This is a side story of The Easily Defeated Hero's Monster Girl Adventure that takes place following the events of Book 4: The Vampiress. You can read the other books on Amazon, but this adventure will always be free and exclusive to chyoa.com!

Rusty sunset light pours through the mullioned windows that line the great dining hall of the Crystal Sanctum. A feast is heaped upon the table in great abundance. Each tray of roasted meats – whole goose, sugared ham, ox brisket – is surrounded by steaming piles of potatoes, turnips, carrots, and buttery tureens of spiced apples, baby peas, and wine-sauced mushrooms. Each guest has their choice of ales, meads, and wines, carried in pitchers by one of the blue-haired golem girls serving the feast.

You pick up another slice of the ham and move it to your plate. You wash down a huge bite with another gulp of red wine.

“Don’t eat too much,” says Morelle, sitting across from you and gazing at you with her sparkling violet eyes. You go for another hunk of the brisket and she kicks you under the table for emphasis. “When you fill up on Hina’s cooking you get all tired and never want to give me all the essence.”

Morelle, red-haired and freckle-faced, looks almost like her old farm girl self. That is, until you look down at her negligee barely holding in her ample breasts, at which point you are reminded that she is a succubus. She is getting much better at changing her shape. She has kept her horn, wings, and tail hidden since she sat down for dinner. Her demonic nature explains why she is fixated on your essence.

“You can’t have his essence tonight,” warns the statuesque blonde sitting next to you. “He will be training with me.”

“Yeah, right. Training,” says Morelle, rolling her eyes. She moves her fist in front of her mouth and pokes her tongue into her cheek.

You snort with laughter and the imposing blonde glares at you.

“Lucas’s training is no joke,” she says.

Theora is your mentor, protector, and sometimes your boss. She is also an angel of Veleda, the goddess who granted you a thousand lives and an incredible magical palace when she assigned you the task of saving the world. From monster girls. Like Morelle.

“Awooo!” Burbles a voice to your other side. A blob of violet gelatin oozes up through the slats in the seat of the chair beside you, filling it and forming into the shape of a voluptuous, if not completely defined, woman.

“Where’ve you been, Oola?” You ask the slime girl.

“Exploring,” she burbles. She reaches out suddenly, swallowing a pastry up in her hand. Instead of picking it up, there is a soft sucking sound and the pastry slides into her translucent violet arm, traveling up towards her body and rapidly disintegrating. The image of all that whipped cream dissolving inside the slime reminds you of all the times it has been your seed swirling into her translucent body and vanishing. “You come and visit me tonight, master?”

“Lucas,” you remind her. “You don’t have to call me master.”

“Awoo! Understand, master,” she says, the fronds of her hair jiggling as she turns her head and smiles at you. Her other arm flops out and swallows up several cookies which bubble and dissolve inside her on their way up her arm.

“I really hope she isn’t going to eat ham like that,” says Morelle, making a disgusted face.

“Violet slimes do not eat meat,” says Theora. “They barely eat anything more than essence, but this one has quite a sweet… ah… tooth?”

“Awoo!” Bubbles Oola happily, slurping up an entire tray of tarts one of the Hinas is holding. The golem lowers the tray, a blank expression her pretty face and her lips pinched into a slight frown. You can’t help but notice a slouch to her usually perfect posture as she heads back to the kitchen. Another Hina takes her place, offering Oola a selection of mint gelatins. Oola sniffs these and gurgles with disgust. The Hina moves on to Morelle, showing a distinct lack of enthusiasm.

You look around the room at all the other Hinas. They are doing their jobs, but something seems off about them. You even notice one drop some food off a tray onto the floor.

“Excuse me,” you say, wiping your mouth with a napkin. You rise from the table. Theora looks at you with her silvery-blue eyes, seeming curious. “I will be back, I just, uh, had a question for the Hinas in the kitchen.”

“They’ll make you anything,” calls Morelle as you head for the kitchen doors. “I had them make me a whole cauldron of pepper stew and…”

You pass through the door and into the kitchen. There is far less bustle than you expected. One blue-haired Hina is cutting vegetables, another is slowly stirring a pot of chocolate, and another seems to be having difficulty pouring wine into a carafe. One Hina seems to be watching it all with concern.

“What’s going on?” You ask her.

“Oh, master,” she says, jolting with surprise and standing up straight. “We are preparing—“

“I know what your jobs are,” you say. “What’s going on with you and the others? Why are you all acting tired or sick or something?”

The Hina sighs, which is not something you have ever seen one of the Hinas do before.

