The group returned to the palace.
[https://i.imgur.com/OXzmh7V.jpg]
Violet needed to pick a knight candidate, but assigning responsibilities to her new Cove pawns was more important. After all, the sudden influx of population would quickly deplete their modest food stockpile.
Furthermore, Slade always lamented about his lack of personal power as a toilet slime. Although he couldn't die easily, his floppy slime slaps didn't hurt much. As a result, he was forced to support other fighters, who were mostly pawns. That's why he was eager to learn more about his new toys and find methods to make them brokenly strong.
The throne room was converted into a giant office combined with a bedroom so that Violet didn't have to take a single step outside for anything. However, many superfluous things cluttered the vast hall. Slade studied them one by one before his sovereign arrived.
The tentacles of the pillar of eyes pierced the floor, walls, and ceiling. The biological 'building' produced fruits from which beholders were born, and it had infested the entire palace, awkwardly meshing itself into the structure material instead of growing in free space. It would be understandable if these were tree roots finding nourishments in the soil, but that wasn’t the case for the pillar of eyes, and yet its ‘trunk’ was growing through the stone walls.
Slade always wondered why. 'It's as if the thing liked to be squeezed into gaps and holes… Well, I can respect that.'
His slime unit in the throne room was huge. About sixty cores, grown by taxing the mana from his citizens, Violet, and the pillar of eyes. His size looked impressive, considering that he only needed four cores to shapeshift into an adult human. Thanks to that, he was confident that he could act as the most comfortable bed that Violet had ever slept on.
Less promoting towards good sleep, braindead bodies and corpses were stacked in a corner of the room. At least, they were sealed inside the slime unit and hidden from sight. His dead harpy pawn lay among them, as she was unable to showcase her powerful whip against the overwhelming numbers of the blimp crew. Slade had harvested these bodies from the shipwreck as research material, hoping to strengthen himself with them.
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He had also salvaged some Tower pawns and restrained these survivors on a slimy wall. He injected mana to convert them, but this process could take days depending on how much mana the pawn held. Fortunately, a translucent system window would conveniently tell him the time left to completion.
[https://i.imgur.com/i3u49aH.jpg]
Slade couldn’t wait to use the iron golem, since he had already experienced the thrill of piloting Violet's golem when she could still use magic. He had more control over them than living organic pawns. Actually, there was a house-sized golem on the floor of Holloweye and it greatly helped the construction of the mage tower, but it consumed a large amount of mana to operate, so it was more a siege weapon than a versatile hunting tool.
The last objects to clutter the hall were already placed in the throne room way before the beholders colonized the palace, and no one dared to move them away. As expected from the grand funeral palace, stone boxes contained ancient mummies, including the remains of the gnoll king. The latter started decaying after Metiva had unsealed the tomb to retrieve artifacts. But the tribe elders couldn't agree with what to do with the desecrated remains. So in the meantime, Slade had to seal it airtight and hope that undead didn't spontaneously appear. 'I should just eat it and be done with it. Why do they want to leave a biohazard around like that.'
Violet and the cortege of pirates arrived in the throne room.
Before Slade could feel embarrassment from judging stares scanning the bedroom, Violet placed the paralyzed mermaid on the bouncy slime bed before jumping in herself. She wrapped herself in a furry slime-blanket like a caterpillar.
"Alright, let's take a look at our new pawns. You, give me a rundown of their characteristics!" Violet pointed at a sea elf.
Three cute masked furballs walked up to Violet, while wearing ferocious armors and axes.
[https://i.imgur.com/xDRPdj7.jpg]
"Oh hum… these are the otterkin raiders. Although they once struck fear in all nine seas, their pawn counterparts are merely a tribute to their bravery. Due to the limitations of F-class pawns, these agile units are used as scouts, deckhands or cannoneers. If needed they can raid trueborn civilians or loot settlements while a battle takes place, but they don’t fare well against military pawns. Since their warding aura is weak and most died when our ship crashed."
[https://i.imgur.com/vGAVE7C.jpg]
"Aww, they look so cute." Lorely giggled as she gave them headpats.
But the last pawn was sus.
[https://i.imgur.com/XFlZneK.jpg]
Slade had sneaked in the line to receive headpats by shapeshifting a few cores into otterfolks.