Gathering funds, and a new destination…

  With the focus that’d been her driving goal now gone, Nox wandered around for a bit, pondering what came next. Her finances were in decent shape, but not enough to pay the fee for another run of the Dungeon of the Cyclops. Nor could she hope to solo it. Even Ginger, as a beastkin who could use the backstab skill, and who’d gained the lucky strike and dodge skills, would’ve had trouble if she tried it again solo.

  Not sure what she was going to do, Nox headed back to the alley and gathered up her two bnkets. They’d been clean when she’d bought them, but now… Well, her nose burned as she carried them in her arms. Going to a service that offered cleaning, she dropped them off—as well as 2 silvers. She hated doing so, but they definitely needed a good cleaning.

  Next came herself. Sure, she nearly always showered when it rained, but that only went so far, so she headed to a proper bathhouse where she paid for a proper bath and to have her clothes properly cleaned. It was a luxury her copper-pinching soul rebelled at, yet she loved it. And so, for the first time in ages and ages, she stood in the streets freshly bathed and in clothes that didn’t in the slightest stink.

  Hmm, I have 22,274 coppers left, Nox mused as she once again wandered the street. That’s 222 silver and 74 coppers; or 2 gold, 22 silver, and 74 coppers… depending on how you look at it. It seems thanks to Verdant paying my entrance fee to the dungeon, my finances crept back to what they were when I sold my hair. I’m not rich, nor do I have a source of income other than roaming the sewers and killing rats while looking for lost coins… but thankfully I’m far from starving.

  She paused to look up at the sky.

  And yet, she continued to muse, it’s not exactly a ton of money. Fuck, am I sick and tired of worrying about every bloody little copper.

  With the sun just peeking above the sky, creating a brilliant red and orange dispy that left the girl—who would normally be in the sewers at the time—staring in awe, she slowly made her way to the brothels. As she did so she pulled out her hair, which she always kept inside her tunic so as to keep it out of the way. It wasn’t the same length as when she’d arrived in this world, but it was around two-feet long, and it was still the dark bck that was so rare here.

  Taking a deep breath, she stepped inside her first brothel in close to 3.5 Earth years.

  “The guys in this city have propositioned me countless times over the st few seasons,” she told the woman who ran the establishment. “And sure, I have the prostitute Blessing, but I’ve never had sex, or ever done anything with a guy… so I’m willing to give one of them a chance to be my first… but only the highest bidder.”

  “I see,” the woman mused. “And how do I know you’re telling the truth on being a virgin?”

  “It’ll be quite obvious to the guy I sleep with,” Nox deadpanned.

  “And the skills you have?”

  “None for pleasure,” Nox replied. “I got resist all, dark vision, and inflict pain… but this is a one time thing to raise funds. I don’t expect to make a living from it.”

  “Hrm. And how did you get the prostitute Blessing,” the woman asked, seeming to be truly curious.

  In the end the woman agreed and she gave—loaned rather—Nox some clothes to wear. That was when Nox’s stomach started to rebel, but she forced her qualms aside and wore them. As she wandered around the establishment, certainly on dispy albeit not quite up for sale yet, word quickly spread. Soon, the 6000 adventurers that the city boasted, and that’d long sought to humiliate her, started to pour into the brothel. In their eyes was dark expectation.

  It was more than a dozen hours ter, with the sun hanging low in the sky, and with word having spread through the whole city, that the bidding finally started. At first the people seemed confused by the process, but they were people who were able to spend a silver a day in a dungeon, meaning they had deep pockets. They learned, and the people who’d mocked her so often, and who’d longed to humiliate her for so long, learned that if they wanted to be the one to finally have a chance with her… they would have to pay. So, despite her being the least skilled prostitute on the continent, and maybe in the whole world, the price they bid on her rose and rose.

  I wonder if it’ll break the deal if I puke while we’re… doing that, Nox idly wondered while standing on a stage in an outfit that revealed all. To her shock, while she found it humiliating, her strongest feeling was one of tediousness. Nor did she have any strong feeling about the prospects of losing her virginity to a stranger. This world had given her the Blessing of Worldly Prostitute, and while it’d been wrong up until now on the prostitute part, it’d not been wrong on the worldly part. She did love worldly things. In fact she loved to eat, and she loved being clothed… The whole loving being clothed part was something she was truly coming to understand and love as she stood on the stage.

