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Luka's Story	By : Ditmag Category: +M through R > Monster Girl Quest Views: 4827 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: Monster Girl Quest is owned by Tortorro and I make no money from this project. It is a labor of love.

Chapter List
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All too soon it was time to continue the quest. I couldn’t help but notice that I was increasingly calling it a quest rather than a journey. We’d already been to every major city on the human continents. The journey aspect of this… journey was basically over. Everything I did from here on would be for a purpose.
I raised the Ball of Guidance and held it out to the sea as I had before. The light shone out brightly to show the way again. I screwed up my courage and dove right in. I hadn’t had any serious problems last time I was in the water, and I didn’t have the spirits then. No reason to worry, I thought. Anything that attacks me down here I can take. I did it last time, after all.
Shockingly enough, we made it all the way to the kraken queen’s shrine without being attacked. Alice was as surprised as I was. Surprised enough to advise me that perhaps I should let her throw me back to shore again. I couldn’t be so lucky as to not get attacked both ways.
As before, the kraken queen was there. “Oh? You two are….. Oh, yes, now I remember! The hero and the silver haired monster than I married!”
“No!” Alice objected. “That’s wrong! Sheesh, next time you say something that stupid I’ll deep fry you.”
“Oh, forgive me, your Majesty!” the queen stammered. “I get confused sometimes. So many visitors, you see. People getting married, people wanting the orb, people wanting my tentacles up their-“
“The orb!” I interjected. “I’m here for the orb this time. To borrow it, not to steal it!”
“Hmmm,” the queen said. “The orb is the treasure of this shrine. But you came all the way here once for the sake of a man and monster getting married, right? As the Queen of the Southern Seas, I must reward that kind of gallantry. I’ll let you borrow it, then.”
She handed me the blue orb. “Thank you!” I said gratefully. This was going so smoothly! At least once I hit the water, anyway.
“I’m not just doing this to reward you,” she said. “I’m also entrusting my hopes with you. A time when monsters and humans don’t hate each other. I believe that the two of you can bring about change.”
“Hmph,” Alice said.
“I truly hope so,” I replied.
“Like the Monster Lord, I’ll be expecting great things from you, human. Now allow me to send you off.”
“Wait!” I said, a tentacle reaching out for me. It paused, the queen looking at me questioningly. “You know what? Okay. Do it.”
She snatched me again and aimed for shore. Just like before, I went flying through the water like a torpedo. The ball once again protected me from the friction of the water and the change in pressure. It failed to protect me once again from land. I summoned Gnome to reduce the damage of the impact. All in all, it worked pretty well. It was painful, but I judged that I wouldn’t have to take time off to recuperate.
Alice appeared as I lay on the sand, assessing my condition. “How many times am I going to stand over your prone form on this beach?” she said.
“On this beach?” I asked. “Never again. The next beach, I make no promises.”
That got a smile out of her. I must have been growing on her. She used to be skilled at maintaining expressions of vague disapproval when I joked.
“So where is the North Sea queen?” I asked.
“You’ll have to go out onto the beach at Gold Port,” she replied. “The ball should show you the path once you get there.”
“Is there any reason I couldn’t use the ball to just swim to Hellgondo, if I’m already going to be at Gold Port?”
“Sure, if you can swim for two days straight and defeat every powerful monster between Gold Port and Hellgondo without resting. It’s more plausible than anything else you suggested. I guess if you can’t find the purple orb you can give it a shot. Wouldn’t be my first preference if I were you.”
Pleased that getting the blue orb had been easier than I had anticipated, we took the carriage back to Gold Port. Alice had developed an enjoyment of using my shoulder for napping while I held her. I was over the moon. While she’d been open to having all kinds of sexual experiences with me, she had never been much for platonic intimacy before. As soon as she’d finished with me she’d always gone to her own bed. I decided to treat this as a good sign that maybe she was starting to feel about me the way I felt about her. It also felt to me as if my mind was calmer when she showed real affection. My anxieties just seemed to fade away when I held her.
Another good sign was more eagerness to learn about where I came from. Previously she’d only been interested in “relevant” things, like what kind of technology my world had. Since my memory was still very spotty, she’d get frustrated that I’d tell her a fact but then couldn’t answer any follow up questions. A good example from a few weeks back had been a conversation about what kind of weapons humans placed on those rockets we had.
“I guess the most dangerous would be nuclear warheads.”
“What’s a nuc… nucu-what?”
“Nuclear warhead,” I explained. “The way it works is that it harnesses the power of the atom to make a really big bang, the kind of bang that can destroy an entire city.”
“WHAT?!!” she exploded. “How? How does that even work? Atoms are tiny pieces of stable matter, at least most are. How do they make them explode?”
