Chapter 290

“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.”