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Luka's Story-Paradox	By : Ditmag Category: +M through R > Monster Girl Quest Views: 2709 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: Monster Girl Quest Paradox is the intellectual property of Tortorro Restistance. I make no money from this.

Chapter List
- 3
- 4
- 5
Camp was once again set up and we glumly ate our food. I say glumly because Alice did the cooking. She had done nothing to help set up camp the first night, but since I was out of commission she stepped up. I think most of us wish that she hadn’t, given how she ruined our dinner.
Since it was early, we spent a lot of time chatting around the fire. Ragora listened aptly, truly interested in learning and seeming to enjoy the camaraderie, such as it was. I still had to remind Alice and Ilias to be civil, after Ilias made a nasty comment on the quality of Alice’s cooking and threw a biscuit at her head, which missed and became embedded in a tree trunk. Ragora was not seeing people at their best, so I decided to switch conversation to more pleasant topics than Alice’s shortcomings as a chef.
“So Sonya, what was your Luka like?” I asked. Sonya thought for a moment, as my companions seemed far more interested in the question than I had expected they would be.
“I guess he was just like you,” Sonya replied. “Just less experienced, less worldly. More naïve. But I have to say I like seeing the man Luka will become. Somehow after all you’ve been through you’ve retained your optimism. You still see the best in everyone.”
“So you’re not mad at me?”
“I’m a little…. Uncomfortable that you enjoy sex with monsters. I would never have guessed that Luka could be capable of that, but then again, he does like everyone, so I guess it does make sense. I know enough about Luka that I know he’d be traumatized if a monster raped him. Was it that way for you?”
“I still haven’t fully processed it all,” I answered. “Being violated by monsters is wonderful, terrifying, revolting, and arousing at the same time. And then I guess before I learned to process it, I became so powerful that I can only be raped by extremely powerful monsters.”
“Unless you choose to let them rape you,” Sonya finished.
“They are doing what comes naturally to them. I’m not going to kill them for that. And I haven’t used my power in combat in a very long time, so I don’t trust my control.”
“Why didn’t you get yourself a weapon, then?” Alice asked. “You’re just walking around looking all tasty and unarmed. Add to that your unwillingness to defend yourself with that crazy power of yours, and you’re just going to get raped every day. Or is that what you want? Are you actually a pervert?”
“Even if I did want it, it wouldn’t be perverted,” I countered. “All monsters want semen. Shouldn’t they also want me to be happy to feed them?”
“Yes!” Ragora piped up.
“NO!!!” Sonya and Ilias said with vehemence.
Alice looked thoughtful. “I hadn’t thought of it that way,” the Monster Lord admitted. “I guess being a predator, my instinct is to capture prey, not ask.”
“I’m not a predator,” Ragora said. “In fact, I hate moving around. Men sometimes come to where we mandragoras gather and give us their semen.”
“And you thank them by taking them captive,” Ilias said accusingly.
“Sometimes,” Ragora said guiltily. “I’ve never done it, but I know mandragoras who have. And I wanted to do that to Luka. But not I know better.”
“As for why I don’t have a sword, that’s a bit of a story that I’d rather not get into right now,” I said. “Maybe another time.”
“If you’re worried about hurting monsters, don’t worry too much,” Alice said. “Monsters are tough and don’t usually fight to the death. A man with a sword is not a deadly threat to any but the weakest monsters, no matter how skilled he is. At best, he can inflict enough injury to make them retreat, but men killing even middling monsters is rare.”
“I’m not really interested in doing real damage to my opponents,” I said. “Although I would to save my life or the lives of my friends. I probably just need to control my power better. I should probably practice.”
“That is a good idea,” Alice said. “I probably should as well. I have a great deal of knowledge of how to use magic, but I’m stuck in this small form. Still, using magic is like training anything else. The more you do it, the stronger and better you become. Perhaps if I practice more I can train this body to wield greater and greater amounts of power. Of course, I’ll never be what I was without recovering my real body. Ilias, you said you cast a spell protecting yourself from Ragora’s scream. Was that true, or were you bluffing?”
“It was true,” Ilias said proudly. “Being completely candid here, I didn’t know if I could cast the spell, but as you mentioned, we didn’t lose most of our knowledge, just our ability. As soon as I regained some movement, which I did before you, just so you know, I tried to cast the spell and I could feel it work. So you’re right, Monster Lord, if we all practice we should all get better. In our case, we need to grow stronger. In Luka’s case, he needs to be able to use his power without obliterating his opponents. A silly worry, but I guess we’ll never change that about you.”