“What they do is they get a… um…. Something… radioactive? Something about fish? And then…. Um….. I feel like I knew this once.”
“This is important!” she insisted. “Remember!”
“Sorry, I just can’t.”
“As soon as you remember, tell me! I need to know in case humans here start that kind of research!”
But now she was actually taking an interest in things I did for fun, which I remembered quite a bit more clearly. About halfway through the carriage ride to Gold Port, she asked me about something I’d mentioned to her on the first day we met.
“So tell me what a jedi is.”
“Now you want to know about that?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “I want to know more about the things you enjoy. Didn’t you say it was a fictional story, like a book?”
“Something like that,” I replied. “A jedi is sort of like a wizard, he or she wields something called ‘the force’, which enables the jedi to do things like move things with his mind, control people’s minds a little, plus anticipate what his opponent will do in a fight. They fight with a light saber, which is a sword made of pure light that can cut through anything, but draws no blood because it cauterizes the wound. Kinda like Granberia’s sword.”
Now I know there are some Star Wars fans out there, so please forgive me if I’m totally botching this description. I had amnesia, cut me some slack!
“How do they control minds?” Alice asked. “That’s one of the disciplines with which I’m most proficient. Do they use eye magic?”
“No, it goes kinda like this,” I explained. “So there’s this really tough monster that I don’t want to fight, so I feel like making you fight it instead. So I’d say to you, ‘you want to protect me from this monster’ while waving my hand like this.”
“That’s stupid. Mind magic doesn’t work that way.”
“It’s fictional and there’s no magic on my world, or at least no one who knows how to practice it. So since there’s no real magic artists have to invent the rules out of thin air.”
“Ohhhhhh, so that’s why all your fictional stories are so implausible and illogical,” she noted. “So is that your favorite fictional story?”
“No, I have a couple of favorites besides that, one of which I only just remembered,” I said. “The first, which I had remembered long before I met you, was a story about a guy who was transported to a fantasy world and he had to save it. It’s a common trope in storytelling.”
“Maybe it happens for real more often than people think,” she said. “It happened to you, after all.”
“Hmmmm…. Maybe,” I mused. “In this one, the guy really doesn’t want to be a savior. He has leprosy and is afflicted with self-loathing. He distrusts power, which makes it hard for him to wield the power he needs to defeat the great evil.”
“So he died horribly, right?”
“No, it turned out that his reluctance was precisely why the god of that world chose him. You see, his power was so great that if he used it unreservedly he would destroy the world he was supposed to save. Which would have been exactly what the great evil of that world wanted. The evil one was trapped in that world and he could only escape if it was destroyed.”
“Hmmmm….” Alice now seemed genuinely interested. “I hadn’t considered that before. I’ve been focused on getting you as powerful as possible. Don’t get me wrong, I recognize how dangerous you can be, but I’d always thought that the danger was in your inability to control it. But how did he defeat the great evil if he didn’t want to learn how to control his power? In real life, taking on something powerful with a hand tied behind your back and no confidence just gets you killed.”
“It’s a long, complex story where he had to defeat him three times, but in the first battle he won by using an outside force to trigger his power. But he stopped short of completely destroying the evil guy because he realized that evil will always exist and the bad guy was just the personification of that evil.”
“That’s not how the world works,” she said. “I think I’d like to read that story, though. That author doesn’t seem to have much grasp of reality but he does seem to have unique insight into how people think. So what’s the other favorite story of yours?”
“It’s about a seagull,” I said. “He wants to learn how to fly faster and higher than all the other seagulls but they make fun of him and eventually banish him.”
“Ah, now that’s something I understand. Intolerance, fear of change, fear of people becoming better than you. That’s the Ilias cult in a nutshell. I think humans fear monsters in part because they are stronger.”
“The raping and eating and enslaving has a lot to do with that, too,” I pointed out.
“I really should do something about that,” she said. “That’s why I’ve been traveling though. Learn about the problems, solve the problems, while recognizing that no solutions are foolproof. You know, smart leadership, not that idiotic rainbows and butterflies nonsense you were talking about.”
“Oh, no, what I was talking about was totally different,” I said. “Humans and monsters getting along, but traveling to try to learn things and figure out why, see if maybe I could come up with ideas no one else has thought of… Totally different from what you’ve been doing.”
“All right, fine, maybe it’s not that different,” she conceded. “I’m just using my brain more and my sword less. Of course, I guess one reason I get to do that is because I haven’t been running all over the world looking tasty.”
Yes, there was that.

It had been less than a week since we’d left the port town. We’d made great time, which gave me high hopes that that strange woman would still be available. Not only was she still available, somehow finding me walking around Gold Port again, but she wasn’t quite ready to leave yet. Since I still needed the silver orb anyway, that was quite convenient.
