The city was much shorter than he was used to but it was unimaginably wide. There were no great towers of metal and stone but fields of buildings as far as the eye could see, from horizon to horizon there was only the city. Where his city had been transported, it seems was only a small town but this was a true gnomish city. From this far away it seemed like the ground shifted and wriggled but that must have been the number of gnomes walking the streets.

As they drew closer still he could see magical balls of light hanging above the road, lighting the streets, most of the buildings seemed to be homes and each was remarkably different from the last, some were made of stone, others made of plants, others metal and as different as the materials used to make them were, the decorations were vastly more varied. A house that was made to resemble a giant dogs head, stood next to a house of smooth marble that had intricate scenes of dancing figures weaved across and around it, which in turn stood next to a house of interwoven tree trunks twisted into the bust of a beautiful woman with green vines for hair.

It seemed that since there was such an abundance of space an resources and enough mages around to make most things easy gnomish culture revolved more around creativity for the general populous, it did make Tilly's rather barren house seem out of place, however. After 4 hours of driving through the city, John was a little overwhelmed by the sheer variety of buildings around him and the number of people walking around the streets but they finally pulled up to a house.

It was larger than most of the other houses he had seen and was made of a deep royal blue stone that was shaped to resemble a crashing wave. As they approached a portion of the wall slid into the ground revealing a small garage only slightly larger than the cart.

"Welcome to our home! If you would help us unload the cart we'd be happy to show you around and to find you a room."

Nodding and still a little dumbfounded from the city John helped the couple unload their belongings, they seemed rather surprised at how strong he was and even more so when he told them that his strength was since he put quite a few points into it 21, apparently gnomes only had 5-8 points in strength usually due to their small stature, it was more than he would have thought but thinking about it, whilst he hadn't realised before since his strength had doubled when he got here, the items in his inventory seemed much heavier than they should be. Gravity must be stronger on this world, which explains why they are so small and proportionately stronger than they should be.

The home was spacious and lavishly decorated, they had a kitchen that wasn't dissimilar to a modern kitchen back on earth, even down to a refrigerator and plumbing, though it was all decorated in a much more abstract way and everything had an underlying theme of water. There was nothing like a TV or a radio but the couple did have a small library and a games room with a variety of board games.

After showing him around the house, pointing out their bedroom and study but not allowing them in, they brought him to a room at the front of the house.

"This was our youngest daughters room, but she moved out Tinkerton..." her voiced hitched a little before she shook herself and stood up straighter "you can stay in here, for now, there's a bathroom through that door and you're welcome to read what you want in the library, just don't take any books out of the room and put them back when you're done, they're quite expensive so please be careful with them. We're going to have some dinner in a couple of hours, once we've unpacked and settled in if you'd like to join us but we're rather tired from travelling all day so we probably won't be up much longer, I'd suggest getting some rest too, take what time you need."

Without waiting for a reply she closed the door, leaving him alone in the room, and he could hear her walking down the hall. John glanced around his new room. A three-quarter bed lay in one corner of the room opposite both doors. The walls were styles to give an underwater appearance and the floor looked like a pale white sand, despite being smooth stone. A cushioned chair sat next to a set of mother of pearl drawers and wardrobe. The bathroom was tiled and had a large bathtub as well as a toilet and sink.

John immediately started running the bath, it had been years since he had had one and there was no experience like it. There was a small shower next to the bath which he used to wash off most of the grime from his body, this was the first time he had been naked whilst in the form of a woman and it was a little weird. Parts of him were more sensitive than they were before and it took a while for him to get used to that, he didn't find his own body attractive sexually either which a part of him was both disconcerted by but also relieved.

Settling into the bath John started to appreciate that maybe not just killing everyone you meet for their skills had some advantages. However, it had some downsides too, whilst staying in this house seemed like a good way to learn more about gnomish culture before going at it alone, he was going to have to find some kind of employment if he wanted to be able to learn more about magic, since he wanted to save his mana for performing some experiments. Mary had pointed out the mages colleges around the city and he was going to have to see how much tuition was. He was also going to have to figure out how much each of his mana crystals was worth before he got ripped off.

Looking over his status sheet to see if anything jumped out at him for potential employment opportunities, he noticed that he had gotten more experience from that car ride with Jax and Mary than he had from the last several days of hunting for his food. It made sense in a way that he would gain experience from it, that is after all what his race was designed to do. It seemed he would have to try and stick around, maybe pay rent so that they'd let him stay here? They were about to become his own personal experience farm.

After relaxing in the bath for an hour, John managed to drag himself out, got dressed into one of the dresses he had taken from Tilly and left his room. He could hear Mary chattering away to Jax in their room down the hall, he still didn't seem to speak back to her. Shrugging again at the unusual man, he was probably mute or something. John made his way into the library, he was very grateful to Tilly for the Babelfish trait and was about to put it to good use. You could learn about a culture from their stories. Grabbing a few books, John settled into a soft armchair and started levelling up his speed reading skill.