“I’m confused about all these different types of magic,” I said. “I know that Ilias is made of holy magic. I know that you don’t even have a true flesh and blood body, it’s just a form you create for yourself.”
“You know that?!” Ilias asked. “What kind of relationship did we have that you would have ever seen my true form? And lived to tell about it?”
“Yes, Luka, what kind of relationship did you have with the Goddess Ilias?” Alice asked. Oops. I talk too much.
“Again, a story for another time,” I said. “The short version is that you needed to use your true form to purify my soul, which had become weighed down by past traumas.”
“Interesting,” Ilias said. “I wonder why my counterpart would do that? It sounds like a very nice reward for a hero who has been through a lot in defense of his goddess. It’s just not the reward I would have thought to give.”
“Anyway, Ilias is made of holy magic, and you, Alice, while flesh and blood, being a monster, you have an affinity for dark magic. I know that in addition, both angels and monsters can utilize the elements. But there seem to be other types of magic that don’t fall into such easy categories.”
“Well right now, I can only use dark magic,” Alice answered. “Because I have an affinity for it, even in this weakened form it comes easily to me. As a child I could use it, often very destructively. But I can do almost nothing with the elements at the moment.”
“It’s the same for me,” Ilias added.
“As for types of magic that don’t fall under holy, dark, or the four elements,” Alice continued. “that’s a little more complicated. Some spells require expertise in more than one element, or combine dark magic with an element. Since I can’t use holy magic at all, I don’t know any spells that combine holy magic with any elements. But magic that doesn’t rely on the elements or holy or dark magic, anyone can learn those spells if they have the aptitude.”
“I noticed that both you and Ilias could have cured my critical ecstasy had you been powerful enough. Would that be an example of an untyped magic?” I asked.
“No,” Ilias replied. “Sometimes you can do the same things with different types of magic. Teleportation is one example. We holy beings have better teleportation magic. We can teleport anywhere at any time, with pinpoint accuracy. Even the most powerful monsters can’t teleport into enclosed places safely, or into other subdimensions.”
“I think the Ancestors could,” I said, immediately regretting that I said it.
“You knew….?! You know what, never mind,” Alice said. “One of these days I’m going to make you tell me everything you know. It appalls me that a human knows things that even I don’t know. The Ancestors have been sealed for thousands of years. It’s interesting to know that they had such powerful teleportation abilities, but that knowledge must have been lost at some point.”
“It wasn’t,” Ilias said. “They passed down their spells to their descendants, but they bear the same risk of materializing inside walls as you do. They are just too powerful to care.”
“I guess that’s true. An ancestor miscalculating and sharing space with a solid object when she materializes is a problem for the solid object, not the ancestor.”
Still, I knew that Tamamo never, except in the most dire emergencies, teleported indoors. The only time I’d ever seen it done was when the Ancestors had invaded the castle.
“Anyway,” Ilias explained. “The point is that you can use holy magic to cure critical ecstasy through healing.”
“And with dark magic,” Alice added. “You cure it through dispelling. Different processes, but the same result. I’d explain the four methods of teleportation, but that would probably put you all to sleep.”
“Does anyone want to hear my Luka story?” Sonya asked. “This whole conversation started with Luka asking about his counterpart. I thought you all might like to hear a story about the kind of man Luka is.”
“Go on,” Alice said, genuinely interested.
“So I was five years old, and I was following Luka into the forest. He liked to explore even at a young age, but I was always bigger, stronger, and better trained than him. I followed him to protect him. But one thing Luka was better at than I was, and always has been, is tracking. I quickly got lost. Then these two slime girls found me. I was so scared.”
“I thought monsters and humans in Iliasville got along?” Alice asked. “At least the slimes and humans, anyway.”
“They do,” Sonya confirmed. “But just as there are bad humans, there are bad slimes, and the bad ones tend to hang out in the forest, where they can ambush males who wander alone in the woods. Fortunately these slimes meant no harm. They were young themselves, not children, but obviously not yet mature. They had no idea what to do. I started to scream and cry, which made them start to scream and cry. As far as we’ve come in the last thirty years, slimes still live in fear that humans will hate them again because of the bad slimes. The commotion brought Luka to my side. He rescued me and brought me home.”