I went out onto the beach with Alice and fished the ball out of my backpack. I grew apprehensive. What if another crab girl shows up? I put the thought out of my mind as best I could. If it happened, I could handle it. Crab girls are weak. That one had my number, sure, but maybe she was special. A super crab girl! Yeah, that must be it. A part of me didn’t believe that for a second, but for the most part my confidence returned. I would need it if I was to survive.
Once again, the ball showed the way. We dove into the water. Destination: the northern sea shrine.
“The monsters in these seas are a lot tougher than the ones in the South,” Alice cautioned. “I can sense them all around. This is not going to go as smoothly as before.”
No sooner had she said that than I saw something approaching ahead of us. As it came closer, it became obvious that it was a mermaid. Whew! I thought. Mermaids are nice, most of them anyway. Nevertheless, Alice had disappeared. I decided to take that as a hint there was danger here. Alice didn’t usually vanish when I had casual conversations with monsters.
“Oh, a human?!” she said with a smile. “I have a present I’d like to give you. Can you come a little closer?”
I’ve made some dumb choices along the way, but even I wasn’t that stupid. There’s only one present a mermaid was likely to give me and I wasn’t interested. Well, maybe I was, but you know….
“That’s okay, no need for a present,” I said. “I don’t even know you. So I’ll just continue on my way.”
“Then I’ll just have to force you!”
She swam closer to me, changing into her true form! This was no mermaid! It was some kind of creature I couldn’t identify. It had a lower body that sort of resembled a dress, clearly meant to trap and eat prey. Since I couldn’t identify it, I had no idea how powerful it might be. As a precaution I summoned Gnome since binding attacks were likely. Would the power of wind even work down here?
Gnome’s power was exactly what I needed because I found it impossible to avoid getting caught by her. Fortunately she had no other offense. She would catch me and start stimulating me with something inside her that felt like tentacles or maybe tongues? It felt pretty amazing in any case. I was never really threatened but she did nab me three separate times before I sealed her, each time working on me with those wonderful… whatever they were.
When I was done, Alice reappeared, as usual. “I’m surprised that when you saw it was a mermaid that you didn’t go swimming towards her.”
“Alice…”
“I know, I know,” she said, smirking. “Good job seeing through her disguise.”
“I didn’t see through it,” I said. “Your disappearing acts tip me off that there’s trouble. Seems like you’re helping me without realizing it sometimes.”
“Oh, you finally figured that out? I always realize exactly what I’m doing. I may not be willing to fight my cute little subordinates, but someone has to protect you from your own obliviousness at the very least.”
I was pleasantly surprised that I didn’t get attacked again before making it to the shrine. Alice had said there were many monsters about but for whatever reason none except the strange one had attacked. Alice speculated that the bright light could have driven many of them away. This was a darker sea than the southern sea and so many of the creatures here didn’t like bright lights.
The northern shrine was very similar to the southern shrine. I wondered what the queen here would be like. When I spotted her, I was taken aback. She was a scary looking one. She had tentacles, like the kraken queen, but they appeared sleeker, more dangerous. She also had claws similar to a crab girl’s, which was a sure way to make me even more uneasy. Finally, she had a trident clutched in one of her tentacles. She seemed to carry herself with more… clarity is the best way I can describe it, in contrast to the always confused kraken queen.
“I am the ruler of these seas, Poseidoness,” she declared. “You must be a thief who has come for the orb.”
“Yes!’ I said. “Wait, I mean-“
I was slapped by a tentacle. She wasn’t waiting to have a conversation about it. The fight was on. I summoned Gnome since I knew her to be effective down here, as well as protection from being restrained by tentacles. Those tentacles were whipping me painfully, but with Gnome’s protection weren’t doing too much damage. I powered through them, something which would never have been possible before finding Gnome, and landed several solid hits with my sword.
That resulted in her bringing the trident into play. Instead of using it to strike me, however, she simply slammed the base into the ground. A wave of force exploded outward, knocking me away from her. I found that I couldn’t move. I was paralyzed again! But this was a different kind of paralysis. Rather than poison or venom induced, it was a kind of magic. How long would I be unable to move?
Her tentacles reached for me and pulled me back to her. With a sadistic smile, she said, “I so rarely get to feed on a man. How would you like me to do it? Oh, but of course you can’t talk. Let’s just go for the most efficient way.”
I’d assumed she was talking about her mouth, but with a jolt I felt a tentacle squirm up my anus. The shock of it broke me from the paralysis instantly and I began to struggle frantically. Even with a queen-level monster’s sexual magic I did not like this! It would make me come, for certain, due to the massaging of my prostate, but it was doing the opposite of reducing my resistance.
