54: The Hall of the Luminous, Part Nineteen

The Hall of the Luminous, Part Nineteen

[... What am I watching?] Neve asked herself. [Is she...?] 

Try as her mind did, she could not find any other alternative for what Ahlakan may have been doing other than what she suspected.

The nulin woman was masturbating. 

Quite furiously, actually. 

"Aahhh..." She moaned out and Neve felt her ears and face getting warm. 

She knew she probably should have turned away, but... she simply couldn't. 

The sight had completely taken hold of her. 

Ahlakan's silky, curvy grey legs folded up, trembling. Her curling toes. Her light whimpers and breathy, needy sounds. How her tongue poked out a little from her open mouth. Her hand, hidden between her legs, and the way the muscles on her arm flexed a little with every motion the fingers Neve couldn't see made.

It was such an intense scene unfolding before her that Neve simply could not tear her eyes away no matter how much she tried. 

Until Ahlakan's eyes finally opened just a little and promptly widened when she caught sight of Neve standing at the door. 

"N-Neve!?" 

[Shit.]

She quickly closed the door and went to walk over to the guest room. 

Before she could, she heard Ahlakan shuffling and running over to the hall, opening the door in a hurry. Neve stopped, putting her hands up defensively. 

"M-My bad," she quickly said with an awkward laugh. "I'm sorry, I just wanted to check..."

She stopped talking as Ahlakan pushed her back against the wall and placed her hands beside Neve, effectively trapping her. 

Looking into the whites of the woman's eyes, the words Neve wanted to say refused to leave her mouth. 

"I-I was not," she said, suddenly, "n-not... I am fine."

"Uh, okay?" 

Neve's confusion grew. 

"I was not having lewd thoughts, I just..." Ahlakan tried to come up with excuses for a while, but as she looked into Neve's eyes, it was like she was reminded of something. "Right... You are not from here." 

Neve smiled awkwardly.

"Ahlakan, I have to be honest with you, I don't know what the fuck you're talking about right now. But, I don't mind that you were... doing what you were doing. It's fine. I-I get it, sometimes you just need to let some steam off. It's okay." 

Ahlakan gave a deep sigh, then, letting her head fall on a spot on the wall beside Neve's own head. 

The healer tried her hardest not to think about how good the girl smelled right now. She usually carried a pleasant scent, but the air reaching Neve's nostrils currently was mind-numbing. 

"You are not nulin."

"You're... you're right. I am definitely not nulin."

[Why does that matter?] 

Perhaps because she guessed that this would be the question that popped into Neve's mind, she said:

"If you had been, or... if you tell anyone about this, I would be in trouble. That's why I was so panicked." She looked up at Neve then, her face hovering dangerously close to the human's own. "Can I ask you to keep this a secret?" 

"Sure, but... What do you mean you'd get in trouble?" Neve asked. 

"... Could we sit down?" She asked, gesturing at her own room and not Neve's. "I'd rather not have this conversation out in the hall. If my mother comes back home and guesses what happened somehow I wouldn't hear the end of it." 

"Um, yeah." 

The two of them walked back into Ahlakan's room and the woman closed the door behind her, as Neve sat down on the edge of the bed. 

She probably should have asked to go to her room instead, as that smell that was nearly making Neve feel light-headed was all around her now. The bed was so warm, too. 

Ahlakan sat down next to her, though, so Neve stayed where she was. 

The nulin's shoulder brushed against Neve's arm as she began to speak. 

"My people have been trapped for some time, you know? Years," Ahlakan explained. 

"I know." 

"In order to survive, certain things were decided on. Food was to be rationed, for example. We ran out anyway, but that was how we operated while we still had some. People could only get a certain amount of exercise per day, as well. Because exercise consumed energy which meant people would hunger and, again, there was not enough food to go around. After I was born, though, a question popped up into my people's minds." 

She glanced at Neve out of the corner of her eye. 

"If more people were born in here like I was, how would we feed them? My people did not have enough resources for themselves, how could they be asked to take care of children?" 

Immediately, Neve saw where she was going with this. Her eyes widened.

[I hadn't considered that.]

Ahlakan nodded, confirming her thoughts.

"Sex was outlawed by the ministress," Ahlakan explained. Because... well, we literally couldn't afford to have children. For some reason, we have not starved to death, but who could say that the same would apply to our children? By extension," she continued, "that meant that other things would need to be banned as well." 

To say Neve was shocked would be an understatement. On some level, this was slightly funny, but it made some degree of sense to her as well. 

Among a population that had no food to sustain themselves, having children could count as quite literally creating a problem. 

