Violet kept bragging until Slade tried to keep her in check.
"I still had a trick in my sleeve to fight back even if you didn't come, you know?"
Violet grimaced. "Don't use that thing. It was helpful once but we don't know what it takes from you."
Slade shrugged and checked the fallen pawns. He discovered with delight that a harpy pawn survived the gremlins' onslaught, but the other one wasn't as lucky. Even though he restored her body, her mind was just absent and she didn't even breathe.
He didn't see the point of noodling around with a degraded brain as he had no idea what would come out of it. Still he packed her body with the rest of the corpses to transport, as they could be used for research.
Violet, the Dungeon sovereign, rubbed her hands like a greedy goblin, eager to bring back the booty. "Hehe, we could upgrade the harpies with that. Maybe get some medusa too!"
She took the freshly healed harpy pawn aside. "Carry this slime unit back to Holloweye and bring back everyone here to transport the goods."
"..."
"Hello? Is there anyone upstairs? Your master gave you an order!" Violet waved her hand in front of the unresponsive harpy.
"Incorrect, my only registered master is Lord Slade," the harpy replied evenly.
Metiva and the gnolls stumbled on their feet, eyes glued on the shocking act of rebellion.
Slade waved his arms in panic. "I apologize on her behalf, Violet! Maybe I healed her wrong."
Violet squeezed his cheeks to shut him up and addressed the harpy. "Can you repeat that?"
"My only master is Lord Slade."
"Noooo, your great master is Violet. Get it right, idiot!" Slade shouted over her voice.
Violet let out a sinister laugh, interrupting the slime’s berating. "Slade, don't you understand the significance of this?"
"What do you mean?" He tilted his slime head as if trying to connect his brain cells together.
Violet ordered the gnolls to keep everything secret and found a spot that offered privacy.
“This might take a while so first things first. Send that harpy back to your village and bring back all the manpower you can-” She sat down on a fragile crate, which collapsed under her weight. After a cough, she spoke to the slime wrapping her body as if nothing happened.
"Many mage guilds tried to modify the loyalty of pawns to suit their need, but no one succeeded. Pawns strictly adhere to a hierarchy of Monarch, Crownbearer, Sovereign, Heroes, and pawn handlers. That is the only reason why sovereigns can never rebel against a monarch. Pawns never forget their real masters even when they’re 'sold' or 'gifted'. Anyway, what did you do to that harpy?" Violet asked.
Slade realized that Violet wasn't upset because the insolent pawn straight up rebelled. His thoughts cleared up with the relief that he wouldn't suffer her fury. "Ah, of course, taking over pawns is a great boon."
"Precisely! This is the only case I've seen. We could take over the world with just that discovery!" Violet spread her arms wide.
"Hum, as for what I did to her… Oh yeah, I fed her a kernel and gave my mana. You know, Shaki gives her pawns metal eyecovers, so I customized mine with a tattoo.”
When people ate Slade’s raw eggs, a part of his mana was left ‘undigested’ in their system and stored as fleshcarving around the organ that managed mana. It sounded funnily similar to visceral fat from alcohol and sugar, but Slade’s pattern provided surprising benefits.
The greatest benefit was the ‘corrupted blessing’, which imitated the blessing of heroes.
Violet shuddered in excitement. “I see. Pawns have the uncanny ability to always recognize their master, even if disguises or spells were used. There were few hypotheses about pawn hierarchy floating around, and one of them was that the information was stored as mana. However, no one knows how to inject their raw mana into another being without triggering a rejection. I surmise that overloading their mana organ with your own mana overwrote everything. If that’s the case, we can steal everything.”
She glanced at the pawns laying on the ground. Pirates, oceanids, sea witches, gremlins, iron golems, magi, naga, there was a large number of pawns to steal.
"That's great, we should tell others the good news."
"That's a terrible idea. You're an existential threat to all monarchs. Just like me, when I became an artificial hero…" Violet stared at the horizon with glazed eyes, recalling her shameful youth.
"Is that so? Let's proceed with discretion then."
Since there was nothing else to do. Slade started converting the magi. It was a long process that could take several hours for a single pawn.
Violet suddenly jumped as if struck by lightning. “Slade, what about eating the corpses? Did you forget that you can shapeshift into what you eat?”
“Oh yeah… I completely forgot about it because my shapeshifting is dogshit for combat.” Slade gave up fighting on his own and mostly limited himself to supporting real fighters.
“Let’s find human corpses! I’m sure we can find some,” Violet ran around with Slade. She was really determined to turn him into a man.
Hours later, a cortege of gnolls and beholders joined the crash site. An impressive golem as tall as a building led the march.