“Settle down, you!” she admonished. “I’m not going to eat you or kill you. Just chastise you! A thief like you deserves this humiliation.”
“I’m not a thief! I just want to borrow the orb!”
“Thieves always say they want to borrow,” she corrected.
I broke free from her hold and resumed my attack. Since she had so helpfully brought me in close again, I was able to land several more hits. I could tell she was growing weaker. Although she wasn’t sealed yet, it was taking most of her energy to maintain her form. Her tentacles weakly grabbed at me. Failing to get anywhere with that, she resorted to trying to push me away with them. Finally, a crab arm grabbed my leg and slammed me to the ground. I shook my leg free and rose to resume the fight.
“Stop!” she said. “I surrender. I cannot defeat you. At this point I am barely strong enough to delay your inevitable victory. You are as strong as the Queen of the Southern Seas said.”
“What?! She sent a message?”
“She did indeed,” Poseidoness replied. “She told me a hero would be coming for the orb, and that I should help him any way I could.”
“But… you accused me of being a thief! You attacked me!”
“A test. I wanted to see how strong you were for my own amusement. Had you been defeated, I simply would have partaken of a little of your semen, given you the orb, and sent you on your way. At least I got to enjoy a little butt play. I do so love to stick my tentacles up there.”
“Um….You’re welcome?” I said hesitantly. I hoped I wouldn’t be sore later.
She handed me the silver orb. “And Alipheese, it has been awhile. You were so small the last time I saw you.”
Alice reappeared. “Hmph… Thank you for guarding these northern seas.”
“Thank you for your kind words, your majesty,” Poseidoness replied.
“I understand your reasons for testing him,” Alice said. “But was it really necessary to violate him that way? You obviously knew I was with him.”
“I beg your pardon, your Majesty, is he your lover? I assumed you would have intervened if he was.”
Alice sighed. “I’m hearing that much too often for my liking. No, he is not. Still, I’m sure you are aware of my orders regarding attacking humans without provocation. You knew why he was here, yet you attacked him anyway.”
“Oh, it seems I have transgressed,” she said. “I’m sorry, you know how difficult it is all the way down here. I don’t get access to very much semen. It makes me forgetful.”
“Very well,” Alice said. “In light of your service and your known desire for coexistence, I shall overlook it. Apologize to Luka.”
“I am sorry, Luka,” Poseidoness said. “Since you are not Alice’s lover, perhaps I could apologize to you properly? I know you don’t like butt play, but I have many other ways to pleasure you if you wish.”
“No, that’s okay, I accept your apology,” I said hurriedly.
“Is there some kind of conspiracy going on here?” Alice asked. “Sheesh.”
“Of course not, your majesty, what would ever give you that idea?” Poseidoness replied. Turning to me, she said, “Hero Luka, I expect great things from you. I pray you bring some light to this world of strife. Never let that sword of yours waver and stray from your path. And now let me send you on your way.”
A tentacle reached out for me. I knew what was coming next. I resigned myself to it and let it happen. There were a lot of dangerous monsters down here. I’d been lucky. I probably wouldn’t be lucky a second time.
I lay on the beach, Alice looking down at me with her arms folded. “So here we are again,” she said.
“Another beach,” I replied. She held out a hand for me. I reached for it but she pulled it away, instead grabbing me with her tail and propping me up. She was developing quite the sense of humor.
“That was surprisingly easy,” she said. “Two orbs in just six days. Just one left to go. Maybe your luck will continue.”

At least for the moment, that seemed to be so. The strange woman found me yet again in town and told me she’d be ready the very next morning.
“I’ve been looking for someone like you,” she said. “I hear you’re interested in Captain Selene. My name is Selena.”
Alice and I returned the introductions. Alice was in human form, so just introduced herself as Alice the traveler, sampling the gourmet foods of the world. I introduced myself as just Luka. She gave me her address and told us to meet her at her home tomorrow morning.
We checked back into the same inn we’d spent so much time in the last time we’d been in Gold Port. Since it had been nearly three weeks since Alice had fed, she was ravenous. Once I was clean, she invited me to sit in a chair, where she proceeded to service me with her mouth again. It was such a change from the predatory way she had fed on me previously. She seemed to really want to make me comfortable. Since we had to go on a potentially dangerous mission tomorrow, she had to hold back a little. Well, maybe a lot, since she still insisted that I had yet to see what she could really do orally. But what she did was amazing enough. Within five minutes she was satisfied once again. I’m pretty sure I was more satisfied. I really was getting stronger. I stayed conscious, although she had to put me in my bed. To my disappointment, she didn’t join me. Oh well, can’t really complain after that, I thought.

