Silent partner.

John lowered his sword; the creature really did not seem to want them harm. He could hear steps coming down the stairs. The door opened and the three girls entered, confirming John's suspicion that they were around but had been asked not to welcome them.

"It's OK, don't harm her! She's peaceful!" he warned them. All three of them were naked, and only Cali had brought the dwarven hatchet as a weapon.

"Who is she, John?" asked Sylvia. The dryad looked around the room and the link between the girl and bed became immediately obvious. "The bed? But how? I thought that you said that the material was inert?"

"I don't know what happened. The place is strange, we mixed it with enchanted wood, your sap as curative properties and you literally radiate life energy when you have sex... Too many factors to be sure. This girl somehow emerged from it, and now she's here. She doesn't seem to be able to talk, but she understands us and can share... feelings and images through touch..." he explained. Standing naked, so soon after having sex, with Anna in his arms, droplets of cum were dripping from the tip of his cock and between her legs. John could see the tendril touching his foot split up and spread like the roots of a tree to reach the small puddles on the stone floor.

"She seems to have good tastes," joked Cali with a grin.

"She's starving. Cali do you still have a vial of elixir in your inventory?" he asked.

"No, I finished it after the battle. Do you want me to go get some?" she asked. John nodded, and she ran away.

The nameless slime girl had her eyes riveted to John's and Anna's crotches. In the end, John put his sword away and shrugged. Anna extended a hand to the slime girl.

"It's alright, you can have it," she told her.

The slime girl fell on her knees in front of them; no one could tell if it was from not being able to stand up or to get at the right level. In a sense, it was very strange, the way that the slime girl acted. Slimes did not have organs or specialized body parts; their whole surface was their eye, tongue, and mouth at the same time. Yet, she was using her mouth to clean his cock and her hand to collect some of the cum running down Anna's legs.

It was not really a blowjob, she was more interested in cleaning the last traces of cum than to give him pleasure, but it still felt wonderful, just like when he had used the slime cocksleeve or when the bed was pleasuring him. The second he was clean, she moved along and buried her face between Anna's legs. John realized that he was perfectly dry; contrary to a real girl leaving some saliva, the slime had absorbed the last bit of precious moisture. Anna's knees wobbled, and John had to hold her for a second.

"Ohhh... How long is this tongue??? It's going... Ohhh... All the way up!!!!" she moaned.

"You OK, honey?"

"She's... Going deep... I feel her inside... It's good... Don't worry.... Oh...."

The slime girl removed her face from Anna's pussy and reabsorbed a good 15 inches of tongue from inside of it. It left Anna panting and blushing. The new girl was now turning to Sylvia, whose pussy was trickling some of her sap. The dryad did not stop her from avidly drinking the nourishing fluid that she produced.

When Cali came back with a few vials of elixir, the slime girl had already lapped up all the moisture from the dryad's pussy, and her long tongue had such an effect that sap had begun to bead on Sylvia's nipples. The slime girl, half fused with the mattress once again, was sitting on her lap and sucking her tits.

John and Anna had been thinking and trying to decide on a name for her. She was visible in the kingdom's interface, and she was able to become a subject if she desired it, but she needed a name first.

John handed the slime girl an open vial of elixir, and her face lit up when she saw it. She was so eager to drink it that she forgot to use her mouth and just absorbed its contents using her finger. The effects were immediately visible: after a few shivers, John noticed that the inside of her body was slightly sparkling. She got up from the bed and tried to stand on a more assured footing. John and Anna had shifted their rings to crowns, the effect of these making sure that anyone here would instinctively know that they were in charge.

"Listen, we would like to offer you to join us in this kingdom. Do you understand what that means?" asked John, handing her another vial of elixir while holding her other hand. His mind was suddenly flooded by concepts and images: service, fellowship, pleasure, agreement. It was a bit weird to communicate this way, especially because it only allowed person to person exchange, leaving everyone else in the dark about what was said. "Wonderful, there is only one thing first. You need to have a name to become a true subject of this kingdom, it won't
work otherwise. What do you think of Daphne for a name? It is the name for a water nymph in an old legend. Would you like to be called that?"

The slime girl had absorbed the second vial while he was talking. Suddenly the domestic slime girl above her head disappeared and was replaced by Daphne. John's mind once again flashed with feelings: service, belonging, agreement. In response John triggered the process for her to join the kingdom. A window appeared in front of Daphne, and she extended a long finger from her vial holding hand to push the OK button on it.

"Welcome to the kingdom of Arcadia!" said Anna, kissing Daphne on the cheek. "Sylvia, I think that both of you could use a trip to the fountain. My king and I have things to finish here."

Once alone in the room, the couple took things back from where they were interrupted. It had been agreed upon in advance that Anna would sleep here until half an hour before the time she usually woke up at home. John had not enough experience with this to take into account the fact that his girlfriend needed a lot more rest than he did. She had spent a lot of time in the kingdom today, and it was already late. He could handle the long days easier thanks to Gamer's body and only needing a couple hours of sleep to recover, but Anna was a rather non enhanced human so far. After a few more rounds of fun on the strangely still reactive mattress, she kissed him goodnight and the material of the bed gathered around her to keep her warm. The fact that no one ever wore sleepwear in this bed and that the material acting as cover was perfectly see-through was only making this bed even more awesome. John had asked Sylvia to produce and stockpile enough material to make a new one. The bed was easily big enough for 3 or 4 if they fit snuggly, but in the long term, extra bedrooms would have a use, and he also had this courtesan chamber to build for the ring bonus.