I couldn’t even imagine growing up in a world like this one. For those who haven’t read the previous Luka’s stories. I grew up on your world, Earth, in the 21^st century. I was transported to a world of monster girls at the age of eighteen. Being a child in a world where monsters might violate you or even eat you sounded like a terrifying way to grow up. I’d been told many times that most males’ first sexual experience was being raped by a monster. I was happy to have changed that, although it remained true that most males’ first experience was still with a monster. They just weren’t being forced as often anymore. The world I found myself on now was in between my ideal world and the harsher world that I’d been transported to. In this world, humans and monsters got along fairly well due to the disappearance of Ilias, but out here in the wild, it was still normal practice to rape or eat males caught alone, or with insufficient protection. So there were two worlds in this one: the cities, where monsters and humans mostly respected each others’ boundaries, and the wild, where monsters ate humans and heroes slayed monsters.
I’d actually been hoping for a more heroic story than Luka rescuing Sonya from a nonthreatening situation, but it was cute that my counterpart acted just as I imagined I would have. I did remember once standing up to a mean dog when my friend fell as we were trying to escape it. I also remembered going tubing at summer camp and pulling a kid to safety who had been drawn into rapids. So apparently I’d always had a heroic streak. It was gratifying to know that whether growing up in a fantasy world with magic and monsters, or my “real” world, I was essentially the same person.
We turned in for the night after some more light conversation. I hoped that our friends back in Iliasburg wouldn’t worry too much that we hadn’t gotten back yet.

We wer e all fully recovered and well rested in the morning. The nice thing about critical ecstasy is that in and of itself it does no harm. It simply renders you too weak to even stand, although over the years I’d gotten to the point where I still had a lot of fight in me as long as I only came once. Two would usually still take me down, and three was when I began to have trouble with staying conscious. Critical ecstasy inflicted multiple times can be deadly, however. Many monsters don’t eat men, or even enslave them. They simply get carried away and make them come too many times, causing their deaths. Some, like succubi, have an energy drain ability which can turn a man into a lifeless husk when combined with the effects of critical ecstasy.
The effects of Ragora’s paralyzing scream were similar. Everyone except Ilias, who never stopped reminding us, had been unsteady for hours. But by morning, full movement and strength had been recovered and we were prepared to set off to the bandits’ cave, now only an hour away. We had high hopes of getting back to Iliasburg by afternoon. We parted ways with Ragora just before reaching the mountain range.
Remember how I said there were no monster encounters between Iliasville and Iliasburg? Well, that was a well traveled road and offered a fairly decent degree of safety from wild monsters. There was a road leading to the Irina mountains, but it was not as well traveled and almost never patrolled by soldiers. In addition, the monsters in this part of the continent were slightly stronger, and also had unique attacks that made it possible to assault prey even when that prey was accompanied by those who could protect him. As I was about to find out.
We made it to the mountains an hour later with no further incident. Alice asked if I knew where the bandits were hiding, to which my answer was that I thought so, but couldn’t be absolutely sure. If they had chosen their hideout on my world at random, then it could be anywhere in this range. But if the cave they had chosen had been a deliberate choice based on the cave’s suitability as a lair, then it would probably be the same cave. Given that the leader of the band was a dragon, and dragons are very meticulous about choosing lairs, it seemed likely that we would have no difficulty locating them.
During this conversation, I had to go relieve myself. Now I relieve myself a lot. So does everyone else in the party, even Ilias, due to being in a diminished, mortal body. Normally I don’t write about it. So if you’ve read enough books or seen enough movies, you know that when the writer makes a point of showing someone wandering off to urinate, he’s about to get attacked.
I finished my business, started to pull my pants up, but never actually got them buttoned. Taken completely by surprise, I found myself wrapped up. A lamia? Tina, perhaps? I think that was her name. The monster brought her head within inches of mine. No, not a lamia. An earthworm girl. I talk a lot about how beautiful this or that monster girl is, but let me tell you, not all of them are pretty. This one was not.
Fortunately my friends heard the commotion and came running, Sonya in the lead, brandishing her club, while Alice and Ilias as usual simply watched with interest.
“Don’t come any closer!” the earthworm girl warned. “I’ll squeeze him to death before you can reach us!”
“I’m not going to watch while you violate him!” Sonya warned. She did halt, however.
“I’m not interested in violating him! I don’t need his semen! I just want water! I’m so dehydrated!”
“We only brought enough water for a day’s travel,” Ilias said. “We’re already almost out, and we still have to get back! We’re not sharing our water with you!”
“I don’t care about your problems, angel!” the earthworm girl spat. “I’m warning you! I’ll kill him!”
“Go ahead,” I said. “Squeeze me. They’re not giving you our water.”
