A day of Work and Pondering.

Coen sat in the middle of a room and unsheathed the sword putting it down on his knees. Than, opening a bag witcher retrieved several vials of potions and a packed weapon oil, that he evenly spread over the edge of a sword with practiced movements.

He waited until it slightly changed the color of silver and repeated the process for several times, making the edge green all over. The next thing he did was to remove a set of flying knifes, but they were a bit different from each other.

The first dozen were long and thin and went through the same process as the sword, but the notable ones were six others, thicker and with space at the center. These ones witcher assembled with strange ellipse shaped capsules.

"Okay, shrapnel and samum knifes, two each will do the trick. For the remaining... incineration." - he quickly installed them with capsules and hanged on the broad belt in their designated positions for a quick and comfortable release if need arises.

After fully taking battle attire on himself and sheathing silver sword on the back, Coen took out three potion bottles. They were quite small, but very effective.

First, red one, was known as Swallow and can greatly enhance regeneration abilities of a witcher and was a mainstream potion to drink in most occasions, after all what witcher needed most during combat is not even healing, but lack of bleeding. And Swallow effect for that was hard to come by.

Second he drank was known as Cat and just granted supreme night vision even above what their enhanced eyes can give.

And third was a Golden Oriole that enhanced poison resistance, up to a full immunity and even helped heal wounds using decomposed nutrients inside monster poison.

He drank them one after another and waited for the effects take place. It was a slightly uncomfortable process, but every witcher one way or another got used to it long ago.

After ten minutes Coen opened his eyes and stood up, exiting the house with predator gaze, ready for the fight.

As for Alan, he was left to his own thoughts and devices from the very beginning and didn't bother to watch what Coen was doing.

And he had his share of things to contemplate. First, how many non-humans was there inside Dillingen and whether this number became more in recent days. Second, if it went up a notch, than they most likely are searching for a mage. And preferably elven one. And third, he apparently didn't remember anything about the fall of Brugge during second Nilfgaard war.

It is the third where even Temeria was torn apart, but that is a story of nearly a decade in the future.

So, either Nilfgaard did have plans for conquest, but stopped because of unexpected defeat under Sodden Hill, the very place they wanted to use as a main leverage point to cross Yaruga, or it was never the case.

However knowing that the bridge, which Dillingen was build to guard, is a bit on a narrow side, having only it as a way to cross Yaruga will spell more troubles than advantage, if it was besieged by the enemy all armies on the north of the river will be cut off from supplies.

'Nilfgaard is an Empire and Emhyr var Emreis, it's Emperor, can't be your regular passerby. He should be more than capable to know such trivia of war strategy, so he obviously chose to go after Sodden Hill as the main route. Then Dillingen? If it is within his plans the only thing he can do without using the army is to seize it from within and use the guerrilla forces he had at hand. Scoia'Tael.'

"The question is whether he did or not gave order to secure additional supply route." - mumbled Alan with a sigh. All these political and war tactics are not what he wanted to have his headache over. But, surprisingly he felt more alive here than in Harry Potter world, never the less he knew he should go back at some point to clean loose ends and it is better be earlier than later.

At least he needs to stop that nose-less freak. He did leave a knowledge of all the Horcruxes for Harry and assembled four of them to destroy, doing the hardest work. But he still felt obliged to be there personally. One way or another it will speed up the matters of killing Voldemort. Well, he didn't tell that the last is Harry himself, but hopefully he will make it back in time to kill of the dark wizard with his own hands. Prophecy remained, however he is not within it's scope.

So for now stuff of the other world can be left there.

Good thing the Eye of Eternium is ready to use, as well as all the things he prepared for the journey. Also, it restored the ability to gather knowledge, so if Alan have a need to know something thoroughly, he has to make the best reference to it through enhanced vision and it will eventually find every possible knowledge about the object or person. But if he really needs nearly all possible information, it required meditation, mana and what is more, time. Yeah, quite a lot of time.

