Chapter 65 – Asking for Directions

"Yeah, I figured as much…" I let out a slight sigh as I turned my head away from my companions and the tight alleyway that we were standing within.

"Surely we can just ask someone for help," Vel suggested, looking in the same direction as me, at the crowd of busy people steaming by in the market square beyond the alley.

In an attempt to do just as she suggested, the young elven woman walked up the edge of the alley and tried to get the attention of anyone nearby who might be so inclined to help us. "Excuse me, but would anyone know the directions to a place called the Red Den?" Vel said softly, somehow still managing to draw a few curious looks from the bustling crowd, but none stopped to offer their help.

"Well, that wasn’t any good." The young elven woman huffed as she walked back into the alley, towards Saph, who raised a tentacle to give her a reassuring pat on the shoulder.

As I stood there at the edge of the alley, my attention slowly drifted away from the crowd steaming down the streets and towards the storefronts that various people were pulling away from the crowd to go into. As I watched many places being frequented over a short period of time, I quickly noticed those stores that saw less foot traffic than those others nearby. One store in particular, not that far down the street from where we were, had even fewer people frequenting it. Not none, but significantly less than any other within sight. It’s dishevelled, cramped exterior probably had something to do with that.

Upon seeing this, an idea came to me and slowly turned into a plan for getting directions to the Red Den. "I’ve got an idea," I said as I turned back to my girlfriend and passed her the backpack that was slung over my shoulder. "Please, hold onto this for me and stay here in the alley until I return. Hopefully, this won’t take too long and I’ll be back before you know it."

"Okay…" Vel nodded in understanding, but the tone of her voice was clearly unsure. "Be safe, Eve."

Before leaving Vel and Saph in the alley to go and enact my plan, there was one last thing I needed, just in case, I was unable to get what we needed with my charms alone. As such, I opened the top of the backpack and retrieved several coins from the pouch that Damien had placed inside before we left. All of the coins inside said pouch were kind of hefty and made of gold, not to mention marked with a range of numbers, no doubt denoting their worth.

Considering the fact that the guards at the entrance to the dungeon were being handed handfuls of copper coins and the occasional silver, these gold coins were probably worth a lot more. As such, I only took a few smaller ones marked with the numbers 1 and 5. I absolutely didn’t want to take one of the ones marked 100 and accidentally lose it, or God forbid, one of the few marked 1000. I’m definitely no expert on this, but I think Damien is filthy rich.

With the smallest of the gold coins at my disposal placed inside the pockets of my pants, I quickly made my way out of the alley, turning right and heading straight for the shop I noticed earlier. As loud and crowded as the streets of this city were, walking down them gave me a strange sense of nostalgia and longing for home since they reminded me of the city I grew up in.

Of course, not everything was the same as at home. The buildings around the market square weren’t towering multi-floored things like on earth, but older styled buildings of wood and sometimes a little bit of brick, as you would expect from such a fantasy world. Additionally, the people here were dressed in an odd style that I wasn’t really accustomed to, but that said, it wasn’t like their clothes were of poor quality. In fact, the quality of the clothing around the place was actually akin to that of Earth, no doubt thanks to the various class skills that assist in the crafting of such things.

What was odd about the style though was how it was a blend of what you would expect to find in a history book or a museum when detailing medieval life, but there were also more modern hints to the workmanship here and there, giving everything the look that it came out of a factory even though no such things probably existed here.

While looking around at all the sights, it wasn’t too long before I reached my destination, a cramped, thin building wedged between two taller, more well-off storefronts. The building I had picked out had no window to see the wares inside, but it did have a wooden sign hanging above the door, a rather crooked, nearly falling apart sign. On the sign was a picture of a wicker basket and the words "Ryan’s Wicker Emporium".

"Emporium" is not the word I would use to describe this place. I mused to myself as I walked in through the front door and laid eyes on the store within.

Just as the outside had indicated, Ryan’s wicker emporium was a very thin and not very well-kept store. A single aisle ran down the centre of the store to a bench at the very end, where a shopkeeper was currently haggling with a middle-aged woman. To either side of the aisle were various tables, shelves, and barrels of whicker goods of every type. In fact, there was an overabundance of merchandise on display to the point where some stacks of wicker baskets were nearly reaching the roof and threatening to come toppling down.

As the shopkeeper haggled with the middle-aged woman, the only other potential customer in the store besides me, I busied myself by looking over the various wicker goods on display. While doing so, I couldn’t help but notice that much of the space was covered in a thick layer of dust. You’d think with all the incredibly handy class skills available on level up, they would take one to help with dusting and keeping your store pristine… Or maybe they have just given up caring. That would explain the sign.

Eventually, the middle-aged woman left, leaving behind a few copper coins as she made her leave with a new wicker basket in her hands. Once, and only once, the woman had left the store and I heard the door shut behind her, did I approach the shopkeeper.

"Welcome to Ryan’s wicker emporium. I’m Ryan, and how can I help you today to fulfil all your wicker needs." The man said in a very monotone voice, which clearly portrayed just how many times he had said this line and how bored he was with it.

This shopkeeper, Ryan, was a fairly well-kept man despite the very unkempt state of his store. He was most likely in his late thirties, a little younger than Damien, and although not as handsome and ruggedly good-looking as Damien, Ryan had a more common charm to him. He was not too fat or too skinny, but mostly just average in a way that gave him his own kind of appeal.

"I was wondering if-" I began but was immediately cut off by the shopkeeper.