“What?” the earthworm girl looked confused. “But…. You don’t want to die, do you?”
“I won’t die,” I said. “Because you can’t squeeze me to death. You can try, though.”
Sonya looked genuinely conflicted. Alice looked intrigued. Ilias was simply pissed. I could see her concentrating, evidently trying to whip something up that could rescue me without her having to approach any closer. It was interesting to me that Ilias was more invested in my life than Alice was. Of course, she had her own selfish reasons for that….
“You’re bluffing!” the earthworm said with disdain. “Give me the water! Now!”
“Not gonna happen,” Ilias said. Sonya looked back at her, then back at me, concern etched on her face.
“I guess you’ll have to carry out your threat,” I said. “Or, you could let me go and we can work something out.”
The earthworm girl seemed to think for a moment. I was optimistic as always that I could reason with any being that I could communicate with. One would think that I’d been around long enough to learn, but alas, even having lived centuries I couldn’t familiarize myself with the behavior of every monster race in the world.
She announced her decision by squeezing me, a sadistic look in her eyes. Since she had my arms pinned, I simply flexed my muscles and resisted. Earthworm girls are stronger than a normal man, but I wasn’t a normal man. I was from Earth, and for some reason Earth humans were significantly stronger than the humans native to this world. Promestein had always speculated that it was better nutrition, or perhaps evolution. On Earth humans were apex predators. On this world, they were further down the food chain. Often regarded as livestock by many monsters.
The earthworm’s face began to show strain as our test of strength continued. She glared at me and bore down harder. I increased my own efforts as well. We were staring at each other, sweat beginning to drip down my face. She didn’t sweat at all, but that could have been due to her dehydration. I also noticed that she wasn’t very slimy, almost dry. I felt bad for her. Being dehydrated as an earthworm girl must be far worse than experiencing it as a human. Perhaps her desperation was making her irrational?
It also may have made her weaker. As soon as I felt her grip loosen a bit, I produced a surge of strength that caused me to violently break out of her hold. Sonya rushed forward with her club, ready to strike a vicious blow. I stopped her with a gesture.
“No! Wait! She’s just thirsty!” I said.
I pulled out my canteen and offered it to her. She stared in disbelief. “You’re…. giving it to me?” she asked, uncomprehending.
“Yes,” I replied. “I can see how dry you are. Earthworm girls are supposed to be slimy. In the state you’re in, you’d have trouble getting my semen even if that’s what you wanted. I know you rely on your slimy bodies to stimulate men into ejaculating for you.”
“We have other means, but…..” she snatched the water from me with her tail and drank deeply. She poured the rest directly onto her body. She sighed in relief, although I could tell it hadn’t been nearly enough.
“Dumb, Luka,” Ilias said.
“Maybe the bandits will have water,” Alice said.
“You gave me… the last of your water?” the earthworm girl asked, even more confused.
“Not the last,” I replied. “Just mine. I can’t ask the others to give up their shares.”
“I threatened to kill you… no, I tried to kill you. And you gave me your water?”
“You were suffering. I don’t blame you for-“
Her tail lashed out and struck me on the side of the head. I went down, hard, dazed. She looked down on me, renewed anger in her eyes. Sonya began to charge again, but Ilias restrained her.
“What are you up to?!” the earthworm girl raged. “Is this some kind of trick?! Why would you willingly give up your water when you proved that I can’t squeeze you to death? You’re going to tell me! Do you know why? Because I may not be able to squeeze you to death, but I can still beat you to death!”
Her tail slammed down on my chest. I was afraid a rib might be broken. Or two. I wanted to reason with her, tell her that I actually had done it to help a desperate traveler, but I couldn’t form words. Perhaps I did need a sword. I was getting thoroughly abused by every opponent I encountered.
“Tell me!” the now completely enraged monster yelled. “I will beat the answers out of you!”
Her tail raised to strike me again. She actually would kill me if I let this continue. I prepared to unleash my power. I didn’t want to kill her, but my convictions did not extend to letting someone take my life. If I unleashed too much, she had brought it upon herself.
Someone had a different idea, however, although one just as deadly. I saw a white bolt strike the rock face behind the monster, causing a large boulder to fall. Adrenaline surged through my body as my natural reflexes too over. With more strength than I thought I had, I tackled the earthworm girl, attempting to get her out of the path of the falling boulder. I felt my ankle twist as we went down in a heap. The pain was stupendous, and added to the pain in my chest, I was beginning to regret taking on this “easy” mission. It had actually been a lot easier the first time around, when I’d been far weaker and had no friends with me!