The next morning, we went to Selena’s house to hear her proposal. Although she hadn’t been specific, I was pretty sure she was going to take a ship out to go find the pirate wreck. What I didn’t yet know was why she wanted me to come with her.
Selena answered the door. We sat down and enjoyed some refreshments and listened to her pitch. Indeed, she had a ship and wanted to go looking for Captain Selene’s ship, whether it was on the bottom or still floating around somewhere.
“So what’s your interest in this?” I asked.
“I’m Captain Selene’s granddaughter,” Selene replied. “Don’t go around blabbing that to anyone. It could create a lot of trouble for me. I believe I know the location of her ship. She wrote a letter to her lover in this town. That lover was my grandfather. She would send him a letter by carrier pigeon every month. Until her ship met with disaster, she sent those letters faithfully, month after month. “
“And those letters contain clues?”
“Yes,” Selena confirmed. “We can figure out the steps of her voyage using those letters.”
She opened up a sea chart, with multiple lines and points marked with ink. “I’ve filled in the points of her voyage on this chart,” she said. “Her last voyage seemed to be headed towards a certain undersea cave. It’s about a week’s sail from Gold Port, to the southwest. This letter, the last one she sent, talks of her happiness at reaching the cave. She was looking for something called the Calamity Box. She found it, too. She wrote that she was going to open the box that night. That’s when the letters stopped.”
“Calamity Box?” I asked. “It sounds fairly obvious why she met with calamity, opening a calamity box and all.”
“That thing was supposed to have been destroyed by the first Monster Lord,” Alice interjected. “Just what was let loose? But I haven’t heard anything about it, so the seal must not have been broken.”
“Do you want to… elaborate on that, Alice?” I asked.
“No, not really.”
Sigh. She’d become a lot more open in recent weeks but sometimes she would still just clam up for reasons unknown. I had to assume she had a good reason. I turned back to Selena.
“So you think Selene’s ship sank where the last letter came from?”
“It might not have even sunk,” Selena replied. “It could still be moored there. It’s worth checking out.”
“So what do you need me for?”
“Shouldn’t that be obvious?” Alice said. “The monsters out there are pretty powerful. She wants a bodyguard.”
“Well, you did want the purple orb,” Selena noted. “If we find the ship, we find the orb. She mentioned in the letters that it was in her quarters. I get the treasure, which after all is my inheritance as her granddaughter, and you get the piece of treasure she valued most, the orb. So, are you in?”
“Absolutely,” I replied.
“Then let’s go,” Selena said. “My preparations are complete, all we have to do now is set sail.”

It was nothing like I had expected. It looked like a giant pirate ship. And the crew were all young women!
“Hehe,” Selena said. “Surprised? I’m the captain of this pirate ship.”
“Your crew looks pretty tough,” I noted. “Why would you need me as a bodyguard?”
“We have our reasons for not fighting,” she replied. “That’s why we hired you.”
If they weren’t going to fight, why were they all armed? I was getting pretty uneasy about all this. I wasn’t really afraid of the crew. With the spirits and my already formidable sword skills, they were unlikely to be a serious threat to me. It was also possible that Alice would deal with them as she had dealt with the ruffians who had tried to ambush me back in Yamatai Village. I couldn’t count on that, of course. Alice had her own reasons for intervening or not intervening and it could be hard to predict what she would do in advance. Still, these were humans, and presumably very susceptible to her eye magic. It would take her only a moment to put everyone on this ship to sleep.
So, a week on a pirate ship? I hoped I wouldn’t get seasick. I was pretty sure I’d never sailed before. One memory that did come back to me was pirate songs. Why did I know so many pirate songs? It would be more accurate to say that they intruded upon my memory, as I was finding it impossible to get them out of my head. I annoyed Alice to no end as I sang them, badly. It irritated her even more that Selena’s crew seemed to enjoy them and joined in once they picked up the lyrics.
It was another kind of song that intruded upon my perceptions as evening fell. I began to worry, as the beautiful sound came from out in the ocean. A legend that I dimly remembered was of the siren, whose song could entice men to leap into the ocean, where something very bad would happen to them. Shouldn’t I be tied up to the mast or something?
“That song…” one of the crew said. “A siren is coming.”
“Everyone, below decks!” Selena ordered. “Luka will take care of it!”
“A siren?” I asked. “Isn’t a man the worst option for fighting a siren?”
“Idiot,” Alice said. “If it was going to affect your mind it already would have. Don’t you remember, mind magic doesn’t work on you?”
Oh yeah. It didn’t occur to me that siren songs worked on the male mind and I didn’t have one. Wait, no, that wasn’t it. Oh well, let’s wait and see what’s coming. Alice, not wishing to blow her cover, went below decks with the other women, still in human form of course. So it was just me on deck, awaiting the inevitable attack.
