Luka



Luka (ルカ) is the main protagonist of Monster Girl Quest. He is a boy of undetermined age (although Alice mentions that he’s younger than 21), and he hails from Ilias Village. He is the current wielder of Angel Halo, a sword with the power to seal monsters. He is the son of Marcellus and the second Seraph Lucifina (making him a human-angel hybrid), the nephew of the first Seraph Micaela, the descendent of Heinrich (on Marcellus' side), and at the end of the game the husband of Alice and father of her expected twin son and daughter. He’s lighthearted, but gullible, which tends to get on Alice’s nerves. He believes in the possibility of coexistence with man and monster, and wants to see a world where they can live together peacefully.

Due to his bloodline as a descendant of the legendary Heinrich and the angel Seraph Lucifina, Luka inherited their powers and abilities, having a tremendous aptitude for the Cursed Sword style (able to combat Granberia, a undisputed master of the style, on relatively even terms with comparatively little training time), and the Four Spirits from his grandfather while possessing all his mother's angelic skills and the abnormal regeneration ability said to be a Fallen Angel technique. Luka also quickly gains power far beyond that of a regular human, giving him the ability to defeat all sorts of monsters once he accumulates enough power. Luka is also a very quick learner, as it doesn't take very long for him to master the skills taught to him and eventually can perfect any skill right off the bat the moment he is informed about it, even mastering the power of water in a relatively short time when Heinrich was said to have taken a year to do so.

As the game progresses, Luka slowly learns Cursed Sword skills, masters the Four Spirits one-by-one, and mysteriously taps into his abnormal regeneration ability. However, his angelic powers remain entirely sealed by his mother's Keepsake Ring, unless he's threatened while asleep, though this only happens twice in Chapter 1. Alice and Tamamo vaguely comment on the power early on and can sense a faint presence from the ring and suggest that Luka may be a monster or something else entirely. The angelic power comes on full display when the ring shatters in Chapter 3. However, Luka is warned not to rely on his angelic powers too much as it will eventually consume and erode his human body, but he ignores the warning. Outside of combat, Luka also has highly refined skills in culinary arts, which he learned in preparation for his journey. Although Luka is only seen cooking for himself and Alice, she often compliments and highly praises his culinary skills despite her initial disappointment on his first two presentations (dried meat and unsalted bread with omelette).

Luka’s most defining character traits are his optimism, hastiness, naivety, and lack of intelligence, usually needing Alice or others explain every single detail to him or mindlessly rushing into a fight while being unaware of the whole story and the consequences his action could bring. However, Luka has bursts of insight during key moments, showing he isn’t completely ignorant to the way the world around him works, such as acknowledging Alice as his traveling companion after discovering she was the Monster Lord and understanding her intentions or when he persuaded Alice to give up her ideals of sacrifice and her trauma by using Alice’s words as well as his experience in traveling the world with her to justify his point.

Even though he is usually meek and easy-going, witnessing injustice, especially in the form of strong ones oppressing the weak, it ignites an extreme and sometimes destructive blind anger in him. For instance, he single-handedly defeated the entire armies, leaders and champions of the insects and plants of Plansect Village due to their civil oppression (interestingly he did so with no signs of tiring, despite the plant's assumptions after his victory over the insects), when he nearly strangles Lupton (a ranking member of Ilias Kreuz) to death for lying about slashing hundreds of monsters at the Bird God Shrine, or when he threatened and attempts to kill Lazarus in Ilias Kreuz Base in Gold Port after Lazarus insults and berates Luka’s father.

However, like all humans, Luka becomes submissive when the monster manages to make him ejaculate and proceeds to rape him: this phenomenon is referred at some points of the game as Critical Ecstasy. In almost all the rape scenes, the monster at least once claims Luka as the “most pathetic” compared to other men she had raped.

Past
Luka was born from a woman and a man, much like any other human. Not much is known from his early childhood, only that his parents moved to Ilias Village. This village, in the south of Ilias, was a very conservative place; strangers weren’t welcomed or treated well, as Luka and his family got to know.

Luka's father was named Marcellus and was a “hero,” the leader and founder of the extremists group Ilias Kreuz, driven to this extreme view by the fact that a woman he loved was killed by monsters on a quest to destroy the Monster Lord, a quest he participated in like many heroes before and after him. Luka's ideals are mostly a direct result of his father's extremism. His father was eventually killed by the monsters he killed himself, or so it was said.