“Ilias, you idiot!” Alice yelled, finally rushing to my side. Sonya was way ahead of her.
“Goddess!” Sonya yelled with alarm. “Oh, it’s horrible!”
Horrible? I’d only sprained my ankle. It wasn’t that bad. Then I looked down and saw what had actually happened. My foot up to my ankle was under the boulder, crushed. A renewed burst of unbearable pain rushed up my leg, as if seeing the true extent of the injury made it more real for me.
The earthworm girl stared in shock. There was nothing in her experience that could possibly process this series of events in any rational way. I guess I’d hoped that she’d help me, or apologize to me. Instead, she slithered off.
“Help me with this!” Alice yelled to the goddess, herself shocked and just staring. Ilias nodded and went to the other side of the boulder.
The two began to push. Sonya joined them. This caused the boulder to grind against my shattered foot, increasing the pain tenfold. I cried out and begged them to stop.
“We’re not strong enough to just lift it off of you,” Alice said. “But I assume this idiotic goddess can still heal you. You can, right?”
“I… I think so,” Ilias panted. “I’m sure if Sonya helps we can do it.”
“Luka, you just have to endure it while they roll it off. I know it hurts, and I know it’s making the injury worse, but we can’t move it off of you any other way, okay?”
I’m brave about many things. Pain isn’t one of them. I briefly considered begging them to just leave me rather than endure them moving that boulder an inch more. And they needed to move it at least ten more inches. But I knew that dehydration or being preyed upon by a wandering animal, who would be happy to just gnaw on me without even bothering to kill me with pleasure as a monster girl would, would be a lot more horrible. I nodded and gritted my teeth.

We lost another day. Ilias and Sonya, working together, did manage to heal my ankle and foot, but determined that the muscles and skin and bones needed at least the rest of the day and night to heal. I was at a high risk for reinjury if I didn’t stay off the foot until the next morning. Sonya confided that she wasn’t really comfortable with me using it for a month, but understood that me resting for that long was out of the question. They would just have to heal it again if it was reinjured.
“There are just so many things about that encounter that were idiotic,” Alice said, seething.
“She was going to kill him,” Ilias said quietly. “I did what I had to do. He didn’t have to save her.”
“That was idiotic as well,” Alice agreed. “What do you think you accomplished there?”
“I was hoping that I’d accomplished teaching her a lesson,” I answered. “I was hoping that she’d learn that humans aren’t all bad, and that she doesn’t need to automatically see us as enemies.”
“Well, I’m sure she ran off to go think about what you taught her, and she’ll become a better person.”
“Really? Then it was worth it.”
“No, not really, idiot!” Alice yelled. “More likely, she’s convinced you were trying to trick her. She probably ran off because we were coming to your aid and she didn’t want to take us all on. Her hatred of humans may have only grown.”
“I think she was just confused,” Sonya mused. “She couldn’t believe anyone could be so generous, giving up his water for a monster after she tried to kill him.”
“I just don’t get you, Luka,” Alice said. “How could you ever forgive someone who tried to kill you?”
“Gee, I can’t imagine,” I replied.

By morning, we were officially out of water. My friends had shared theirs with me. I wasn’t terribly worried. It wasn’t a hot day, and we were about four hours from Iliasburg barring anymore setbacks. We’d be thirsty as hell, but we’d live. I would have to make a point of treating my companions to some of Iliasburg’s highest quality beverages to sate their extreme thirst. I also knew it was probable that the bandits had water, although I wasn’t about to make kids go thirsty if they only had enough for themselves.
The first time around, I’d had difficulty finding the bandits’ lair, so had jostled my money bag loudly, knowing that most monsters had superior hearing. Sure enough, one of them had come out to investigate. The downside was that I’d lost the element of surprise. This time I was starting out with an advantage. I knew exactly what to expect, and I would be invading their lair, rather than drawing them out.
We stood at the cave entrance. I saw no sign of the bandits. I feared that perhaps they hadn’t chosen the same cave. Alice, however, confirmed that it was indeed their lair.
“You were right,” Alice said. “I smell four young monsters in there. Exactly as you described. Please finish this quickly. I’m already thirsty and I haven’t had a decent meal in two days.”
“That’s because you were the one cooking!” Ilias snapped.
“Don’t worry, Alice,” I assured her. “This will be a piece of cake.”
“There’s cake?” Alice asked. “I don’t smell any cake.”