John silently exited the room, not to avoid being noticed but to let her sleep in peace. John, as much as he would like to do so, could not afford to sleep 5 or 6 hours with her, not when there was so much to do around the kingdom and so few hours where he could be here.

Realizing how much noise what he was going to do would create, he opened the kingdom interface once more and bought an upgrade. This option called Smart soundproofing would cut a room off from any sound not actively directed at someone inside. The rooms dug underground were already pretty well isolated, so it only required 5 units of slime material to upgrade the room and the enchant skill. Once sure that she would remain undisturbed, he got to the ground floor to meet Vesta. He had sent her a text asking her to come, and thankfully, she had not gone to the fountain with Sylvia and Daphne.

They met up in the forge because John wanted to test a few things. It cost John another 1000$ to make it barely functional: the stone anvil would not allow John to forge any quality materials and there was nothing to burn in the forge or furnace.

John deposited three of the low quality swords looted from the rat men in a crucible. The junk metal looked ugly and would be brittle, but John hoped that melting it would make it possible to refine it into a purer metal. Each sword was made out of 3 units, or that is what he could scrap them for.

"Vesta, I'm learning the art of the forge, and I would be happy to share what I know with you as I progress. This is one of these things fire can bring us. Taking rock or ore and fashion it into useful tools and weapons. I’ll go up to the lab, as I need to use one of the crafting tables up there. While I am gone, I want you to melt these. Focused heat, just like in the junkyard, not to cut but to melt completely this time. Do you think you can do that?" he asked her. Even if she could not make them liquid, he might be able to forge them together.

"I'll do my best. I never did it like this before. I hope I can!" she cheered, eager to be useful. John was glad to be able to give her useful things to do with her fire, especially when it did not involve killing or destroying things. It was important for her, to help her overcome what happened to her.

"Awesome, I'll be back in a few minutes." John ran upstairs to the laboratory. He quickly created three axe handles out of wood, and then he switched over to the enchanting table. He had understood something: if there was a limit on how much he could enhance an item through magic and runes once crafted, he could try enhance each material before the crafting. Turning the wood into enchanted wood had given awesome results before, so it was his first step. He also used three silver coins per handle to create wire to be ingrained into the wood, and he used basic enchantments for quality on the silver before integrating it. He prepared in the same way a few strips of lizardmen hide before wrapping them on the handles. Once satisfied with the whole thing and the few runes he learned from the initial book that he got from Moira, he got back to the forge.

The metal in the crucible was glowing red hot. John had put on his slime suit, to protect himself, and recovered the hammer that he had looted in the dungeon. This was not liquid metal, but it was soft enough to work it easily. John realized that he could ignore the need for thongs by using Move, but the need to hold it really tight meant that he could not hold many items at once, two was difficult and three was really stretching it. Vesta helped him by holding one of the glowing pieces of metal bare handed.

The process was easy and straightforward: John hammered the three items together until they were only one, folded it, hammered it and did it again. The heating and hammering had already reduced the mass of the metal by a good third, burnt away or removed as sludge or impurities when the hammer landed on the block. Once he considered it worked enough, John began to shape it. It was almost the same design than the dwarven hatchet: an axe on one side, pickaxe on the other. John wanted to create a multifunction harvesting tool that could double as a weapon and to make enough for every battle capable person in the kingdom.

The axe head, once forged, was upgraded using junk rat bones, before receiving runes of enhancement. Soon came the moment to craft the tool, using an upgraded, enchanted, rune engraved axe head and an equally worked on shaft.

The result was beautiful: a long tool, with a blade on one side and a spike on the other. The grip was comfortable and allowed it to be swung with two hands or just one. John did invest the points from his last level, 5 in AGI and 5 in STR, as it would allow him to use it one handed if needed. The junk rat bones had fused themselves into the material of the blade and pick, making it shimmer of copper reflections. One could notice some rat head shaped design on each side of the blade but also John's coat of arms.

Arcadian Pioneer Axe: enchanted item.
Created by King John 1st of Arcadia to help the expansion of his kingdom, this versatile tool is designed to gather resources and wage war.
Swift: the weapon moves faster than its weight should allow while conserving momentum.
Expert tool used: +20% durability and dmg.
Scavenger: +1 skill lvl to Harvesting when wielded (grants the skill at lvl 1 if skill not known by wielder). +10% ressources gathered.
Armor-bane: ignores 15 armor points, +5 durability dmg per hit.
240/240 durability

While looking with pride at the result, he blew a spectral kiss to Vesta, and without losing a second, he started on another batch. It took him a few hours in total, but in the end he had three identical weapons. In the process of doing this he reached lvl 4 in Echant, lvl 7 in Fire resistance, 5/12 in Apprentice Smith and lvl 6 in Craft.

He left Vesta to celebrate this achievement with a Shadow Clone and walked to the computer room. There was a lot of forge equipment on the Abyss Auction, but the good stuff was insanely expensive. He had an idea how to decipher the dwarven tome on runes, a bit of an exploit but probably worth a try. He texted Tricia and Moira to ask if any of them were in possession of a dwarvish pronunciation guide. If he was able to say what was on the pages, then he should be able to understand it thanks to his crown. He really hoped that the way the effect was written would allow this to work.

Before getting back to his room to join his queen in bed, he took a last look at the plan of his castle. There was a lot missing, such as plumbing, but it was a very nice start.

A very good start indeed...

He used clean on himself to remove the smell of smoke and burnt metal before going back into the bedroom. Once inside he climbed into the bed, the living material letting him get closer and spoon his girlfriend before closing up on him.

There were still a lot of mysteries, challenges and things to do, but they could wait for another day.