Outside Kalkstein's alchemy workshop in the Temple Quarter of Vizima.
"Kalkstein is an eccentric alchemist. He rarely comes out, and most of his income comes from long-term contracts supplying potions of unknown contents to a few nobles. People say he's extremely hard to deal with—almost no one can hold a normal conversation with him, and…"
Angoulême stopped there.
"Uh… yeah… and?" Victor prompted. "What else?"
"That's it."
The air abruptly fell silent.
Then Victor's voice rose a notch. "That's it? Are you kidding me?
That 'introduction' is basically useless. I let you get here ten days early and this is all you've got?"
"No, Captain—this is everything I could learn from people around here." Angoulême looked wronged and genuinely aggrieved. "And you specifically told me not to approach him first. You said we couldn't let him form a preconceived bias. What was I supposed to do?"
Victor had only just started thinking his crew member was improving. Reality immediately slapped him in the face.
With no better option, he studied the plain-looking house. Nothing about it stood out—except the name "Kalkstein" hanging on the door, proof that this famous master alchemist lived here.
They were already here. Overthinking wouldn't help.
Victor led his crew member inside. The first floor was laid out like an ordinary home and was completely empty, but faintly—through the floor—he could hear the sound of people arguing in the basement.
After a moment's consideration, Victor waved Angoulême to wait upstairs. Alone, he descended the steps to the basement. The further he went, the stronger the sharp medicinal scent became—apparently alchemists thought alike, because Kalkstein had built his facilities underground as well.
As Victor continued down, the voices grew clearer. They seemed to be debating the plague. He rounded a folding screen, stopped—and saw two men sitting across from each other.
They couldn't have been more different.
One was shorter, with a thick, long goatee and long hair combed back to reveal a broad forehead. His features had a faintly atavistic cast, like some old bloodline had risen closer to the surface than it should.
The other was tall and lean, with a fluffy crown of short curls and a nose that hooked slightly like a hawk's. But paired with a carefully groomed, square-trimmed mustache, it gave him an odd kind of charm.
"Listen, Alexander. The approach you're proposing simply won't work—"
"No, no, no! Kalkstein, shut up. At least let me finish. My point is—"
They were so absorbed in the argument that neither of them noticed Victor.
Victor didn't interrupt, either. He waited quietly where he was, and he didn't take a single step closer—because his Wolf School medallion was trembling faintly, warning him that magic was present.
A quick glance was enough to spot several magical traps that weren't even bothering to hide. Clearly, this "master alchemist" wasn't ignorant of magic, and the workshop's defenses definitely went beyond what was visible on the surface.
He kept observing.
The basement was a spacious working laboratory, arranged with one wall of shelves and two walls lined with tools. Extracting flasks, mortar and pestle, mixing beakers, fermentation barrels, distillers, filter jugs—everything was there.
And of course, right in the center of the room, the one thing no alchemist—and no sorceress—could do without: a great brewing cauldron.
Victor pictured himself working in a space like this. He could already tell he'd like the clean, efficient feel of it. He decided he'd copy Kalkstein's layout for his own alchemy room.
"…In short, Kalk—besides the known risks of contact with the sick or the dead, splattered pus or blood—there has to be a vector that plays a decisive role. Otherwise the Catriona plague couldn't have spread so far…"
"Mm… water, air… The most likely is a living vector. And whether that vector is affected by the plague itself… that's hard to say…"
At that, the room went quiet. The two of them fell into the same silence, thinking.
Then—
"—Rats."
A stranger's voice broke the stillness.
Kalkstein turned, surprised, toward the source of the voice, and replied in an even tone, "We considered rats long ago. But we found no symptoms in them, and the earliest patients showed no signs of being bitten!"
Alexander lifted his head as well, startled. He saw the speaker was a young man—no older than twenty by the look of him—dressed like a mercenary, yet also carrying a herb satchel. It made him look slightly out of place, as if two worlds had been stitched together.
The young man didn't seem bothered by Kalkstein's objection. Calm and confident, he continued.
"No. It is rats—more precisely, the fleas on rats.
Flea bites are the primary vector for the Catriona plague."
Catriona—a name taken from the Nilfgaardian ship that brought the plague.
Most victims developed sudden inflammation in the groin: redness, swelling, tenderness, and sometimes it burst and wept pus. A smaller number began with the armpits or the neck.
Yesterday, in the tavern, when Shani described the symptoms—abscesses spreading over the body, skin turning ashen, limbs blackening—Victor's mind had instinctively jumped to an ancient disease he'd never seen with his own eyes: the Black Death.
The plague.
But the brilliant minds of this era weren't fools. They were already taking the correct measures: cleaning homes to reduce filth, indirectly wiping out rats, isolating the sick, burning the dead. They were doing nearly everything that could be done in a world without antibiotics.
Victor had listened to Shani and found little he could add. She even had something like a mask—though by modern standards the design was bizarre.
Still, the instant "fleas" left his mouth—
Kalkstein fell silent.
Alexander fell silent too.
Then the tall Alexander suddenly sprang out of his chair, chanting loudly as a portal bloomed into existence—milky-white ripples spreading across its surface. He was so hurried he didn't even acknowledge Kalkstein or say goodbye. He simply stepped through and vanished.
Kalkstein—the one with the atavistic features—lifted his head thoughtfully. With a wave of his hand, he dispelled several glimmering magical traps, then gestured for Victor to come forward and take a seat.
He placed one hand over his chest.
"Alchemist—Adalbertus Aloysius Kalkstein. Who are you, stranger? And what brings you here?"
Victor placed a hand over his chest as well and bowed in return.
"Victor Corion. From Bell Town, east of Zerrikania. An alchemist's apprentice. I came seeking the wisdom of alchemy."
He sat.
Kalkstein smiled. "From what I've seen, you've already displayed a fair measure of wisdom. To rattle Alexander like that… the idea of fleas as the culprit must have real value."
"Unfortunately, it isn't my wisdom," Victor said. "It's only because my homeland once faced the threat of Catriona as well.
And even now, there's no certain cure—only public sanitation measures, and time, until it burns itself out."
The alchemist nodded. "No matter. That is Alexander's subject. I was only debating it with him.
Now—let us speak of your request.
Since you claim to be an alchemist's apprentice, we will speak as alchemists do.
Tell me: what do you believe an alchemist is? I will warn you now—if your answer does not satisfy me, you will leave."
The question came out of nowhere. But between Angoulême's useless "investigation" outside, the discussion Victor had listened to inside, and Kalkstein's manner and way of speaking, Victor now had a rough outline of the man's personality.
Naive. Pure. Stubborn. A scientist chasing his own goals with obsessive focus.
So Victor answered, "An alchemist… is a seeker of truth."