Court Cuisine (Chapter 12)
While visiting an abandoned dining hall, Laios comes up with an experiment of entering the Living Paintings to see if he can eat the food that the portraits have to offer. He does so while intruding in the major events of King Delgal's life.
Boiled in Salt Water (Chapter 13)
When the group sets up camp for the night, Chilchuck discovers a Mimic hiding in one of the rooms, which causes his skin to boil. But fate is a cruel mistress as the half-foot ends up trapped in the same room as the creature leaving him to have to figure out how to escape on his own.
Court Cuisine contains the following tropes:
Full course court cuisine: Sauteed fish with soybeans, roast duck, pumpkin soup, golden cow cheese, golden wheat bread, fruit
- All for Nothing: Laios is able to enjoy a feast in the Living Painting but the moment he returns, he's still hungry because neither the food, nor the nourishment he received from consuming it, came with him.
- Creepy Changing Painting: The Living Painting watches the party from its perch on the wall, up until it attacks Laios.
- Dissonant Serenity: Although he feels bad about it, Laios forces himself to calmly take food from the plates while the king is dying next to him, knowing he may not get another chance to eat.
- Everyone Has Standards: Laios feels guilty for stealing food when the prince is born and leaves to find another painting to steal food from.
- I Told You So: Marcille and Chilchuck make it clear that they are never going to let Laios live it down for wasting time with the Living Painting.
- Jabba Table Manners: Laios pigs out when eating an elegant court buffet during King Delgal's coronation.
- Jerkass Has a Point: The Elf's decision to kill Laios is extreme but it's not unreasonable to dislike him, considering all the stupid shenanigans Laios pulled during the prince's birth, the death of the king and the prince's coronation.
- Mistaken for Servant: When entering the first painting, a handmaiden mistakes Laios for a palace guard and puts him to work alongside her.
- Mood Whiplash: While the wedding guests rush to attend to King Freinag after realising that he's been poisoned, Laios focuses on snagging as much food as he can.
- Oh, Crap!: Laios panics when the Elf notices him and tries to kill him.
- Portal Picture: The party reaches an abandoned dining hall with possessed portraits that can trap any sucker into it's personal dimension.
- Strong Family Resemblance: An adult Delgal looks exactly like his old man.
- Stupidest Thing I've Ever Heard: Both Marcille and Chillchuck have this reaction when they hear of Laios' idea of eating painting food.
Boiled in Salt Water contains the following tropes:
Boiled mimic
- Bait-and-Switch: To Chilchuck's annoyance, the empty box he accused of being a Mimic turned out to be an empty box all along. The real Mimic was pretending to be a cabinet inside the trap room.
- Bathos: As he's running from a crab-like Mimic, Chilchuck unconsciously thinks of Laios giving him random trivia about how to identify a Mimic's gender.Chilchuck: I don't wanna hear his stupid trivia before I die!
- Berserk Button: Chilchuck detests Mimics because of all the grief they've given him throughout his trapper solving career.
- Continuity Nod: The young trapmaster discovers a Treasure Bug.
- Dude in Distress: Chilchuck ends up locked in the same room as the Mimic and struggles to escape without alerting his friends.
- "Eureka!" Moment: When he takes a closer look at the Treasure Bug, Chilchuck realizes that they have the same letters featured in the message plate in the trap room. With this info, he's able to decipher the correct order to open the room again.
- Failure Montage: Chilchuck flashes back to how his life was riddled with hardships everytime he faced a Mimic.
- Irony: Chilchuck tries to get the Treasure Bug out of fear the Mimic might eat it, only for Laios to reveal that the Treasure Bugs kill Mimics.
- Mimic Species: Mimics in this universe take the form of giant hermit crabs. Young ones hide in small objects like helmets. When they're older and larger they tuck themselves into treasure chests, or box-shaped furniture, waiting to attack potential dopes.
- Older Than He Looks: Played With. To the average viewer, Chilchuck looks like a little kid when in truth he's actually 28. But to long-lived beings like elves and dwarves, he's still a little kid in their eyes.
- Parasitic Horror: Despite the Treasure Bugs being relatively easy to deal with in their first appearance, this episode reveals they have a horrifying way of reproducing. Individuals will crawl inside Mimics to lay their eggs and then let the larva eat said Mimic from the inside out, killing it.