The harder and larger the subject, the more he needs to expend himself. He was not ready to touch some severe issues for now, as there is no way to know what might happen. For example, he surely won't use Eye of Eternium to figure out Gaunter O'Dimm existence. Let alone, there is no certainty that the work of the artifact is untraceable.

All in all, it is a good thing he has access to the full supply from the ring.

He after all emptied both vaults in Gringotts while preparing and right now he might need to exchange some money.

Alan looked inside, withdrawing a bottle of milk with sandwiches. Actually what he prepared were cooking pots and great amount of raw ingredients with many bottles of spices and different drinks, but the biggest part were different sorts of coffee and tea.

However now he actually admonished himself for not buying a good stash of wines. He has some, but not many. That was a mistake, yeah.

Well, aside from books on Alchemy, Runes and Healing magic with what was stored in Gringotts and huge amount of herbs for practice, that was all he has!

So, he started with the later, namely Healing magic, it is the most needed now, to patch up his new friend and himself if push comes to a sudden wall of crap. Alan already noticed that monsters here are very strong and fast for a normal human to take care of, even a well trained swordsman will find it a challenge to kill a single drowner, let alone a number of them.

What was even more unsettling – their unique trait of unmatched regenerative abilities can be stopped only with silver. If not that, one needs to either burn them, use some magic or do it grandpa way and tediously chop monster in little pieces.

Ghouls are even more physically fit and they are merely a cannon fodder for trained witcher. If not for his magic, Alan would be a dead man even with his enhanced body. So he needed to train and while at it he needs to recuperate and heal as fast as possible.

The right way of using healing magic is for sustenance during training!

He closed his eyes and slipped into meditation, contemplating over simple spell to heal minor cuts.

And so morning came without notice, when a stench attacked him. A loud sound came from the door with barrage of footsteps and grumbling.

"New scars?" - Alan stepped out from his room and helped Coen to remove armor without any squeamishness. One must say that it is easy for a witcher to put on and take off their armor without help at all, not unlike knights sets, that need people to help wear them. So Alan just helped to speed up the process.

"Just couple of scratches, give me a red vial from the bag and bandages." - Coen didn't even flinch, while sitting down.

"Who got you?" - Alan asked while preparing to help the man in tending to his wounds.

"A hag. Never thought it would be so close to the fortress, nearly got a fisher right in front of my eyes while I was pretty far away. Just nailed it with throwing knifes, but lost two. Thought she died, but there was another under her, waiting. Hell, never saw such smart ones. She was a bit different in color to, with orange veins, faster and stronger. If not for the fact, that I seems to injure her with incineration knife, I'm afraid that would have been the end of me. Need to forge more of those and keep my eyes open. Recently there was a rumor about some new types of monsters appearing here and there. We will have more work to do soon enough." - said Coen.

"You use throwing knifes?" - Alan was surprised.

"More practical that way in direct confrontation. Bombs are the love of School of the Wolf, but we in School of Chimera specialize in throwing knifes and hidden blades. We craft special things for our gloves." - Coen said evenly.

"Hidden blades?" - Alan asked.

"Hehe, curious?" - he laughed with a rueful grin. It was clear who was more eager, the one to show of, or the one to see. With that, even before Alan answered, he extended a hand and with practically no noise a strait double edged blade went out of his wrist.

"Handy." - nodded Alan. - "Teach me how to create one?"

"Fat chance." - scoffed Coen with glee.

"Miser." - grumbled Alan in return, already conjuring plans of analyzing it. He just needs some knowledge to be extracted by Eye of Eternium, but the process will be tedious and waste quite a bit of time and mana. It can't actually be considered stealing, because technically he will be inventing one anew, but with the use of current knowledge and Eye of Eternium enlightenment.

Coen finished tending to his wounds and poured Swallow over them directly while bandaging. Apparently it speeds up the healing process, but makes wounds toxic to the touch of normal people. Actually, any witcher potion is a lethal drug to anyone else. Well, maybe sorcerer will survive it, but even it is questionable.

Day started anew in Dillingen and for the two it signified incoming trouble.