Dungeons and Dalliances

7.25 – The City of Eros II

"Alright," Natalie said, struggling to keep a straight face.

And, shamefully, struggling to ignore the stir of excitement inside her stomach. She absolutely, one-hundred percent did not want anything to do with Elida.

Then again…

A publicly staked favor, in which Elida had to, for example, choke on her cock in front of a crowd of spectators?

Well. Natalie would do it for the retribution, and to empower her Tokens, of course. No other reason. There was no internal, natural attraction to the concept of having those lips stretched around her cock, and those angry green eyes glaring up after being thoroughly flounced in the arena.

"And the other three buildings?" Natalie said, impressed she managed to keep her voice straight.

"The Bordello, the Arena, and the Palace Basement. The Bordello is … maybe the most scandalous of the options. Well, I don't know, the Palace Basement is—" she coughed. "The Bordello is what it sounds like. If you get an assignment there, you can accept and, ah, perform services for other cityfolk. For that matter, buying services there empowers some of your own tokens too. Most things that are, um, indecent if you want to call it that, will empower tokens inside the City. But there's different levels of the Bordello. You don't have to—you know, go all the way. In the lowest level, all you have to do is dance, and you can even keep some of your clothes on."

"Some of your clothes on," Vanetta repeated, seeming a bit faint at the whole concept. As to be expected. The girl was clearly of a more reserved mindset.

"Though even that is, uh, still scandalous, depending on your perspective. Which is why a lot of people refuse the Bordello," Acacia said. "Like I said, you always have a choice. Um, anyway, the Bordello does get kind of crazy the higher the floor you go. I don't think there's all that many people actually … giving full service, but there have been a couple, and the Token payout is pretty nice. So." Her face had returned to being fully red by this point, and she moved on; they understood what she was getting at.

"The Arena is the most private option," Acacia said. "If you can come to terms with the whole idea of staking, but don't want it to involve anything public. Though it can sometimes include other people. It's pretty similar to the Coliseum, except that you go up against monsters, and if you lose, you don't get hurt, you just have to pay out the stake."

"With a monster?" Vanetta asked, aghast.

"N-No! That's just the fight," Acacia said. "You fight, and if you lose, you have to pay out the stake. And the stake can be a variety of things. It's actually kind of interesting, it seems the City goes easy on—well, I don't want to call them prudes, but you know." She shrugged. "It definitely doesn't throw you off the deep end, most of the time. There's almost a … work-your-way-in feel with assignments, where it tests and tries to push your boundaries."

Natalie had noticed something similar with her own adventures. They had gotten lewder and more ridiculous the longer she spent delving.

"Makes sense," Natalie said. "It's trying to find challenges outside of a person's comfort zone, but only so much so that it thinks they'll be tempted."

"That's probably the idea," Acacia said. "Which is kind of weird to think about, because it's even more sapient than the dungeon usually is, but whatever. This whole floor is weird. I try to not think about it."

"What might the stakes be?" Vanetta asked. "As an example?"

Acacia cleared her throat. "You get to pick them, or at least have a say in it. But it happens before the challenge, so you're locked in afterward. It could be as simple as, you know, some self pleasure," despite having been at the City for presumably some time, the woman clearly hadn't grown fully accustomed to the strange life here, because she blushed and stammered over her explanations, "like with certain contraptions being dragged out, which you have to, ah, use."

"Contraptions," Vanetta said flatly.

"There really is quite a lot of variety," Acacia said. "You'll see."

"And the Palace Basements?" Natalie asked her.

"Right. The last of the major assignments. The Palace is where everyone lives, by the way, you can rent rooms there with tokens. It's cheap, just one a day, and I would really recommend springing for it: meals, hot baths, soap, beds, the full works. It's like you're not even in the dungeon."

That sounded nice. Natalie was more than used to roughing it, but that didn't mean she liked being without hot showers.

"The Palace Basements are for the, um, adventurous types I suppose you would call it," Acacia said. "And are definitely the most refused assignment. Because there's no pre-staking or even knowing what you're getting into when you climb down there. And it can get, ah, interesting."

"Interesting how?"

"You know how I said in the arena, you're not staking with the monsters, just fighting against them?"

"You're kidding me," Vanetta said flatly.

"Nope," Acacia said, face burning scarlet. "The Basements have some very enthusiastic monsters. I will say, though, they're not monsters, o-or at least not anything too unpleasant."

"Too unpleasant," Vanetta repeated.

"Though that depends on the person, of course," Acacia coughed, scarlet-faced. "You're free to think otherwise. Still, the people I've talked to said the monsters there were humanoid, like ninety to ninety-five percent, just some … non-human features. S-Some of them are kinda cute. I've heard! I haven't been down there obviously."

Her description sounded awfully like Malice. Had other monster souls been drawn into this City to 'fight' the delvers here?

"Though there's also some less human ones," Acacia said. "I heard a story about a vine monster that … well, I won't keep going. You can imagine. And the thing about the basement is, you can run away from or fight what you find, but there's no guarantee you'll get away. So if you head down there, you better be ready for anything. And even the City presents it as the most, ah, degenerate? Assignment available. It's why most people refuse it."

"Unbelievable," Vanetta said.

"It's crazy, don't get me wrong," Acacia agreed. "No one will argue otherwise. But it is all optional, and you get a steady supply of Empowered Tokens just by participating as a viewer. That's why the Coliseum is usually packed, or the lower floors of the Bordello. Plenty of people here just watch rather than engage directly. And if you don't want to do even that, well, you can just hunt in the Ruins. All of the really nice items for sale are bought with Empowered Tokens, but there's still some great stuff for unempowered ones. And you can trade too, if you want." She shrugged. "You can also straight up leave the City, if you don't want to be here. So … yeah, craziest dungeon floor I've heard of. But if you want my opinion?" She met Natalie and Vanetta's eyes, blushing, though with a confident expression as she made her claim: "You two got lucky. There's some crazy loot to be earned, and it doesn't come with half the risk of dying. It's an enormous opportunity."

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