Luka shared a much closer bond with his mother compared to his father; one could say he loved his mother as much as that he hated his father. A sweet woman, she tried to live with her husband and the animosity of the villagers. She always tried to keep Luka on the right path and turn him into a real hero, that, too, is a great pillar on which his ideals are built. But one day, his mother suffered from a deadly disease that the villagers refused to treat nor pray for, leaving his mother to die. But just before she died, she begged Luka to not feel angered by this and his father and to always follow the path of the true hero.

Soon after, another deadly plague spread through the village, killing off most of the inhabitants. This led to an increase in immigration, and all those newcomers made the people depend on them. The hostility towards newcomers faded away, just like the stench of newcomers on Luka; in one swipe, he had become one of the senior members of the village.

Present and Meeting Alice
Luka has been happily living in Ilias Village for a while now. He is somewhere between 15 and 20 and training daily, because he has a dream: a dream about coexistence between man and monster. And he finally is able to get the baptism of Ilias that day: a once-in-a-lifetime chance to get blessed by the goddess that very day, something he had trained and waited for it for a long time. Even the goddess visits him in his sleep and tells him that he must become a true hero by defeating the Monster Lord, much like Heinrich, his idolized hero, who had actually slain a Monster Lord 500 years ago. But on that very day, something unfortunates happens: a Slime Girl attacks the village, making mayhem break out; not many monsters attack Ilias Village, for it’s heavily guarded. But instead of letting the guards take care of it, Luka charges towards the menace, ignoring his sweet neighbor Betty. However, if Luka decides to run off in the mayhem, Ilias will attempt to redirect him into fighting the monster, but if he runs off again Ilias punishes him and renders him unconscious, resulting a Game Over.

Luka at first tries to convince the Slime Girl to go away, but she insists on raping him, something that would violate Ilias’ commandments. Before the two engage, Ilias appears to Luka and tells him how to fight; however if Luka asks for help twice, Ilias will accidentally KO him (due to Luka not receiving any healing when Ilias explains receiving damage works for the second time), resulting a Game Over. Though the Slime Girl seems to have the advantage with a preemptive strike, dodging, and recovering from his attacks, he finally manages to beat her in the very uncontrolled fight by flailing wildly. Even so, he had beaten a monster, and for him that had been a very special occasion. Happy as he was by that, he walked into the forest, wanting to enjoy the great feeling of victory, but, of course, also to enjoy the nature. While walking through the forest, Luka thinks back about his dream of coexistence: 30 years ago there were scenes of coexistence, until a horrid event known as the Slaughter of Remina where it was believed monsters massacred all of its villagers, not leaving one survivor; Luka has to defeat the Monster Lord so coexistence will return. Suddenly, a huge impact shakes the forest and his eardrums, interrupting his monologue. Startled by it, he goes to find out what could make such a sound, which turns out to be a lamia monster girl lying in a crater. Luka has a mind-blowing dilemma in front of him: take care of the monster girl that lies there unconscious and have a chance on missing his baptism, or just go away from the forest to get baptized.

If Luka decides to leave the monster girl and pretend he didn’t see anything, she immediately wakes up once he departs. Unfortunately, he had missed Ilias’ baptism, but as he leaves the church, he suddenly wounds up back at the forest, with the monster girl pissed at him. Angered, she immediately unleashes her devastating onslaught of unavoidable magic and rape on Luka, thus ending his life and resulting a Game Over.

Luka’s soft heart leads him to his choice: he is going to take care of that strange-looking monster girl. As he inspects the monster girl, she immediately wakes up and asks Luka where she is and who he is; Luka can respond honestly, lie, or not respond. Lying results Luka saying that the monster girl is in heaven because she died and that Luka is a slime, however lying or not responding results the monster girl hypnotizing him into responding in an overly pathetic manner. Knowing that the monster girl is all right, Luka tries to leave for his baptism, but she stops him, states Ilias’ baptism is foolish, and asks him why he didn’t take advantage of her conscious state and kill her. Luka responds with his big dream of coexistence, something that she laughs off, hurting his feelings and making him act childish. The monster girl then releases Luka, but it already is too late; when Luka arrives at the temple, Ilias did not appear, practically denying him his baptism. Luka is shooed away by the priest and he returns to home, looking so bad even a traveler takes pity on him and mistakes him for being poisoned.

