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

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

  Then again…

  A publicly staked favor, in which Elida had to, for example, choke on her co 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 attra to the cept of having those lips stretched around her cock, and those angry green eyes gring up after being thhly flounced in the arena.

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

  "The Bordello, the Arena, and the Pace Basement. The Bordello is … maybe the most sdalous of the options. Well, I don't know, the Pace Basement is—" she coughed. "The Bordello is what it sounds like. If you get an assighere, you 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, i if you want to call it that, will empower tokens ihe 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 even keep some of your clothes on."

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

  "Though even that is, uh, still sdalous, 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 returo being fully red by this point, and she moved on; they uood what she was getting at.

  "The Arena is the most private option," Acacia said. "If you e to terms with the whole idea of staking, but don't want it to involve anything public. Though it sometimes include other people. It's pretty simir 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?" Vaa 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 be a variety of things. It's actually kind of iing, 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 assigs, where it tests and tries to push your boundaries."

  Natalie had noticed something simir with her own advehey 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 fort 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?" Vaa 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 aced to the strange life here, because she blushed and stammered over her expnations, "like with certain traptions being dragged out, which you have to, ah, use."

  "traptions," Vaa said ftly.

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

  "And the Pace Basements?" Natalie asked her.

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

  That sounded niatalie was more thahing it, but that didn't mean she liked being without hot showers.

  "The Pace Basements are for the, um, adventurous types I suppose you would call it," Acacia said. "And are defihe most refused assig. Because there's no pre-staking or even knowing what yetting into when you climb down there. And it get, ah, iing."

  "Iing how?"

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

  "You're kidding me," Vaa said ftly.

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

  "Too unpleasant," Vaa 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 mohere were humanoid, like o y-five pert, just some … non-humaures. 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 mohat … well, I won't keep going. You imagine. And the thing about the basement is, you run away frht 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 evey presents it as the most, ah, degee? Assig avaible. It's why most people refuse it."

  "Unbelievable," Vaa 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 just hunt in the Ruins. All of the really ems for sale are bought with Empowered Tokens, but there's still some great stuff for unempowered ones. And you trade too, if you want." She shrugged. "You alsht 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 Vaa's eyes, blushing, though with a fident expression as she made her cim: "You two got lucky. There's some crazy loot to be earned, and it doesn't e with half the risk of dying. It's an enormous opportunity."