they disappeared out of thin air within the blink of an eye! As for the four goblins in question, they felt beyond pissed off that their clothes and armor got wet, so it was best that they didn’t have to deal with any spooky entities on top of this discomfort. Too stressful.
It was really uncomfortable to wear anything wet, their skins couldn’t really work around this sluggish discomfort, so their first thought was to take all of their clothes off right away, they wanted to strip naked. They figured that they shouldn’t be needing any clothes here underwater, but it appears that they’re wrong about that!
“Keep your clothes on, people, we don’t need to see each other’s junk this time.” Arvena interrupted them.
Then, she explained. “We can turn into aqus goblins, if we’re to fit in around here. Nul is filled with them, and since they’re about our size, then we don’t have to take our clothes off this time. We’ll refrain from taking them off, because armor and weapons are expensive, you know? We’ll be shifting into aqus goblins.”
“You make a compelling argument,” Tim joked, “I was looking forward to using a sword anyway, we never get to use these things.”
“Hold on to that because you may need it,” She nodded, “There are a lot of normal goblins like you and I, who never left Nul once they got here, and they’ve become very territorial over time, very dangerous too. We may need to fight them, heck, I got chased out of here last time before I could make any real progress, so always be on your guard.”
“Hmm…” Tim sighed, and then he thought to himself. “I still have a couple of tricks up my sleeve that I never used before. I'm sure that these hiki-tiki bastards won’t complain about being killed by spooky necromantic powers, so we should be alright.”
Anyway, after that short conversation, Arvena led by example. She shapeshifted into an aqus goblin, and since this species wasn’t really superior to degranus goblins, she didn’t have to beg the gods in order to achieve this transformation. She had visited this nano-universe before, and understood that aqus goblins were just dark-blue skinned goblins, who also had gills. Those were the main differences between the two species, they weren’t too special.
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With that considered, it didn’t take her long to grow a pair of gills, she transformed under five minutes!
Tim transformed under ten minutes later on, and then he started mocking everyone’s ears, this latter part was predictable. The ears of aqus goblins were longer in comparison, and they hung backwards like the ears of a rabbit, so they were funny to look at on most occasions!
Skendus and Ortana shapeshifted as well, without any complications. Since no one in the group had to sacrifice anything, the sizes of their bodies remained very much the same. Skendus was still the largest in the group!
Their feet had grown a bit too big, so they had to take their shoes off, but other than that they were the same. It was easier to swim without shoes, and the webs that had grown on their hands, along with their feet, were sure to help them swim better as well.
Their pairs of shoes were the only things that they had to sacrifice in this journey, and since their skin was very recipient of the seawater around them, odds were that they didn’t have to leave any more clothes behind!
Anyway, after they were fit to travel, the four of them started swimming. Their idle swimming speed was about 5 km/h, which was handy because most fish swam at that speed, so they really felt at home here! At most, they discovered that they could swim up to 11 km/h if they needed to, apart from Tim, who could swim even faster than that with the aid of his powers. He was happy with the numbers overall, and so were his friends, as they could swim away from danger if they needed to.
They ended up swimming deeper in this weird sea, they had to. This nano-universe consisted of a single, circular, five-kilometer wide sea, so they knew that they only had to swim down if they were to discover anything important. The explorative part of this journey consisted of that simple formula, so they weren’t going to see anything that hadn’t been discovered by their forefathers already!
Arvena came here with a plan in mind, and since she had some back-up now, she felt confident that they were to reign victorious against any and all obstacles that could be tossed against them. In previous journeys when she had been in this universe alone, she hadn't been fortunate at all, progress-wise, and that’s why she was so appreciative of the help that her guests were willing to offer, all for the sake of collective progress! She knew of its value.
With that said, she was comfortable enough to share her plan. “We're here to remove the mana-quality bracket that each of us have, guys. I've told you about this before, each of us are bound to hit a limit of how much we can improve the quality of our mana, this is inevitable, it happens to most mages, so we have to do something about it. In this universe, we can ‘push’ this limit further away, it’s very possible to do so, and I haven’t told you much about Nul before, because I didn’t want to discourage you. It's very dangerous to swim in these waters!”
“Nothing is as scary as being stuck in the same level forever,” Tim added, as he swam alongside her. “You should've told us.”
“Well, I am telling you now. Our goal today is to find a holy site, basically, and we're to kill everyone in the holy site that opposes us. It feels wrong to kill our own kind, but the degranus goblins here have usurped a bunch of holy sites for decades now, and they don't accept visitors. We'll be fighting some really powerful guys, but if we win and remove our power brackets afterwards, then I'll take you to the Ruins of Aqumus back in the mainland, where our progress will be bountiful!”