  Keeping what she hoped was a seductive smile on her face, the young woman stood and started walking among the guests. As she listened in on the various conversations, she learned that she was failing abysmally in the smiling seductively part, but that it didn’t matter. Her smile was more mocking, or so people cimed, and the men took that as an insult… and so they bid higher on the woman they loathed. The way they saw it, she was prey and the hunt was on. In essence, they were still little more than a mindless mob.

  Eyeing the drinks people carried and the food they ate, Nox’s stomach rumbled, but it’d been so long since she’d had anything but rat bread that she knew better than to sample anything. Vomiting now would be bad, and would wreck the bidding process.

  For fuck sakes, hurry it up, she pleaded as she kept up her wholly fake, and apparently mocking smile.

  With her being a talentless prostitute, it wasn’t something that would’ve worked in another city where the people didn’t know her. But here, where they did know her, and looked down on her, the bidding was now in gold coins… To be honest, she found it a bit fttering that they were willing to bid so high. But the whole process was still tedious as heck.

  The bidding came down to three of the richer people and it quickly accelerated. Eventually it stopped at an even 50 gold. Across the room Nox could tell even the woman who ran the establishment was more that a bit shocked.

  We haggled a bit, … well, a lot, Nox mused, and I got her to agree that the cut would be 70 for me, 30 for her. I don’t think she expected this to go anywhere, and to in fact lose money on the whole deal. But she’s now pretty happy, I think. That’ll give me 35 gold going forward, which is an amount I’m more than happy with, and which is far more than I expected. Now, to get this done and over with.

  With the crowd cheering on the man who’d won, Nox led the winner off to a room. That was where things started to go wrong. For one, she just colpsed on the bed, sighed, and waited for it all to be over with. But the winner seemed to expect her to do something. Given he’d paid 50 gold for this, Nox didn’t thing he was wrong to expect something… she just didn’t know what he expected. After all, she was a virgin with zero experience in sex, zero interest in sex, and certainly zero interest in the man she was with.

  The man’s voice grew coarse and vitriolic, while Nox grew even more bored. It wasn’t as if he could actually do anything here to hurt her—not in a brothel in a world where prostitutes were actually valued—so she knew she had nothing to be scared of, and that left boredom. With it having been an extremely long and tiring day, plus with it being the first true bed she’d been in for the st 3.5 years, and with that bed being really, really comfortable, the young woman started to doze off, only to have the man’s annoying bellowing stir her back to awareness again.

  Nox sighed, not for the first nor second time, and the man’s nguage grew more and more condemning and spiteful. For some reason, seemingly finding his abuse of her arousing, the man finally grew excited. When she rolled her eyes, yawned, and almost drifted back to sleep though, things only got worse. He defted—literally. The disinterested eyes of the girl as she idly watched the deftion, yawning again in the process, caused the man’s soul to also quiver, and as his manhood defted, so did his soul.

  The deed never got done, but the man’s time limit with the girl did expire and he left looking dejected… as if he didn’t feel he’d gotten his money’s worth. On that part Nox again had to agree with him. If she were in his pce, she too would be pissed. Then again, she would never bid 50 gold coins on a prostitute, and so was quite sure she would never be in his pce.

  Nox blinked. And recalling how she’d somehow accidentally teleported herself into a whole new world, she decided that maybe she shouldn’t tempt fate by thinking she would never end up in such and such a pce or situation. Past experience proved she was quite capable of going far beyond what the man had. After all, he would go home, brag to his friends, and all would be right as rain for him. She, on the other hand, was stuck in this world where for 3.5 years she’d eaten nothing but rat bread and slept on the hard, cold, cobblestone road of an alleyway.

  The man outside the hallway heard Nox break down in a loud, uncontrolble fit of shrill ughter and snickering, clearly immensely amused beyond all reason, and something within him broke; he sunk to his knees, knowing he would never have the pride that he’d once had. Tears ran down his face, and as if bearing the weight of the world on his shoulders, he stood and shuffled forward. Passing the owner of the establishment, he kept his head low.

  An hour ter, with Nox having cleaned up, she shook her head at the cup the woman who owned the establishment offered her. She already knew there would be no children from the encounter. Lack of encounter, rather.

  “Interesting,” the woman stated, eyeing Nox. “I think poor Tallen will remember you for some quite some time.”

  “That was his name,” Nox idly inquired.