“Another figure of speech. What I meant to say was that this will be easy.”
“Is ‘easy’ really the word you want to use to describe the last two days? These may be children, but the way you’ve been fighting, or more accurately, not fighting, you’re going to end up raped by all four of them, and they’ll relieve you of your money to boot.”
She had a point. Although these were children, they were smaller versions of extremely powerful monsters, equivalent to the three imps who had also easily bested me because I didn’t want to hurt any of them.
“That’s why I’m going in there with you, Luka,” Sonya said. “Those poor children need help, before someone strong comes to this cave and murders them.”
“You mean do a hero’s duty?” Ilias asked. “Who taught you to care about young monsters? Being children doesn’t make them any less evil.”
“I can’t kill children, Ilias,” Sonya said, looking down. “And not all monsters are bad. You’ve been gone a long time, Ilias. I still believe in your commandments about not consorting sexually with monsters, but I’m not a killer. But I promise you, if they intend to violate Luka, my club will teach them the error of their ways. My club won’t kill them, will they, Alice?”
“Not likely,” Alice answered. “As long as you stop beating them when they give up. Still, that’s a vicious weapon. Perhaps something more elegant is more appropriate for this job.”
Alice reached into a bag that she materialized out of nothing and began rummaging through it. I’d been afraid to ask for what I knew she must be about to produce, because I didn’t really know what her trust level was with me. I believed that if she saw how I was with monsters, that she would loan me Angel Halo eventually. It had just taken a little longer than I’d anticipated.
“Aha!” Alice exclaimed, pulling out the weird, almost horrifying sword that I had grown so familiar with in a bygone age. I hadn’t wielded that sword in a very long time, which is why I couldn’t simply use my own magic to duplicate it anymore. I needed that familiar feel of the sword in my hand in order to imagine it well enough to create it using my magic.
I was expecting her to hand it to me, but she simply held the sword still, looking at it. Actually, neither she nor Sonya, were moving at all, seemingly transfixed by the sword. I knew the sword looked scary, so I understood Sonya’s frozen look, but Alice had seen that sword many times. It was hers, after all! So why was she just looking at it and not moving?
My answer came when Nero’s hand grasped the hilt and removed it from Alice’s grip. “This sword is way too powerful. I think I’ll keep it safe in case it’s needed later.”
I reached out and grabbed Nero’s hand. He looked up at me in shock.
“What the hell?!” Nero exclaimed. “I stopped time! How are you doing this?!”
“You stopped time?” I asked. “You can do that?”
“You don’t even know about time magic yet you can move around freely outside of time? You are really frightening me.”
“I’m frightening you? You’re the one that just appeared out of nowhere to steal a sword that will allow me to fight my enemies without holding back and not kill any of them. Why would you want to take it from me?”
“It’s too powerful, Luka!” Nero yelled. “You have no idea how dangerous this weapon is! In your foolhardy hands, do you realize how much damage you could do?”
“Would you prefer me to use my power on those little children?”
“Power? What power? You’ve discovered your angel powers?”
“Angel powers? I don’t have angel powers.”
“Let me see this power,” Nero ordered.
Reluctantly I fired a blast at a far off rock face. It made a very satisfying explosion. I immediately regretted it. Doing that sort of thing in a mountain range could be dangerous, causing avalanches. But I was lucky. Nothing further occurred once the dust settled.
Nero stared at the rock face, then at me. “What the hell are you?” he asked. “That power doesn’t even exist on this world! But I guess you didn’t either until three days ago.”
“Nero, please, I need this sword. I’m getting raped or injured every time I face a monster because I don’t want to unleash THAT on them. You need to trust me. You admitted that a Luka is a Luka no matter what universe they are from. Maybe you don’t feel that you could trust your actual dad with Angel Halo I don’t agree, because when I used Angel Halo the first time I also had no experience. But now I do. No one is more qualified to use this weapon than me, Nero. Please… that weapon is my only hope of completing this mission without taking a life.”
Nero seemed to consider, then slowly released his hand from the sword, leaving it in my hands. Reconsidering, he took the sword back from me and placed it back in Alice’s hands.
“I was never here,” Nero said, then vanished. Time resumed.
“This is Angel Halo,” Alice said. “You can use it to…. I can tell by the look on your face that you already know what this is.”
“I do,” I said, smiling. “And thank you. I’d been waiting for this but didn’t have the nerve to ask.”
“I’d been thinking about giving it to you earlier, but that encounter with the earthworm girl really highlighted for me how badly you don’t want to kill your opponents. You’d even risk your own life to save an enemy.”
