The team jumped through the portal, and their dragons followed suit! They were very excited to harvest the benefits of the needle universe in front of them, they wanted to get as many mana points per hour as they could!
However, once they passed through the portal, they were stunned by the multiple shades of blue that immediately pierced through their pupils. This shade was unexpected, because this universe was as red as a rose the last time they were here. They hadn't seen a single spec of blue within it before, but now, it was all they could see!
“What the hell?” Tim blurted, and the rest followed suit with their curses.
There was a sea of sorts in front of them, and this was very perplexing, because a one-kilometer wide universe wasn't supposed to have a sea. It was too small, it wouldn't be able to sustain it, nonetheless create it under natural circumstances!
“I guess that's why the portal had ‘Aqus’ in its name. This is as watery as things can get.” He muttered, but no one understood what he meant.
Thankfully they hadn't splashed down in the sea, but landed on a dry stone of sorts instead, however, even the stone was weird. The stone was so discolored, that it looked like it came out of the bottom of a volcano!
The stone was the only bit of dry land they could use, and it was only twenty meters wide, but they were glad to land on it. The rest of the universe featured deep waters, exclusively!
“Are you sure this is the bug universe?” Gustav asked.
Gustav felt entitled to harvest the benefits that Purpureus Mundi offered, because after all, he helped dominate it. His hands were smeared with the blood of some unlucky humans, and if he can't reap the benefits of the dangers that he survived, then he may have gotten his hands bloody for nothing. He was getting angry!
With his anger expending, he then pointed out the obvious. “Timothy, this is looking a lot like the nano-universe of Nul. We're not supposed to be in Nul, there's no benefit to it!”
Timothy wanted to answer back, and he planned to be as sarcastic about it as possible, however, he wasn’t allowed to nurture his sarcastic nature. Something weird happened that caught everyone’s attention, they saw a huge creature leaping out of the water, and once it splashed in the water, it created a small wave that reached all the way up to the team’s hips. They were almost dragged in afterwards!
“What the… have you ever seen a fish like that, Ortana?” Tim asked her, as she was the most well traveled person here. “Are fish supposed to have a long nose like that?”
“I haven't flown over the seas all that much, but that fish is weird, it looks like it's a thousand years old…” She pointed out.
Timothy tried his best to understand what was going on, and at first this was difficult, but when he saw a couple of other smaller fish splashing around in the close distance, he got a brief hint. Now, he was flabbergasted!
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“Those are fucking dinosaurs!” He yelled out, worriedly, though also carelessly, because the rest didn't have a clue of what he was talking about.
“What the heck are dinosaurs supposed to be?” Ortana asked, “I haven't heard that name before.”
Timothy needed a minute to gather his thoughts, and now the more he thought about it, the more he realized that the word ‘dinosaurs’ was exclusive to planet earth, it was inappropriate to use that name here. The fish in front of them looked prehistoric at best, but they weren't dinosaurs.
“They're really old fish, you got it right the first time.” He finally answered, “I think this is a different timeline of Purpureus Mundi, because I added the word ‘Aqus’ to this realm's name, just before I summoned a portal. This is really difficult to explain, but let's just say that we're at a timeline where bugs are yet to exist, we came here millions of years early.”
“That can't be right, even Valporovus is just a few thousand years old. This needle universe couldn't have been created before Valporovus…” Arvena pointed out, she knew her ancient history really well.
Now regardless of what each of them thought, the fact of the matter was that this timeline was very different to what they met with the last time they passed through a black portal. This truth was very consistent, regardless of how weird, they couldn’t wrap their head around it.
Anyway, they stopped worrying about the bug and the fish, when they suddenly noticed their mana pools depleting! Everyone could instinctively sense how many points were in their mana pool, and when they noticed a slight decrease, they started panicking thoroughly!
“I lost fifty mana points in this god forsaken place already! I wanted to get more mana points, not lose them!” Gustav yelled, and this was perhaps the angriest he ever got.
“Calm your tits, big boy.” Arvena scolded, “If you bothered to read more books back home, you'd understand that only a few things can steal your mana. Those being either mana roots, or bearers of psidium mana, and since it's very unlikely for us to find any bastards in here infected with psidium mana, it could only mean one thing; There are a bunch of mana roots down there!”
With that said, the five of them started getting more excited. Gustav didn't know much about mana roots, as he had been isolated in his city throughout most of his life, but he had heard about them. Mana roots were amongst the few things that could give someone large amounts of mana, in mere seconds, rather than hours! If he could harvest those roots, then he'd fill the rest of his deep, mana pool very quickly!
However, this wasn't an easy task. Considering that the roots were in harvesting mode right now, this made their new task here all the more difficult! They wanted mana, but the roots wanted the very same, they wanted mana as well, and were harvesting everything within close vicinity!
“There has to be tens of roots down there…” Arvena muttered, “To hell with filling our pools, we can ascend several levels if we play our cards right!”
Afterwards, she started shapeshifting, and she didn't think twice about it. She wanted to turn into an aqus goblin, and turning into a water-breathing goblin was more practical, because she didn't have to take her armor off while in this form. Aqus goblins and degranus goblins were very similar in size, after all.
The rest of the team followed suit, they started shapeshifting, though they didn't understand what the rest of the plan was. Jumping in the water while the roots were in ‘harvest mode’ sounded like a very stupid idea in hindsight, but they were willing to follow her lead.
Every goblin started shifting, apart from Gustav. He never attained this ability, as there weren't too many books about it. One had to kill and consume a shapeshifter in order to attain this ability, and Gustav never had the chance to do so.
“I can't shapeshift, and I'm not much of a swimmer either, so...” He admitted, and then he said. “I'll stay up here with the dragons, just in case any of those big bastarding fish are feeling lucky. We can't have them wreck our village back home.”