Chapter 308

Natalie composed herself. She’d been flustered by Elida’s unexpected arrival, as if she’d been caught doing something inappropriate, but she hadn’t, really. She was checking out the Coliseum purely out of practical considerations. To see how it worked, and to see how fast the passive token-enchantment was. And for once, she wasn’t lying to herself. Natalie was a lot of things, but a voyeur wasn’t one.

Well, she wasn’t especially a voyeur, at least. She wouldn’t pretend the show being put on didn’t get her a little excited. Nevertheless. She wouldn’t have shown up if not for curiosity on the enchantment function.

“Elida,” Natalie repeated, more composed this time. “Faye. Clementine. When’d you get here? How’d you find us?”

“About an hour ago,” Elida said. “We just missed the ‘cycle reset,’ apparently. How unfortunate. We saw your name and Vanetta’s and went hunting. Checked the Arena first, since that was what your assignment was, and figured you’d either be in the shopping district or at the Coliseum. And here you are.” She walked over and leaned on the stone railing next to Natalie, casually peering out at the ongoing—activity. “This is truly the strangest floor I’ve ever heard of. What’s happening? This is a stake payout, I believe they called it?”

Someone had given her the rundown on how the City worked, it seemed. The basics at least.

“We only got here a few hours before you, so we don’t know that much more,” Natalie said. “But yes, this is—a stake payout.”

“Curious. What were the terms?”

Slightly flustered, she relayed the stake’s description to Elida.

“Ah. So the extra bits were created by the stake? Interesting.” She leaned back to peer over Natalie’s shoulder. “Where are my manners? It’s good to see you again, Vanetta. I presume you and Natalie had some good bonding time? You were both sent to the Arena for a ‘duo assignment’, no?”

If Natalie had teasingly prodded Vanetta in such a way, she expected the dark-haired rogue would blush furiously. With Elida, her face was completely deadpan. She met Elida’s gaze with barely a twitch. “Yes. I wondered when you’d get here. You must have been thrown farther from the City than us.”

“It was a hike,” Elida agreed. “You two have gotten the lay of the land? You’ll need to catch us up.”

“You’ve gotten a room at the Palace?” Natalie asked.

“Indeed. A lovely young man gave us the initiation spiel—but there seems to be a lot going on.”

“Yeah. But automatons are stationed at most buildings. They’re helpful. The only bit that’s not obvious is the Emporium. That we’ve heard about, at least.”

“The Emporium?”

“In the shopping district. Apparently it’s where all the valuable items are sold. Well, the really valuable ones. The regular shops are already—absurd enough.”

“Oh?”

“They sell Epics.”

Even Elida’s eyes widened at that, the news flooring her.

“Epics? On the third floor?”

“They’re expensive as hell, but yes. We’d have to be here—” She ran a rough calculation in her head. As she’d learned earlier, token generation and enchantment was inconsistent, not something that could be estimated with reliability. “Well, probably more than a week, just to buy one. And that’s assuming we’re very, very efficient workers.”

One of the other city goers had mentioned only earning six enchanted tokens for their arena run. Working at that pace, it would take all month even for a run of the mill Epic.

‘Run of the mill Epic.’ Natalie shook her head. What a ridiculous statement.

“I see,” Elida said. “And there’s the matter of the time limit. How unfortunate.”

“The time limit?”

“The two-week maximum.”