"Intimacy in general has been banned. Hugs, kisses, and physical contact of any kind outside of fighting could potentially lead to lustful thoughts. Lustful thoughts could lead to people getting pregnant. Therefore, anyone shown doing such acts is to be separated from the rest, and sectioned off so as to not potentially cause problems. Even just talking about sex is considered dangerous." 

"That's..." 

[That is insane,] she thought, as she looked away. 

"However," Ahlakan continued, "try as I might to keep these thoughts out, they still appear." Her tone grew softer. Hers and Neve's hands were placed on the bed between them, and Neve swore she felt her brush up against her. "I... I try to push them out as best as I can. That's what you walked in on. That's all I was doing." 

Shaking her head, Neve laughed a little. 

"I told you, it's fine," Neve replied. "You don't have to justify yourself to me about that. I don't care. It's okay." 

Ahlakan then breathed out deeply. Neve could tell just how nervous she'd been as she talked about this. Although to her it was a little comical, this was something Ahlakan was seriously concerned about. 

"Was... Is such a thing common among your kind?" Ahlakan asked then. 

"Uh, yeah. Depending on where you go, I guess. I've definitely never heard about any place banning sex, though," she replied with a chuckle. 

[Well... Among straight couples, anyway. The Church's Guild literally doesn't let you join if you're gay. I guess, in a way, that's kind of similar to what's happening here. Though, these people have way more of an actual justification. They just don't want kids to be born who are doomed to starve to death. What a terrible thing to have to worry about.] 

"I see... I would say that you are lucky, but I have never had sex. I do not know what I am missing out on," Ahlakan said with a slightly sad smile. 

"Neither do I."

"..." Ahlakan pulled back. "You... What?"  2

"Hm? Oh, yeah, I haven't fucked either." Neve shrugged. 

"But..." Ahlakan blinked. "Why?" She seemed so confused, Neve held back giggles. "If sex is practiced openly where you are from, why have you not had it?" 

"I mean..." Neve pulled away a bit, scratching the back of her head. "It's complicated." 

"Is that so?" Ahlakan asked, without taking her eyes off her. 

"... I don't know. I guess you could say I tried once, but... it didn't end well."

There was one memory that Neve had pushed away, locked up in her mental vault to forget about forever, that suddenly resurfaced. 

The embarrassment she'd felt back then... It had probably ruined the prospect of dating for her permanently. 

[I really didn't need to remember that,] she thought. [Fuck.] 

"I see..." Ahlakan muttered. 

They remained in silence, then. While Ahlakan contemplated something, Neve tried, and failed, to push that memory away. 

She could almost hear the laughter of half a dozen teens around her, along with the chorus of snapping cameras that had made it so Neve didn't take a single step out of her home for almost a full month. She felt almost as cold, then, as she had that day, though she wasn't naked right now like she had been back then. 

[Yep. Really didn't need to remember that.] 

"Would you like to?" 

That one question cut through all of Neve's thoughts like a sword slashing through a goblin's neck. 

Neve turned to look at her, wondering if she'd actually just heard that. 

"What?" 

"Would you like to?" Ahlakan asked again. "Have sex, I mean." 

Her question was posed quietly, but, to her credit, Ahlakan did not look away. 

"I..." 

Neve struggled to find something to respond with. She hadn't expected anything like this in a million years. 

However, some thoughts did come to mind. Some thoughts that made it so that she seriously considered that proposition. 

First, she was currently in The Final Challenge. Even if she made it out of here, she still had all 10 floors of the Main Dungeon to go through, and Thomas's group to deal with. There was a very real chance she could die in the near future.

Second, she didn't really have much of a reason to say "no". Aside from the nerves building up, whispering words of disbelief into her ears, if Ahlakan was being serious, then what reason did she have not to take her up on her offer?

If anything, she had a few reasons to go through with this. For one, she was horny. Ahlakan's scent and the sight she'd witnessed had made sure of that. 

And, second, she could use the stress relief. 

"... Are you sure?" Neve asked. "It's your first time. What if I clear the Infested Hall and you leave this place? Are you sure you want to give it to me? We barely know each other."

"... With all due respect, Neve," Ahlakan said with that same sad smile, "I do not believe you will succeed. I hope you do, but I would be lying if I said I did." 

[Oh.]

That meant that, as far as Ahlakan was concerned, this could very well be her one and only shot at this too.

Neve hadn't considered that.

So, she packed up every nervous thought she had and bottled it up, forcing her mouth to say:

"Sure. Let's do it." 

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