Dungeons and Dalliances

7.27 – The City of Eros IV

The rooms were everything Acacia had said they would be. Natalie was a bit awed that she would be living in all but luxury during the weekend delve. A plush bed, hot water, and even meals delivered by automatons. Plenty of space too. The bathroom was a number of times larger than her own back at Tenet. The basin-style bath tub was especially enormous, enough to fit six. Natalie wondered if that was to encourage multi-person use. Seeing how Lust had her hand in making this city, she assumed so.

There were also 'pleasure dungeons' in each room through a trapdoor at the foot of the enormous bed. Natalie had peeked in briefly and closed the hatch, blushing hard.

Afterward, Acacia showed them to the Assignment Boards.

"Since there's a lot of people here, they're broken up by first name," Acacia said. "The boards get busy on reset hours, of course, but usually it's not too bad. It's a good time to socialize, since lots of people hang around after the reset. A natural, uh, congregation time, I guess you'd call it."

"Will we have assignments already?" Vanetta asked.

"Not until the first reset after you enter the city for the first time," Acacia said. "Which will be around three hours from now, so you won't have to wait long."

"We'll be able to use these boards to tell when Elida gets here, then," Natalie deduced, and Vanetta tilted her head briefly before nodding, clearly not having thought of that herself. "In a general sense, at least," Natalie said. "And if we don't bump into her first."

"Elida? Your teammate?" Acacia asked.

"Yeah."

"It's a smart way to see if she's shown up," Acacia said. "But you won't be able to actually find her. Except by meeting up at the boards themselves, I suppose. Hadn't thought of using it like that myself, but to be fair most groups get here in one piece. I'm surprised you two didn't. You were split up."

Natalie and Vanetta found the 'N' and 'V' boards respectively just to take a look, and to confirm their names weren't there. The assignments were simple: they held the full name of the Citygoer along with concise instructions: Report to the Bordello, or Report to the Coliseum for your duel against, and then the name of their opponent. And so on. Some had more detailed instructions, but those were rarer.

While Natalie lingered at her board, checking out a few of the assignments, Acacia approached her to speak privately.

"I'm gonna get going now," she told her. "I'm happy to return the favor and get you two oriented, but the City is a valuable opportunity, and I don't wanna waste my time. No offense or anything. I liked meeting you two." She chewed her lip and blushed. "That said … my assignment today was the Bordello, and I was waiting till near the end of the cycle to go. Was just gonna do some dancing on the lowest floor. But if someone wanted to be a client of mine on one of the higher ones, I might not be too against the idea. Think about it."

The woman didn't give a chance for Natalie to respond: blushing furiously, she waved goodbye, already starting to leave.

"I'll be there," Acacia called. "No big deal if you don't come, I know you'll be busy settling in. Just an offer!"

And then she had fled.

Natalie watched her go, heat also having risen onto her cheeks at the girl's bluntness. She wondered whether Acacia would have made the same bold offer even a few days prior. Lust's goal with this city was clearly to get people to indulge in their desires, and perhaps even become more uninhibited in general. Which Natalie guessed wasn't a bad thing, though it still made her feel some sort of way, the deliberate intent behind all these systems, trying to get men and women to show off their bodies and, well, fuck like rabbits, plainly put.

"What was that?" Vanetta asked.

"Uh, nothing. Doesn't matter."

"She propositioned you, didn't she?" The words were dry.

Natalie cleared her throat, which was answer enough.

Natalie wasn't sure if she would be heading to the Bordello to take her up on the offer, which wasn't implying anything about Acacia, just that it wasn't a priority—and she didn't want to waste Tokens as a client. It would enchant some too, she knew, but there were more efficient ways to gain Empowered Tokens and her supply wasn't all that large.

Still … maybe. But probably not.

"Didn't find your name either, right?" Natalie asked.

"No. It's as she said. We'll get our assignments on the reset."

They stood quietly for a moment.

"What do you think of all this?" Natalie asked curiously.

"It's an opportunity," Vanetta said, "as Acacia said." She thought for a second. "We would be stupid to leave after just two nights, in fact. Tenet would understand the delay. For that matter, I'm positive they'd want us to stay and gather information and to squeeze every drop of advancement we could from such a unique dungeon floor. They'll want a thorough report."

That idea, of course, had wiggled into Natalie's brain as well. She grimaced, not because she was antsy to get back to Tenet to return to class, but for other obvious reasons.

"They'll think something happened to me."

Vanetta tilted her head, not understanding at first, but it didn't take long.

"Ah," she said. "Your girlfriends."

That statement nearly made Natalie jump in place. "Huh? What? They're not my girlfriends."

"Well, the ones that are, then."

"None of them are."

Vanetta stared at her. "Excuse me?"

"What?"

"The one with black hair," she said. "Her, surely. At least."

"Jordan? We—we aren't even—what are you implying?"

Vanetta stared even longer at her.

"Uh huh," she eventually said. "Does she know that?"

"Does she—of course she does! We're just friends."

"Friends," Vanetta repeated. She shook her head. "Anyway," she said, sounding extremely dubious, but returning to the topic at hand. "It seems common sense it'll take longer than a few days to gain enough Tokens to buy out the best items in these 'shops', and Acacia made it clear the items there were incredible. That they're the whole end-goal of all of this." She paused. "So that's our obvious next stop. We need to know what we're working toward."

"You're planning on actually, ah, engaging, then?" Natalie asked, a bit flustered from the previous line of questioning. What the hell had she been implying? She and Jordan were obviously only friends. Sure, really close friends that had known each other forever, and were breaking each other's pelvises every night, and Natalie was secretly in love—

She forcibly reined her thoughts in, waiting for Vanetta's response.

Her cheeks had colored. "I don't know," she said honestly. "Probably not any of the more, uh, interesting stuff. But if I have to just stand around and watch …" Even that idea clearly flustered her. "If the rewards are good enough, then just looking doesn't bother me. And you? You're planning on 'engaging'?"

"Probably. I don't know to what extent though." Despite being far more experienced and having fewer inhibitions than Vanetta, that didn't mean Natalie was jumping at the idea of baring herself naked for a crowd. Much less fucking in front of them.

Though the private encounters in the Arena or even the Palace Basement?

Maybe. Maybe those would be interesting.

She had fucked a dungeon-pussy the instant it'd been offered to her, after all. It wasn't like private encounters of any degree of lewdness deterred her.

Well. Not any degree. There were many things she would be hesitant about or outright refuse, but she was more adventurous than most people.

"Right," Vanetta said. "Come on. Let's go check out the shops. We're waiting for the reset, anyway."

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