  The owner of the establishment nodded. “Are you sure you won’t stay,” she asked. “There are a certain type of customers I think you would be perfect with.”

  Sensing a business opportunity, Nox shook her head. “No, but if you want to make a wig for someone else to py at being me, I’ll sell my hair for a gold coin.”

  Soon, once again bald, she left the second brothel she’d visited in her young life. In her adventuring guild account she now knew there would be 382,284 coppers. Not a big fortune, but if she was thrift in her spending, it would st her ages and ages.

  To see how much experience it’d netted her, Nox checked her Blessing.

  Worldly Prostitute

  Name: Nox Walker

  Race: Human

  Level: 10/100

  Subrace: Pneswalker

  Exp: 310/2000

  Str: 110

  Con: 120

  Int: 130

  Wis: 130

  Cha: 120

  Luc: 120

  Mana: 130/130

  Stamina: 118/120

  Regen: 1.30 Per Hour

  Regen: 1.20 Per Hour

  She blinked. All of that, and she’d only made 1 experience point? Rolling her eyes, the woman burst out in another uncontrolble, spontaneous fit of shrill ughter.

  Around a corner, Tallen heard the woman again erupt in uncontrolled ughter—ughter he knew had to be aimed at him—and his already fractured soul shattered.

  Shaking her head, Nox continued on her way to the adventuring guild. It was now quite te, and the pce was practically empty with the adventurers either lining up to wait to get into the dungeon, or in bed dead asleep. At one counter she saw Callo who was apparently also sleeping.

  “Yes,” the man said, yawning as he eyed her bald head with some curiosity.

  “What are the nearby dungeons a level 10 can enter,” Nox asked.

  “You’re not sticking with the brothel,” the man asked.

  “No,” Nox replied with a shake of her head. “That was boring as heck,” she emphatically stated loud enough to carry across the room, ensuring Tallen even more degradation in the future.

  “I see,” Callo mused, and he gulped, amazed at the woman’s callous disregard for a lover. “Well,” he continued after a pause, “there’s the Dungeon of Mockery in the city of Munt. You need to be level 5 or above to get in, but they don’t even keep a guard in front of it anymore. Like all dungeons, the entrance fee is supposed to be 1 silver, but if you just go on in no one will care.”

  “Free?” Nox knew free usually meant too good to be true.

  “Single monster to a room, but killing the monster doesn’t clear the room,” Callo expined. “The pce has those nasty word puzzles that, to be blunt, those with Blessings reted to fighting aren’t good at.”

  “I see,” Nox mused, frowning. It didn’t sound promising. For all that she’d been in this world for 1224 days, most of her time had been spent trying to survive. Her knowledge of this world was sadly cking with there being dozens and dozens of things she knew she should know, but didn’t. And she was too afraid to ask because it would make her stand out. If those puzzles required local knowledge, then she would flunk them as badly as she had Mrs Albright’s nguage tests.

  “The puzzles seem to be the main focus of the dungeon, with the monster only being token monsters” Callo added. “Still, while you can enter solo I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone who doesn’t have a Blessing reted to fighting.”

  Nox nodded.

  “Then there’s the Dungeon of Terror,” Callo added. “You need to be level 10 or above to get in, and… well, be prepared to fight is all I can say. You also need to be in a group of five to seven to be allowed in. It’s in the city of Yunk.”

  The man shrugged.

  “That’s all those within a day’s travel,” he told Nox.

  “Thanks,” the woman said with a grateful smile.

  Outside the guild she pondered her next move, and decided that it would be the Dungeon of Mockery in the city of Munt. And if that failed, she would hunt further afield.

  Yawning, the young retrieved her bnkets, which were now nice and clean, before heading back to the alley for one st night in the city of Lunk. Hungry, she got a chunk of bread from the ever present Si and settle down for the night. With a destination in mind, and a future to ponder, Nox closed her eyes with the events at the brothel pushed to one side.

  Nor, even stuck in another world, did she consider her eighteenth birthday to have been all that bad. Sure, she hadn’t celebrated it, but she had finished her first dungeon, garnering a huge amount of experience. And, on top of that, she’d made a ton of coinage. All in all, she figured it’d been a pretty good day.

  AnnouncementNox has completed her first dungeon, and seems to have adapted quite nicely to the new world she's found herself in. As such, with her soon to be starting her second dungeon, I will now try to release chapters each Saturday.