But in his house, there is a surprise waiting for him: the very same strange monster girl lies in wait. Luka then begins asking her who she is, how he found his house, why she came here, and even questions who he is. After all the questions, the monster girl hints to have been responsible for Ilias not appearing at his baptism, stating the goddess attacked her, something that Luka is too stupid to notice even though he gets the hint. The monster girl then rudely demands for food, something that Luka is forced to comply with (either willingly or unwillingly, the latter resulting the monster hypnotizing him and Luka nearly attempts to offer himself as food when he couldn't find anything in his kitchen due to cleaning it out for his journey, dismaying the monster and releasing the hypnosis), but is satisfied and positively compliments the proper seasonings on just dry meat. She then tells Luka that he is interesting for believing in coexistence and that she will follow him on his journey, which is made possible by her words. He can’t seem to understand her motivations for doing so, but he accepts her following him, knowing he couldn’t possibly stop her. Before the monster girl leaves his house, she reveals her name as Alipheese Fateburn, or Alice for short, to which Luka thinks odd of.

En Route to Iliasburg
After saying farewell to everybody, Luka leaves the village where his mother died and where he grew up. Outside of the village, he meets up with Alice again, who once again chastises him for having ridiculous thoughts of baptism and heroism. She then asks him where he intends to go, but is annoyed with almost everything on their continent named Ilias. Suddenly, their conversation is interrupted by a Slug Girl; Luka tries to turn to Alice for help, but can’t seem to find her as if she disappeared, and she has. Like the Slime Girl, Luka struggles in this fight; he can’t hurt the slug with his sword, so he gets jittery, looking for things with which he can where he then shows a rare display of his real intelligence by taking out some salt and throwing it all out at the slug, causing her to flee.

Alice appears again, stating that she didn’t run away, but does not want other monsters to see her; she isn’t his companion nor ally, but a mere observer who will abandon him if he falters in battle. She then notes that Luka made a big mistake during the fight: he threw away all the salt, so she doesn’t see how he is going to season her food the right way any longer. But her worries aren’t correct, as in camp, he seasons her food in a way she enjoys, even without the salt. This makes her actually hand out a compliment for once, but the compliment is immediately followed by an insult. She calls his swordplay horrible, even though Luka states that he has learned it from combining techniques learned to him by travelers for five years, in exchange for a house to call their own for the duration of their stay. To improve his chances, Alice teaches Luka Demon Decapitation and SP. Luka is, and he will continue to be, grossed out by the cruel story behind the skill, but beggars can’t be choosers; Luka learns the skill and it will turn out to be a nice ally. Before they sleep, Alice notes Luka’s Keepsake Ring, sensing something faint from it, then they talk about their family and Alice’s motives where she ends up showing the 500 year old World Traveler guidebook that supposedly has information on sightseeing places and local delicacies.

The next morning, Ilias appears to Luka in his dream briefly to tell him that she will always be watching. After finishing breakfast, Luka prays to his goddess as it is a commandment, which Alice is disgusted of and is a contradiction to his goals. They then continue onto to Iliasburg, where Alice states its famed for its Sutherland Inn and its Ama-ama Dango, though nothing much happens until Luka runs into a gigantic plant in the middle of the road. He has a choice whether to yank it or not. Yanking it makes Luka fight the plant, a Mandragora, whose scream paralyzes him and renders him vulnerable to her fellatio until he finally resists the paralysis and attacks, causing her to flee; Alice comments that he really is nothing but a barbarian behind his mask of coexistence. Not yanking it will result in missing the fight, though Alice praises him and reveals that it was actually a monster but still insults him for being possibly barbaric.

Finally, when the sun goes to sleep, Luka sees Iliasburg, a big, imposing village, in front of him. Thinking that Iliasburg might be even worse in its anti-monster sentiment, he asks Alice if she can look like a human; at first, she isn’t too keen on the idea, but Luka convinces her that she won’t be able to enjoy the village’s delicacies. So after she morphed herself into the body of a human, they set foot in the village. Walking through it, Luka notices its awfully quiet with no business that normally would define the streets. And the reason behind that appears in front of him: a very strong monster fighting with soldiers, while there are already a ton of soldier lying beaten below her. Even Luka, who hasn’t left Ilias Village even once in his life, recognizes the sword and the monster: Granberia of the Four Heavenly Knights is trying, nay, taking over the village. With her flaming sword, she then easily beats down two of the three soldiers still standing in front of her and sends the third running. As Granberia declares the town hers and plots to move onto Ilias Village, Luka must decide whether to confront the Heavenly Knight or cower in fear.