I’d always wondered what a siren looked like. What I saw exceeded any expectations I might have had. She was a winged creature and absolutely beautiful. Between the voice and the face and the body it was easy to see why men stuck on a ship with other men for months were willing to leap into the ocean after her. Did a siren even need a spell to make that happen?
“I thought this ship had nothing but women,” the siren said by way of greeting. “But then suddenly I spotted a very high quality looking piece of meat. But why hasn’t my piece of meat come to me? I’ve never had to come to the meat before.”
“I require a little bit more wooing than that,” I replied. “You do have a very nice voice though. Would you like to sing a pirate song with me?”
Ignoring my banter, she said, “Oh well, it would make sense that the best quality meat wouldn’t be so easy to catch.”
Although this was a creature of legend, deprived of her most powerful weapon, she was basically a harpy. Her tactics were similar. She flew at me talons first. With the aid of Sylph, dodging was a piece of cake. On her second pass, I hit her solidly with my sword. There was no third pass. Cursing, she flew away.
“You’re good,” Selena said, appearing behind me. How had I not felt her approach in the wind? “As expected of the hero I was waiting for.”
“It wasn’t really much of a fight,” I said modestly. “For some reason her song didn’t work on me.”

The next few days were uneventful. Lately I’d been really fortunate in not encountering too much trouble. Alice speculated that there could be a variety of factors contributing to that. Some monsters have a sixth sense about the power of their opponents. It could be that they were steering clear of me as a result. I didn’t get seasick, which was a relief. So I mainly just spent my days chilling out with Alice. She seemed alternately apprehensive and irritable about something, but didn’t deign to explain what was bothering her. At times she’d even look sad and withdrawn. The best I could do was tell her that if she needed someone to talk to I was willing to listen. She thanked me, but didn’t open up.
As we got close to our destination, I asked Selena what we’d do if the ship was at the bottom. Would we have to go back for a salvage ship?
“That won’t be necessary,” she assured me. “It’s still afloat.”
She seemed pretty sure about that. She turned out to be right. One of the crew reported sighting the ship. It looked about as one would expect after 50 years. Torn sails, half rotted hull. I wondered if the sailors reporting those rumors had passed by here and seen the derelict.
“Bring us up to the side!” Selena ordered her crew. As ordered, the ship pulled up alongside the derelict and ropes were extended to it.
“The ship is going to be in delicate shape,” Selena cautioned. “so only a few can go in there. We don’t want too much weight on the decks. Luka, I want you for sure.”
“I’m going as well,” Alice said. It wasn’t an offer. I was mildly surprised. I would have thought a ghost ship would activate her phobia. As we crossed on the ropes, she did seem a little fidgety. I didn’t worry about her too much. Whatever her fears, she was the Monster Lord. She’d be fine.
After we boarded, Alice started feeling around in the air. “Is this a barrier?” she said. I noticed some tingling on my skin.
“What kind of barrier?” I asked her.
“A very powerful one,” she replied. “Against evil.”
“How come we got in so easily?”
“Idiot, are you evil? Besides, it only keeps evil in, it doesn’t keep it out.”
“Captain Selene put up this barrier,” Selena said. “After opening the calamity box and waking it up, she used another artifact she owned to create a barrier to separate this ship from the outside world.”
“How do you know this?” I asked.
“I’ll tell you later,” she replied. “Right now we have bigger problems.”
I looked to where she was pointing. On the deck was some kind of sea monster. “Is that the calamity?” I asked.
“No,” said Alice. “Just some sea creature that wandered onto the ship. It’s a starfish girl, should be no problem for you. Finish this quick and join us below decks.”
With that, Selena and Alice went below, leaving me with the starfish girl. It was indeed an easy fight, if a bit lengthy. She had no effective attacks against my speed, only an annoying restraint that took some effort to break out of. She was a mean one too, threatening to eat me alive. It was always a pleasure sealing those types. It took several hits, but she was sealed into the form of a starfish, which I picked up and tossed into the water.
I went below decks, moving cautiously since the floor didn’t seem all that steady. Ahead of me I heard what I was sure was Alice screaming. I hurried forward, wondering what could scare her that much. Oh wait, of course. Why not? We’re on a ghost ship. I sighted her just ahead. She was back in monster form, scared right out of whatever spell she used to look human. When she saw me, she sped over to me and hugged me, crying.
“What’s wrong, Alice?” I said.
“Se…Se….Se….” was all she could get out, then she screamed again and hid behind me.
“Where’s Selena,” I asked. “She… She’s… That… That!”
“I’m right here,” Selena said, coming around the corner.
