The team beamed through the air, and made it to the vicinity of their destination in two weeks time. It was very easy to travel when they had dragons to their side, and not to mention, the dragons became a bit faster and stronger ever since their mana leveled up! A greater mana quality seems to give them very physical features, such as strength, speed, and tougher scales! This made sense.
Iron Claw the Wicked has had very tough scales, which hinted that his mana quality had also been very high, perhaps several realms above the common member of the platoon that attacked it! The math was easy to follow.
Anyway, the team landed in the vicinity of the Ruins of Aqumus, point being that they were about twenty kilometers away from the ruins. The team were on the shores of The Old Sea, and had made camp there for a few days.
Originally they would just shapeshift, and then stride the waters, but they couldn’t leave Gustav behind, as he was their newest member who changed their calculations. He couldn’t shapeshift, and he didn't want to sacrifice several levels of his mana quality just to shapeshift, so the rest of the team had spent a couple of days in the water, in the search of a bubonic shifter! They avoided going to the ruins for now.
It was imperative to bring Gustav to the ruins as well, and this wasn't because of maintaining their friendship alone. The ruins are said to be very dangerous, even for them who's mana quality was very decent, so the team needed every helping hand they could get while they were down there, they needed more firepower! They needed him.
They found a bubonic shifter eventually, killed it, and brought it up to the shore. Gustav then fried the shifter, who in this case had assumed the form of a great white shark before it was killed, and now he was to eat it.
“I spent a shit-ton of points carrying this bastard, so you better fry me up a fat, fish steak.” Tim requested, jokingly.
It took little time to cut the shark up, and they managed to fry its flesh equally as fast, because they had a good camp set up on the shores. Gustav started consuming the fried fish meat, and already started feeling different.
The rest of the team could already shapeshift, so this meat didn't affect them at all. They just filled their bellies with a decent meal, and the dragons did the same thing. The dragons were incapable of absorbing all, or at least most powers from the looks of it - they worked with what they were born with.
“Are you ready?” Arvena pressured, “Can you shift now?”
Before she could finish that sentence, Gustav had already initiated the new ability that he gained. He started ‘melting’. Eating freshly cooked meat, and gaining an ability out of it was one of the best ways to start their morning, that was for sure!
It took Gustav ten minutes to shapeshift, and thankfully he didn't feel any pain along the way, as this ability made his bones and flesh too soft for them to experience any pain. He was all mushy in between his armor, until eventually, his skin became more solid exponentially, and he turned into a four-foot tall aqus goblin!
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With his skin blue, and a pair of gills to meet the demands of the sea, he was now ready to hit the water. He was ready to swim, it was impossible for him to drown now!
In the meantime, other members of the team had been preparing as well. Timothy and Skendus had swam across the waters shaped as aqus goblins these past couple of days, but they started growing tired of this form, so they decided to rely on what made them the most comfortable. In order to achieve this, they had to strip naked first, so they left their armor in the camp, and then swam against the waves along the shoreline, until they reached a spot that was about ten feet deep.
Timothy then started shifting into a stingray, and Skendus shifted into a sawfish! These were the bodies that they were the most accustomed to when striding the seas, and surely, even though they didn't have opposable thumbs in this form, there were still many benefits to them, such as a larger mana pool, and the grand feeling of feeling comfortable in their own skin! Regarding mana, since the containment of mana was physical, it was only natural that bigger bodies had a bigger mana pool.
“Hello again, mister battle-nose.” Tim teased his friend.
“Greetings, sea pancake.” Skendus reciprocated.
The rest of the team then joined them in the waters, while the dragons stayed back at the camp, because they could neither breathe water, shapeshift, nor did they need large quantities of mana to begin with. The ruins were not a task that they needed to indulge in. Besides, the team had left their backpacks full of expensive gems at the camp, so someone had to guard them!
Anyway, once the rest of the team was in the water, Gustav almost attacked his friends, as he mistook Timothy and Skendus for random, monstrous fish, but thankfully Arvena had been there to stop him! They avoided unnecessary injuries.
“Easy, tiger! Never seen a stingray before?” Tim exclaimed. Everyone else around him could understand his stingray tongue, on the count that they hit the waters as aquis goblins.
“Actually, no, I never saw a stingray.” Gustav admitted, so at this point it was difficult to be mad at him.
The following conversations were purely jokes, they teased one another. Ortana was especially a target to the teasing, because she refused to turn into a stingray, even though she had spent a good portion of her life as one! She'd rather have opposable thumbs, and that was understandable, but it was still very easy to tease her. It was a good way to kill time, because the ruins were nearly nineteen kilometers away from them, it would take a while to swim there.
Regarding his new body, Timothy made a great choice turning into a stingray! Firstly, he chose to be as huge as possible, he exerted that option thoroughly, so he ended up being three-and-a-half meters long!
Secondly, he was two-point-seven meters wide, and his width was adjusted to meet the needs of his new muscles! He was a very muscley stingray now, on the count of a strength upgrade that he experienced a while ago, meaning that he could stride The Old Sea with his natural, explosive strength now! Weighing just above a ton as well, he was the healthiest that he had ever been, he was no longer anorexic!
Timothy's mana pool experienced some decent changes as well, right after he shifted, and the system made sure to specify them. She was quick with it.
[The Goddess’ kiss mana pool = 522,045/2,200,000]
Tim's pool was bigger in comparison to his friend's pools, his friends who were on the same level, because he had it increase by twenty-five percent recently. He paid plenty of system points for it, and this percentage-increase would always apply to his mana pool, regardless of the settings and circumstances that he had, so he was very happy about that! Though it would take a while to fill it up, such a vast pool could prove to be very dependable in the face of an expensive battle. Paired with an increased mana regeneration-rate that this bigger body of his provided, he was as ready as he could possibly be to face the challenges of The Old Sea!
[As of now, you can generate 2,100 mana points an hour!] The system beeped.