I didn’t tell her how close I’d been to spreading earthworm parts all over the countryside. I accepted the sword gratefully, and without further ado, Sonya and I entered the cave.
Remember how I said we’d have the element of surprise? Well, monsters are really hard to surprise. Goblin girl, at least, heard us, and was waiting for us right inside the cave.
“Halt, intruders!” the little goblin ordered. “You face the Goblin of Earth. I am merely one of the Four Heavenly Bandits! See what happens to people who defy us!”
The goblin turned and gestured to three graves behind her.
“Do you see those graves?!” Sonya cried. “She must be more evil than she looks!”
“That’s right! Now hand over all your stuff!”
“I’ve got a better idea,” I said. “There’s no need for you kids to be living this life. Monsters and humans get along in Iliasburg. You four should be able to find a decent way to make a living there.”
“You think so?” the goblin girl asked, making me hope that perhaps this would be easier than it had been the first time around. Once again, I was to be disappointed.
“Menial labor is not for powerful monsters like us!” the goblin declared. “Now prepare yourself! I will strike with me Hammer of Earth!”
Slowly, she lifted her hammer and brought it crashing down towards my head. For what it was worth, she was better at wielding that thing than her counterpart had been, but it was still far too big for her. I caught it well above my head.
“Hey, no fair! You can’t just block my hammer!”
I yanked the hammer out of her hand and prepared to lecture her on violence, but the act of confiscating her beloved hammer broke her. She burst into tears and ran off. I’d really been hoping to avoid the tears this time.
“Ummmm. Keep going, I guess?” Sonya asked.
“Maybe you should try talking the next one out of attacking us,” I suggested. “I must not be good with kids.”
I inspected the graves. One said, “Here lies a bug.” Another said, “Here lies a fish”. I didn’t even bother to read the third. Any worries I had about these children being a real threat were gone. Sonya noticed as well and breathed a sigh of relief.
We continued on through the cave. Approximately one hundred yards in, we encountered a small purple haired lamia. I knew her to be Tina, mainly because I’d gotten into a great deal of trouble with the adult version of this particular lamia.
“Bwahahaha, you’ve come!” she said evilly. “I am the Heavenly Bandit of Water!”
She waited for a reaction. Sonya had nothing to say. Since I’d meant to leave the persuasion to her, that meant I had nothing either.
“Wh-why are you not cowering in fear?” the lamia asked with disappointment. “Let’s see you maintain that brave front when I’m coiled around you!”
Now that I recalled it, that’s exactly how she’d attacked me the first time around. She’d coiled around me and squeezed, but she had been so weak that even a normal man could have easily broken her hold. Despite her threat, however, it must have been misdirection, because her tail painfully slapped both me and Sonya in the face. Sonya, enraged, swung her club. Tina ducked and cowered.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry! I was just playing! Please don’t smash my face in!”
Sonya stopped, realizing how far she’d gone with that temper of hers. “I’m so sorry, little one! You hurt me with that tail slap, I lost my temper! I’m not going to hurt you!”
“You’re mean!” the lamia spat, and slithered off.
“Why do I feel like I’m the bad guy here?” Sonya asked, dejected.
“Let’s just continue on,” I said. “No harm, no foul.”
“You are so strange.”
About another hundred yards into the cave, we encountered the fourth of the Heavenly…. Er… children.
“I am the terror that flaps in the night!” the vampire proudly declared. “I am the Vampire of Wind! And you shall be my prey!”
“Can she actually drain our blood?” Sonya asked.
“I think that’s a myth,” I replied.
“I am no myth!” the vampire protested. “Cower in fear at my power!”
She leaped at me, and before I could react, her fangs were in my neck. The feeling was actually pleasureable, the pain only beginning when Sonya roughly yanked her off of me and threw her to the ground, where she landed hard. I’d been worried about hurting these little girls, but Sonya was the one who was being too rough!
The vampire girl bawled as I felt my neck. Small trickles of blood were on my fingers from the tiny holes her little teeth had made. Sonya placed her hand on the wound, causing a warm feeling of relief, instantly stopping the pain and the bleeding. The vampire girl said something completely inappropriate for her age and ran off.
“Was it like this when you did it the first time?” Sonya asked, clearly feeling bad about how she had been handling the situation.
“Yeah, it went about this way,” I said. “We have to be careful with this last one, though. Even a young dragon can be dangerous. This one can actually hurt us. Furthermore, she’s got a really hard head. Don’t spare that club. I mean it, Sonya. She breathes fire.”