“What’s going on?” I asked her.
“That young monster seems to be quite terrified,” Selena stated, not concerned at all that Alice had turned from a human to a monster. “More importantly, Luka, the thing I’m after is past this door.”
“Thing you’re after?” I said skeptically. “I thought you were after treasure. And isn’t that the captain’s cabin? Shouldn’t the orb be in there too?”
“The orb is in indeed in there,” Selena confirmed. “As well as the monster that was in the Calamity Box. Selene sealed off this ship to prevent it from getting out. Luka, you’re going to have to-“
Suddenly Selena vanished into thin air. Alice screamed. I tried to comfort her. “Alice, there’s a monster behind that door. Only a monster. Perfectly safe for you. C’mon, let’s go.”
Only a monster. I was safer out here, even if there were ghosts. Was Selena a ghost? Alice sure seemed to think so. Focusing on the monster seemed to bring Alice back under control. She nodded and took my hand. I kicked open the door.
Inside wasn’t one monster, but three. They looked like flies. “That’s Beelzebub,” Alice stated matter of factly. “She’s the queen of flies. She’s incredibly evil. That’s why the first Monster Lord sealed her in a box. The box became legendary, so idiot humans thought it was some kind of treasure to be opened.”
“So you’re the little soldier that pirate brought,” one of them said. “And you must be a blood relative of the Monster Lord. How amusing. It seems our time for revenge has come at last.”
“So all three of these are one mind?” I asked.
“Yes and no,” Alice said helpfully. Then she vanished.
“So it seems the current Monster Lord is a coward,” Beelzebub said. “But not you, human. In fact, we sense that you are quite powerful. You will make outstanding breeding stock. With you as our mate, we will create an army of powerful flies to take over the world.”
I drew my sword and attacked. True evil like this could not be reasoned with. Immediately I was assaulted by a wall of flies. I had to cover my eyes and mouth. That gave the monster ample opportunity to assault me with pleasure attacks. Since the three were of one mind, they could coordinate perfectly. One restrained me while the others played with me. I felt hands, breasts, and mouths all over me. I swung blindly, but hit nothing.
Summoning the power of the wind cleared the flies away, enabling me to see and strike one of the Queen’s bodies. That angered her, resulting in me getting punched in the face and body by what must have been eight fists. Two of them held me down as the third laid on top of me.
“Time to mate!” the one on top said triumphantly. “Go ahead and summon the earth spirit if you can. It will do you no good. We are far too powerful, even for you. The only thing that might have saved you was your Monster Lord companion, but she seems to have left you to your fate.”
I summoned Gnome anyway and struggled. Nothing. They were indeed strong. I was going to fail. I knew that Alice was capable of letting me die. But would she really allow this creature out just because I couldn’t stop her?
“Sheesh… How long are you planning on playing with them?”
The three looked up. “Oho! So the faux Monster Lord decided to come back after all!”
“You were sealed by the very first Monster Lord,” Alice said calmly. “Therefore, it falls to the current Monster Lord to make sure you never threaten the world again.”
“Big words coming from someone who was just cowering in a corner,” one of them said mockingly. “You are no match for us.”
With a gesture, Alice sent a ball of fire at the monster straddling me. She never even had a chance to scream. She exploded into ash. Not wasting any time, I ran my sword through another, sealing her. That left just one aspect of Beelzebub.
“How is she so powerful?” the last one said.
“Now you’re the one cowering, idiot!” Alice shouted. This time a wave of ice shot from her fingertips. The remaining aspect was frozen solid. Alice calmly punched her, shattering her.
“Were they just not as powerful as I thought, or are you just unbelievably powerful?” I asked Alice. I appreciated her direct aid, but I had been getting used to the idea of not killing anyone. Anytime Alice joined a fight, the opponent tended to get obliterated. The fact that she was capable of killing so easily made me uneasy.
“Their true power is their reproductive ability,” she explained. “You probably could have defeated them if you’d fought smarter, but I don’t hold you responsible for that. You had no idea what to expect. It’s not like you made any obviously stupid errors. I couldn’t let you become their sperm bank.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I owe you my life yet again.”
“Hmph. Don’t give me too much credit. I’ve left you to the mercies of monsters countless times. The world was at stake. If it hadn’t been….”
Deciding not to think too much about that, I decided to go looking for the purple orb. It wasn’t hard to find. As Selena had mentioned, it was on display on a shelf. I had all six! It was a bittersweet accomplishment, however. I still didn’t feel ready to go to Hellgondo. What would I do until then? When would I decide that I would never be ready and give up? It was something I’d have to think long and hard about when we returned.
