Now that I got my gear back, I was finally able to explore the district properly. It was a huge district, though, so I couldn’t cover all of it in one sitting.
The first thing I did was to go to the local market and sell some of my excess items. I was now swimming in money, what with having over 2500 orens to my name. Of course, everything costs more money in the city to, so a single book about alghouls would take a fifth of that away from me.
The snake is a symbol of medicine here as well.
I met up with Zoltan Chivay again, who apparently also found a way back into the city. I told him about my dice game conquests, so he directed me at four other professional gamblers in the city. Other than that, we had some philosophical discussions, but nothing important was really said. He has thoughts about his future marriage and Geralt has his worries about what the world is heading into and his future career.
I managed to find the house belonging to Shani, but instead of her, I found an old hag there, who soon threw me out. Next up was the house of Kalkstein, the alchemist who I did work for in the outskirts. This time, he has a far bigger job. Apparently, there’s a magical tower in the swamps, built by some other alchemist who’s long gone now. There’s something in the tower that creates monsters in the area and Kalkstein wants it. The problem is, no one knows how to enter the tower, so he wants me to find a way. For this, he offered 1000 oren as well as an item that would allow me to teleport between places of power and his laboratory. Definitely worth it, in my opinion.
Kalkstein’s looks are… peculiar.
On the route from the sewer to the dungeon, there was the house of the local fence, whose name I forgot. He has a unique look to him, so gaming tropes make me think he will be important for something later on. For now, I just bought an axe from him that was stronger than the one I had and left.
Finally, I got to the hospital and met Siegfried again. Since he wasn’t the one who killed the cockatrice, he was put on guard duty. I guess things would have been different if I accepted his offer to join forces, but hey, at least he’s alive now. Someone needs to be on guard duty to.