Alice
Initially the relationship between Alice and Luka started out a little rough due to Alice's conditions of refusing to help Luka during their travel, but came to understood that once he learned Alice's true identity. They eventually became good traveling companions, though they butt heads over many different things: Alice is interested by Luka's dream of coexistence and wants to see how it fares against the real world, but also likes to insult Luka and call him an idiot or "fake hero" when he acts stupid and dislikes Luka taking on "pointless" sidequests; Luka on the other hand, appreciates her assistance and advice, but criticizes her gluttony and willful personality and misses no opportunity to point out when she is doing something out of character, such as playing in the snow as well as accepting candy from strangers (one of them being a lolicon, when Alice was sealed into a younger body at the time). Despite Alice saying she will not help Luka, she teaches him Cursed Sword skills and informs him of the Four Spirits to help him improve in combat, directly fights alongside him when she has to pass judgment as the Monster Lord, and comforts him and gives him advice when he comes face to face with personal issues. Alice also routinely has sexual contact with Luka for his semen, though as their travels go the reasons for initiating sex also branch into jealousy and eventually love, especially when Alice strips both of their virginities.

Despite Ilias' commands to kill the Monster Lord, Luka is at reluctant to carry out such an order and gradually falls in love with Alice as well. Upon realizing that Alice taught him the Cursed Sword skills and Quadruple Giga solely to create a hero to kill her to achieve coexistence, Luka refuses, reminding Alice that self-sacrifice is not the path to coexistence.

At the end of the game, Luka and Alice become a wedded couple and are expecting a twin son and daughter. With Ilias finally gone and coexistence has truly come to light, the fake hero and monster lord work together to maintain that peace for their children.

Goddess Ilias
Ilias acts as Luka’s guide throughout the game whenever he is defeated and the player asks for an evaluation, or in certain storyline events. At the beginning of Chapter 1, Ilias teaches Luka (and indirectly, the player) how to fight. Her subsequent appearances involve telling Luka in his dreams to “defeat the Monster Lord”.

While Luka’s initial faith in Ilias is somewhat strong, he does many actions against Ilias’s will (most notably his dreams of coexistence between man and monster), which accumulate and ultimately lead to the relationship between Ilias and Luka being severed at the end of Chapter 2. In addition, the fact that he can see fairies (said to be invisible to those with a strong faith in Ilias) is proof that his faith in her is actually very poor, or at least was already wavering by the time he entered the Forest of Spirits.

During the first two chapters, Luka gradually starts to break all of Ilias’s commandments (or at least the four commandments that are mentioned) by starting to neglect his prayers, letting Alice rape him several times, and eventually rebelling and pointing his sword against her once he realizes she is the true obstacle to coexistence. In spite of this, she keeps up her benevolent façade until he explicitly denies her, refuses to finish off the Monster Lord, and deems her the true obstacle of coexistence.

At the end of Chapter 2, Ilias reveals that she believed Luka could change her beliefs of humanity’s faults, being her “first failed creations”, but it’s quite clear she was wrong about him after he rebelled. However, when Luka confronts Ilias for the final battle, she reveals that everything that happened, from “guiding” him to his rebellion against her, was all part of her plan, using him as a pawn to complete her true goal of gaining Alice I's dark power.

Once Ilias is stopped, however, the last (and only) beneficial thing she does for Luka is curing the erosion of his body, having wanted to do something befitting of a goddess for once in her life.

Four Heavenly Knights
Luka often interacts with the Four Heavenly Knights, who all have different opinions of him.