“Forgive me, master,” she says, bowing her head. “I do not wish to alarm you, but we are not well. I thought it was only a passing thing related to our visit to the Nightlands, but since returning to Lorraine our condition has only worsened.”

“What is causing it?”

“Of that, I am not certain,” says the Hina. “One of us has gone down to the Heart Engine to inspect it for damage and has not returned.”

“The Heart Engine?” You ask. “This is the first I am hearing of that. What is it?”

“When this place was created, and we along with it, the heart of the sanctum began to turn and spin. It is an impossible magical machine which provides access to the unlimited power of the subcosmos we inhabit.” The Hinas lips pinch together in a worried frown. “Since leaving the Nightlands, the Heart Engine has been fading and our power diminishing. It is almost as if something has taken a piece of the engine.”

“Okay, that makes complete sense,” you say with a shrug. “Should I be worried?”

“You will need to evacuate before the engine stops completely or you will be trapped here forever,” she says. “But that should not happen for well over an hour.”

“An hour?” You take hold of the Hina’s slender shoulders and shake her until she looks at you with her glassy blue eyes. They do seem a bit dim. “What can I do to stop this?”

“You have to find out what has happened to my sister that went down to the Heart Engine,” she says.

“She might know what is going on.”

“Take me there,” you say. “Now.”

You are not sure what is happening or what you might face, so you take a huge meat cleaver from the butcher’s block to use as a weapon. You following the slouching Hina out of the kitchen and to a door you have never noticed before near the grand staircase. It is so small and unobtrusive that you must have passed it dozens of times before and never noticed.

Hina opens it with a click and plucks a candelabrum from the wall to light the way down the narrow staircase. You follow behind the blue-haired Hina, entering a world of unadorned stone and cramped passages at odds with the grandeur of the rest of the palace. It is like being behind the stage at the solstice pageant in St. Ingbert’s.

“How deep does this go?” You ask after descending what seems like several floors.

“Almost there,” says Hina. “Do you feel it, master?”

You feel something, a throbbing charge in the air perhaps, but it is hard to define exactly. Being close to the Heart Engine does seem to be helping Hina. She is walking surely and upright again.

You descend another few dozen steps in the winding staircase and you see a pink glow from below. The glow becomes brighter and brighter, throbbing in intensity to match the charge you feel pulsing in the air. You and Hina emerge from the staircase and the golem girl cries out as she sees a huge golden gate stands open. She moves with surprising speed, hurrying through the gate and into the glowing chamber beyond.

The Heart Engine of the Crystal Sanctum is a huge device of intense beauty and complexity. It floats in the center of the chamber, seemingly made from a multitude of overlapping crystalline gears. It is obvious to you that there is something wrong. Some gears are turning rapidly in fits and spurts while others wobble, threatening to break loose and barely in contact with their neighboring gears. You are so shocked by the vast, elaborate mechanism of pink crystal that you almost trip over the ruined Hina twisted into a heap on the floor.

“Oh, my sister,” moans your Hina, crouching down beside her ruined sister. “What has done this to you?”

“I’m willing to bet it was whatever damaged this machine,” you say, indicating the Heart Engine. “Can you tell what is missing?”

“I would need to carefully analyze the remaining gears and compare them to—“

Hina is interrupted by a scraping sound from the other side of the Heart Engine. A shadowy figure is visible dragging a crystalline wheel. The figure seems human, vaguely feminine, with what seems to be white hair, although it is hard to tell in the pink light that throbs throughout the room.

“Hey!” You call out. “You there! Stop!”

“She has one of the wheels!” Hina cries, starting towards the woman.

The female figure quickly wraps the wheel in an animal skin and hefts it onto her back. She watches you with hard red eyes as you begin to run towards her, following the curve of the huge room. You brandish your meat cleaver and shout, “Give that back!”

A cloth covering her nose and mouth falls away for a moment, revealing a woman of exquisite and delicate beauty. There is no mistaking her long, pointed ears to match her delicate features; this woman is an elf. Judging by the white hair and red eyes, going on what you know from myths, this is a dark elf. Her kind was thought to be extinct, but once plagued human settlements by emerging from vast networks of tunnels to steal, kidnap, and murder.

Obviously, there is at least one dark elf still alive.

“Stop,” you say, slowing as you approach her. “You cannot take that.”

“I already have,” she says, a faint accent curling her words. “I need it more than you, human.”

Before you can reach her, the elf tosses something onto the floor to your feet. In a whoosh of smoke, you are blinded and the dark elf escapes into a nearby access tunnel.