"I won't say no to crass, but probably not on the marble flooring."

"Didn't you say the floor needed some wearing out? We could wear it out."

"I think anything intense enough to strip the polish from the marble would get us kicked out. Also, unless you cum acid, I have no idea what could possibly do that."

"That seems like a lack of creativity on your part."

"Mr. Bergson? I have your enchantment ready," says a person emerging from a door.

Arik dutifully opens wide and sticks his tongue out.

And now he is pierced and healed for his trouble. "Thank you very much! Is there anything else Kafra can help you with today, sir?"

"Um."

He turns to Taharqi.

"We'll teleport to Geffen later but for other services, maybe open a storage account?" He looks at the Kafra person.

"That's certainly doable!" they say, turning back to Arik. "We have multiple tiers of storage service of increasing capacity and convenience. At the low end, you can rent a box and have a Kafra agent teleport it to you whenever you need it; at the high end you can have an entire room of storage including weapon racks, stasis chambers, cold storage, and many other amenities, plus the service of an employee to fetch anything for you so you don't have to do it yourself, plus an enchanted item that can teleport you directly to it and then back where you came from at will."

"I'll take the box, thanks. Five-foot cube."

"Certainly! I can register you very quickly for that. Do you have anything you wish to store at this time?"

Arik looks down at himself.

Arik looks back up.

"I'm alright."

"Of course! If that'll be all, then, I hope you have a wonderful day. My colleague in the main lobby will be able to teleport you to Geffen."

"Thanks for all your help."

Can the helpful representative's colleague in the main lobby teleport them to Geffen?

They indeed can! Costs this much.

Taharqi can pay for it.

Here's a portal, please step into it.

Hyup!

Hyah!

Geffen's moniker is "the City of Magic", and it's well-earned. The Mages' Guild is headquartered there, but that in itself is a consequence, not the cause, of its focus on magic. The kingdom of Geffenia, which regained its independence from the kingdom of Rune-Midgard within the last hundred years, was founded by elves, hundreds of years ago before the majority of them moved back to Alfheim and sealed the entrance—and one of the main things they've always been great at was magic. And now, with magic back in the world and humans once more capable of wielding it, Geffenia has become the world power it used to be.

The whole city is roughly hexagonal, and is oriented around the Wizard Tower. It's arranged in concentric terraced rings of roads and buildings, with rings closer to the tower in the center placed lower than those farther out, and there are six main radial roads leading from the outermost ring all the way to the Tower. That means that the Tower is even taller than it looks from the outside, and looks progressively more impressive and imposing the closer to it you get. Couple that with the fact that it is visible from a fair distance away from the city, easily five times taller than the next tallest building, looking impressively wizardly—even to eyes that can't see the torrents of magic coming from it and powering various wards and enchantments all over the city, including a ward that covers the city itself—and you get a very awe-inspiring sight, widely considered one of the greatest feats of architecture on the continent.

And as if that weren't enough, the city itself is very obviously magical. The streetlights, not currently lit up this early in the day, are floating lamps with mage lights inside them. The plaza the two of them find themselves at once they've gone through the portal has a fountain with a statue made up of hunks of stone connected to each other by glowing magical tendrils to form the rough silhouette of a wizard with their staff held out in front of them. And though the staff is not physically connected to anything else, that's where the water is spouting from.

"Okay, I can respect this," Arik judges. "It's still showing off, but magic is a much less annoying thing to show off than money."

"Personally I like it for the, you know, artistic merit itself. Not just the showing off, but it's—pretty in the same way a painting or a sculpture or a song are pretty, you know?"

"Oh, yes, it's lovely too. I just think... if something's ugly, that's the end of it, it's failed. If it's beautiful, I have more to judge."

"You know what, that makes sense, I respect that. Anyway, let's see if we can find Vallynn," he says, and starts leading the way down the road towards the Wizards' Tower.