First, though, we had to return to Selena’s ship. Selena had returned to her own ship. When we crossed over onto her ship, she and her crew were there to greet us.
“Thank you, Hero Luka,” Selena addressed me. “Thanks to you, those horrible abominations have been destroyed. “
“Selena,” I responded. “I thank you, but who are you, really?”
“Luka, I may have fibbed a little. I’m not Captain Selene’s granddaughter. I am Captain Selene.”
“But what happened to you all those years ago?” I asked. “How do you look so good?”
“We aren’t alive anymore,” she replied. “As soon as we opened that box, our lives were forfeit. We managed to seal the creature in our ship before we died, but the seal was not going to last forever. As long as the threat of Beelzebub remained, we could not rest. But now we have no more regrets. Thank you, Luka. I wish you luck on your journeys to come. Our own journey begins now.”
With that, they vanished, leaving Alice and I alone on the ship. This was the second time that I’d had the privilege of helping lost souls find peace. Wait! Alice! Is she all right? I thought frantically.
She had fainted again. The fact that the ship sailed us back to Gold Port by itself didn’t help matters. We had to spend nearly a week on a ghost ship driving itself. To Alice’s credit, she didn’t leave the ship even though she was quite capable of doing so. Once she got past her initial freakout, she fell back to merely being irritable and jumpy. I admired her courage, staying here on the ship with me when she could have teleported or flown somewhere else, anywhere else. I hoped that being exposed to real ghosts so many times would help her get over her phobia. A woman who could instantly incinerate ancient evil monsters had no need to fear harmless ghosts.
When we arrived back in Gold Port, she demanded that I take her to an inn so that she could get some proper rest. I had slept like a baby on the ship. Since I was used to Alice always being up earlier than me, I’d just assumed she was following her normal patterns. In fact, she’d barely slept at all during the week’s journey back from the derelict. I guess I couldn’t blame her given her phobia. So back to the inn we went, where she collapsed onto a bed and began snoring almost immediately. I took a little nap myself.

When I awakened, she was still sound asleep. That was the first time that had ever happened. She must be super tired, I thought. I decided to hang around the city. I was sure Alice would locate me if she wanted me for something. She always had before. She wasn’t the only one looking for me. A soldier in a Sabasan uniform approached me while I was browsing the merchant stands.
“Would you happen to be Sir Luka?” the soldier asked.
“Yes,” I said warily.
“Ah! I found you at last! Something horrible has happened in Sabasa! Princess Sara has been kidnapped by monsters!”
Oh really? I thought. Or did she just run away again? Still, something about it bothered me. She had a concrete reason for running before. She wanted to perform the Dragon Seal Trial. Had she left to go look for Granberia? That seemed farfetched given how little she had to go on. She couldn’t be escaping an imminent marriage. The King seemed set on me until I returned from my quest.
“Please, save Sara again!” the soldier pleaded. “I’ll return and report that I made contact with you, Luka.”
I guess now I had something to do while waiting to be confident enough to go to Hellgondo. Saving Sara’s bacon wasn’t what I had in mind. I still liked Sara an awful lot, so my instincts were definitely in favor of saving her. What I dreaded was encountering her father and his very sophisticated pressure tactics again. My flirtation with the idea of marrying her was brief and no longer something I seriously considered. I hadn’t thought through how I would break that news to her father. I guess since my primary mission remained unfulfilled, I could still get out of giving him a firm no.
I returned to our room with a healthy amount of food, assuming that Alice would be quite hungry when she awakened. That turned out to be the safest bet I’d ever make. She was also hungry for the other thing, but uninterested in making it particularly fun for me this time. She jerked me off with one hand while eating her food with the other, and whenever I came, she’d have me do it on the food. I was pretty grossed out by that.
As I lay in the bed recuperating from her feeding, she asked me what I did with my day. I mildly dreaded telling her about Sara because I knew she was a bit jealous of her. But there was no getting out of it, so I did.
“Do you think she ran off to find Granberia?” I asked.
“She’s an idiot, just forget about the whole thing.”
Argh. My instincts were telling me to go to Sabasa. Might as well, I thought. I’m not yet at the stage where I can go to Hellgondo. I still couldn’t use Salamander’s power very well. Until I could use all four spirits, best to stay off of that continent. Besides, I’d made another promise. No setting foot on that continent unless I felt confident that I could handle it.
“I think I’m going to go rescue her,” I declared. “It’s not like I have anything better to do since I’m not ready for Hellgondo yet.”
“You’re more ready than you think,” Alice said. “You’re not ready for the Heavenly Knights, of course, but there’s plenty to do on Hellgondo. Trust me.”
“Okay, I’ll think about it after I save Sara.”
“Hmph…” Alice humphed. “Whatever, do what you want.”
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