“Oh, I hope I don’t have to hit her!” Sonya groaned.
I drew Angel Halo for the first time and we continued on. The dragon had been the most memorable part of this confrontation. She was the only one who I’d actually struck, twice in fact. She hadn’t been sealed. It was clear why she was the leader. If the bandits had been forced to fight for real against heroes invading their cave, the dragon would have been the one to actually drive them out. As expected, we reached the end of the cave and she was there. She had a vicious snarl on her face and evil looking claws and teeth.
“I am the final of the Four Heavenly Bandits, the Dragon of Fire! Well done making it this far, heroes!”
“We’re not here to hurt anyone,” I said, giving up on Sonya saying anything useful to the child. “You don’t need to resort to banditry. I want to show you a better way.”
“We enjoy taking people’s stuff!” the dragon protested.
“Until someone too strong for you comes to this cave and hurts you,” Sonya pointed out.
“That… that won’t happen! We’re the Four Heavenly Bandits! No one can stand against our power! If you want me to see things your way, you have to defeat me! That’s the way of monsters!”
It was. I readied myself for my first battle in countless centuries with Angel Halo. Now that it was in my hands, it felt like an old friend. I felt a billion times safer with it in my grasp. I’d beaten the Four Heavenly Knights and the Monster Lord with the sword. With Angel Halo, I was nearly invincible.
“Rawr!!!” the dragon roared, actually quite credibly. “Here I come!”
She leaped to bite Sonya, who dodged out of the way and counterattacked with her club. Sonya’s club missed cleanly as the dragon switched with commendable quickness to scratching me, tearing my shirt and opening a small cut on my chest. I knew that her head was almost invulnerable, so I struck with my sword at her vulnerable abdomen, making a small wound that began leaking energy. That’s how Angel Halo worked. Instead of creating wounds of the flesh which bled, it created wounds of the spirit, causing the being wounded to be unable to hold onto their form. A monster or angel that received enough wounds from Angel Halo would be sealed into a smaller, weaker form that would render them no longer a threat.
As before, it didn’t come to that. The dragon girl was tough, and could take bonks on the head pretty well, but having her soft flesh cut was painful, even if it didn’t do real damage given the nature of Angel Halo. All of the fight was taken out of her as she cried and made her escape.
“I guess that’s it,” Sonya said. “So what now? They can’t just stay here in this cave robbing travelers.”
We started back where we’d entered. The cave had no side passages, it was just deep and mostly straight, meaning that it would be impossible for them to double back and get around us. Alice and Ilias were waiting at the entrance. I remembered that last time I’d done this, Alice had intercepted them and dragged them back into the cave. Despite her small form, this was time was no different. Glum and tearful, the four children were marched back into the cave to stand before Sonya and me.
“So, any ideas on what to do with them?” Sonya asked.
“I don’t care,” Alice said disinterestedly. “You have defeated them. They wanted to act like adult monsters, they have to live with adult consequences. You have the right to eat them, violate them, kill them, sell them….”
“Waaahhhhh! Don’t eat us!” lamia girl cried.
“I vote for killing them and putting their heads on spikes outside Iliasburg’s gates,” Ilias said unhelpfully.
“No, please don’t!” Dragon girl bawled.
“See, Luka, you made them cry again,” Alice said, equally unhelpfully.
“You and I are going to have a talk on how monsters treat those they defeat,” I warned Alice. “In the meantime, I’m going to give you four a taste of human justice.”
“Human justice?” Goblin girl asked, confused. “What does that mean? It doesn’t mean you’ll eat us, does it?”
“No,” Sonya said, kneeling before the young goblin. “That’s not our way. What Luka means is that you’re going to have to come to Iliasburg with us and apologize for all the things you’ve done. You’ll probably have to perform restitution as well.”
“WAAAHHHHH!!!!” vampire girl cried. “I don’t want to be a restitute!”
“What?! No! What is that, even? It just means that you have to make up for what you did through honest work, that’s all.”
“Oh,” vampire girl said. “I…. I think I can do that.”
“I’m scared,” lamia girl sniffled. “What if they want to hurt us?”
“They won’t,” I promised. “And in the unlikely event that they do, Sonya and I will protect you.”
“Look, I’ll apologize with you, okay?” Sonya said, trying to comfort lamia girl. “Come on, let’s go.”
“Do you guys have any water?” Ilias asked.
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Luka's Story-Paradox