"We do not buy wicker goods anymore, only sell them," Ryan said with a sigh as if expecting that was what I was going to ask about.

I was taken a little off guard by this interruption and the look of regret in the man’s eyes as he glanced back over my shoulder at the various dusty, stacks of wicker goods on the overfilled store shelves. But in a moment, I regained my composure and continued on.

"That’s not why I’m here. I was wondering if you could help me. You see, it’s my first time in the city and I’m a bit lost." I said as I fluttered my eyes and pushed my chest out, in the hopes that my charm score of 45 would help out here.

No doubt it did, because the shopkeeper's eyes momentarily darted down to my breasts, where he definitely noticed the fact that I wasn’t wearing a bra and the bumps of my nipples pressing against my thin shirt were extremely obvious. When Ryan’s eyes flicked back up to mine, his cheeks were adorned with a slight bit of blush. "I’m sorry to hear that. If I can help you, I will. Where is it that you need to go?"

Hearing this, I couldn’t help but smile excitedly. Back on Earth, this small amount of conversation with a stranger would have been enough to send my brain whirling with needless worry and anxiety. After all, I wasn’t the most social person back then, even workplace conversations could be challenging. But here, in this world, where I was free from all such needless worries, I could do things I could only dream of before.

Speaking of which, it was a shame he was so willing to help me, as, coming in here, I was more than willing to suck him off to get on his good side. The coins in my pocket were just a safety net if I couldn’t convince him to do that kind of you scratch my back, I scratch your back deal. Maybe he will be up for a thank you blowjob afterwards.

"I need to get to a place called the Red Den. Do you know how to get there?" I asked as innocently as I could, despite the fact that I had some suspicions about what kind of a place that was.

Given the name, It’s probably either a brothel, a fighting pit, or a drug den. Maybe even all three.

"The Red Den?" Ryan gasped as he looked me up and down again, his eyes only momentarily lingering on my sizable breasts. "I don’t mean to be rude, but what could a beautiful young woman like yourself want with a depraved place like that? Surely you aren’t going to…"

Whatever it was that Ryan thought I may be going there to do, he left it unsaid as he trailed off and took another glance at my breasts, but I had a feeling based on the way he acted that it narrowed the options in my head of what kind of place the Red Den was probably going to be down to it being a brothel. Additionally, the fact that Damien’s wife, Kehlana, was a sex worker before they ran away also helped narrow that down when I remembered that fact a few seconds later. However, the man’s poor reaction to my wanting to go to such a place wasn’t the best sign that he would be up for a thank you blowjob after he helped me, or that he would even help me get there in the first place.

Putting my deception skill to use, I immediately spun a lie that I had been thinking up while waiting for the middle-aged woman, in the off chance he would have wanted to know why I needed to go to the Red Den. "I have an important letter from out of the city that needs to be personally delivered to Sophia Varsen at the Red Den, but as I said, it's my first time in the city and I got a bit lost. I don’t even know what kind of place this Red Den is that would make you react like that."

Thankfully, it seemed like the shopkeeper, Ryan, bought my lie without even the slightest bit of suspicion that I could be lying. "Oh, dear, you should be careful. The Red Den is not the most… decent place in the city, especially for young women as beautiful as you. It might be the most renowned whorehouse in the entire kingdom, but a whorehouse is still a whorehouse. Ah, pardon my language."

"That’s quite fine," I said with a fake smile, taking note that while Damien had subscribed to more politically correct terminology for sex workers as was more common back on Earth, not everyone in this world did so. "I will be extra careful and not linger at such a place more than is necessary, but duty demands I go there and deliver the letter to Sophia Varsen in person."

"Very well, here's how you get there…" Ryan began to give me directions on how to get to the Red Den from his store. Luckily, it wasn’t actually that far away, only a couple of streets down on the main thoroughfare and then down an alleyway.

"Thank you so much for your assistance," I said with a slight bow of my head. "I wish there was something I could give you as thanks, but I don’t have much to my name."

"It's quite alright. Helping a beautiful young woman like yourself is reward enough." The man said, with a happy smile on his face. Of course, he choose this time to try and take another sneaky glance at my tits, but I couldn’t blame him. After all, they were marvellous and if I was him I wouldn’t stop staring at them.

"Still…" I trailed off as a devilish idea came to me.

Given the way that the man referred to the Red Den as a whorehouse instead of a brothel, both of which were terms that made it more than apparent what happened there but the one he purposefully chose just happened to be more demeaning of the two, I didn’t have high hopes of giving him a thank you blowjob or really wanted to anymore. However, that wouldn’t stop me from having a little fun messing with him. After all, I had already gotten what I needed from him, and there was no harm in giving him a little treat. Especially when his eyes were so clearly interested in my breasts.

"You have my thanks, and as such, here is a little reward," I said as I lifted the front of my shirt up, revealing my breasts in full to him.

As Ryan’s jaw almost hit the floor, I added further to my treat by bouncing up and down slightly so as to make my ample breasts jiggle around. After a few seconds of this, I pulled my shirt back down and said. "You should come by the Red Den in a week or two. Hopefully, I will have earned a job at that BROTHEL by then. I’m sure, given how beautiful a young woman you think I am, you would just love a chance to fuck me, no?"

With a thoroughly amused smile on my face, I turned and walked out of the man’s store, leaving him speechless in my wake. From there, I made my way back to my two companions, hidden away in the alley not that far away from the store. Although my exchange with Ryan really didn’t take that long, and my companions had been patiently waiting for me to return, they were grateful to see me come back safe and sound.