 * Granberia: Although she praised him as a swordsman, she initially viewed him as a mere "hero" that needed to be crushed. However, when she discovered that Alice taught him Cursed Sword skills, Granberia saw potential in Luka’s and frequently sparred against him to see it grow. By the time he acquired all the Four Spirits, she saw him as a worthy opponent and greatly respected Luka after he finally managed to defeat her.
 * Tamamo: When they first met, Tamamo (perhaps jokingly) saw Luka as a potential husband, to Luka's dismay. Despite this playful demeanor, she entrusted Luka to look after Alice and also mentored him on using the earth element properly. After he defeated Tamamo, she came to greatly respect his growth and then tries to look after his well being, though he often ignores her and blindly rushes into danger. She also oversaw Luka's and Alice's marriage, testing Luka's ability to resist temptation and approved the marriage once he passed.
 * Alma Elma: She always saw him as nothing but a mere sex toy and often tried to seduce him. She was also very whimsical during their battles, such as giving herself handicaps and nonchalantly surrendering, but respected their fights and his request to go all out during their fight in the Monster Lord’s Castle.
 * Erubetie: Because of her hatred towards humans, Erubetie hated the hell out of Luka; she outright tried to kill him on their first encounter. Though Luka tried to reason with her during their fight in the Monster Lord’s Castle, Erubetie refused to listen but eventually realized that attempting to kill him if it meant killing herself was meaningless. However, Luka managed to get her to soften after explaining her wrongdoings when Slime Bess betrayed her and saving her life from Amphisbaena. By then, Erubetie becomes less hostile; she offered him jelly, invited him into her room to relax, and shows great intimacy in her final rape scene.

Four Spirits
Despite joining him on his adventure, the Four Spirits do not interact with Luka as much as Alice does. However, they all try to aid Luka and help him improve his ability when using their powers, and all of them have tested Luka's worthiness. Overall, the Four Spirits seem quite pleased with his growth and are satisfied with their journey with him. Luka also has sex with all of them once (only to restore the power that Promestein drained from them).


 * Sylph: She finds Luka's motives intriguing and somewhat helps him use her power. Luka is concerned for her welfare when the other spirits attack her. By the end of their journey, she is very satisfied on the exciting experience of their journey, being the first spirit to join him and also the first spirit to part ways with him.
 * Gnome: Due to her constant silence, Gnome's relationship with Luka is very vague. However, at the end of their journey, she feels that their adventure was fun because they've been together.
 * Undine: She despises humans, but not to the same level as Erubetie, seeing some potential in him when he recruited Sylph and Gnome. She advises him how to utilize the power of wind and earth together, and seems impressed when Luka quickly mastered water in a short amount of time. At the end of their journey, Undine is pleased with Luka changing her and Erubetie's opinions of humans.
 * Salamander: Acting as a mentor, she taught Luka the principles of water and fire, and is satisfied with his growth. However, she tries to divert Luka from following Heinrich's recklessness, and is quite unhappy when he tries to do so throughout Chapter 3 and the final fight with Ilias.

Amira
The “unfortunate lamia” who claims to be infatuated with Luka after he supposedly chases away Granberia in Iliasburg. When the two first meet, Luka is annoyed at her appearance and attempts to kill her, only to be stopped by Alice. Despite her unusual appearance or blatant lies, she provides very helpful information to Luka and Alice, and assists them by finding out where the Four Spirits and the Six Orbs were located during Chapter 1 and 2, along with averting the crisis with her “unfortunate” friends in Succubus Village in Chapter 3.

At the end of the game, Amira no longer proclaims her love for him and had created a world-wide selling book that overdramatically details his adventures and, under Tamamo's order, the marriage between him and Alice which had yet to happen. Though Luka is a bit bewildered upon acquiring the book, he doesn't mind how "silly" it is as it still brings out the message of coexistence.

Trivia

 * Luka trying to become a martyr was foreshadowed when he was annoyed with Granberia’s pity, monologuing that he would rather have died instead.
 * Oddly enough, many monsters throughout the series have commented on Luka’s genes being of high quality, and how desirable his genes were. This is further proven when Alice and a few monsters, when they taste Luka’s semen, describe it to have a unique taste they could get used to. This could be a foreshadowing of his hidden lineage.
 * Throughout the game, whenever Luka fights alongside or against a human, he utterly overpowers them, even in the earlier stages of his journey.
 * Whether coincidental or not, Luka is often depicted as having a similar hair color to Alma Elma, a similarity which becomes much more apparent in Chapter 2.
 * In all the images with Luka using an elemental attack, the Iron Sword is in place of the Angel Halo. This is likely due to the Angel Halo’s grotesque, deterring appearance, or a homage to the RPG cliché of always showing the same weapon on the character’s sprite.
 * Luka is suggested to be between 15 and 20 years old given that his mother died 10 years before, Alice states he is younger than her (21), and how he is depicted in the flashbacks. The baptism for heroes is also a coming of age ceremony. Despite actual age or appearance, Luka is of the age to be considered an adult in his society.
 * In Judeo-Christian Religion, the progeny of a fallen angel and a human are called Nephil (singular) or Nephilim (plural).
 * In Genesis, Nephilim were called "heroes".