That night, Roy begged Moore and Susie to let him work as the butcher’s apprentice. The couple refused at first, but they couldn’t keep it up as Roy didn’t stop, so they agreed.

The couple had been by Roy’s side since the day he was born, and they thought it was bizarre that Roy’s demeanor had completely changed after waking up. He used to be a quiet, timid child, but then he became talkative and expressive.

However, the concern shown by Roy toward them wasn’t fake, so the innocent couple didn’t suspect anything. Instead, they felt relieved about their son’s change. They thought that the accident matured him and made him grow up.

When the next day came, the Kaer villagers were surprised to see a frail Roy following the butcher around.

“Did Moore’s kid turn insane after almost getting crushed? He’s as weak as a girl. He can’t butcher anything.”

“Oh, what do you know, you bumpkin? The boy had a brush with death. Of course he’s going to change, but I bet he won’t last the week. Not everyone can be a butcher, and it’s a lucrative job. Why’d Fletcher want to share with him?”

The villagers gossiped about him, but Roy ignored their nasty comments. All he wanted to do was work with Fletcher, but after a day, he found out that a butcher’s job was different from what he’d had in mind.

After the bigger livestock were sent to the butcher’s place, Fletcher would feed the cows and goats some yellow powder that would paralyze them to prevent them from struggling as they were killed.

Fletcher told him the powder was an anesthetic the village’s herbalist gave him. After killing the livestock came the hardest part: cutting up the meat perfectly. If they wanted to keep the muscle intact after cutting it, the butcher had to have a thorough understanding of the anatomy of cows, goats, and pigs.

Fletcher wasn’t talented enough to draw the anatomy of the livestock. All he could do was teach Roy through action.

When Roy saw Fletcher calmly skin the cow, disembowel it, and filet the meat, he started to puke. The stench of the cow’s insides filled the air, becoming a miasma of everything that was foul in the world. Everywhere he looked, Roy could only see a crimson hue, the cow’s blood splattering everywhere.

His stomach churned, and he retched again. The kill wasn’t much, but the disassembling of the livestock was a great test of his will.

The butcher chortled. “I knew something was off when you killed that cow so easily yesterday. Now you know how gory this line of work is. Told you it’s dirty and exhausting. Why else do you think everyone else stays away from being a butcher? Well, everyone except you, Roy. Of course, you ain’t going to get my business this easily. See if you can keep up until the end.”

When Roy recovered from his retching, his head felt fuzzy, and his legs were starting to turn to jelly. But the butcher didn’t give him time to rest.

“Come here and take the knife. I’ll teach you how to make a perfect cut. Let’s start with strength control. Start here, and cut upward.”

“I said up! The fuck are you cutting?! Dammit! Put your back into it!”

Every little mistake Roy made earned him a harsh scolding from Fletcher. 

Gods, he complained quietly. Not only does the apprentice have to wade through the bloody scene, they have to endure this scolding and get worked to the bone.

It didn’t take long for Roy to start feeling sore in his arms. His Constitution was four, one point lower than a healthy adult. Because of that, he would tire easily. The exhaustion from his body and soul was starting to take a toll, wearing him down.

Why did I ask to be an apprentice? I did this to myself. 

Even though Roy was grumbling in silence, he finished the job Fletcher gave him. It was more important than his own feelings, but the point here was that every livestock he killed granted him EXP.

I am working for someone else after all. Even so, I get to train my body, gain EXP, and I even have meat. Perfect. Nothing to complain about.

His first day of being an apprentice finally came to an arduous end after butchering two cows. The clients were from another village, and Fletcher received ten crowns for his service. “Business ain’t this good every day,” Fletcher told him.

Kaer only had a hundred families or so. Even if they included business from the other villages, it wasn’t as if Fletcher had work all the time.

When their job was done for the day, Fletcher, in all his generosity, gave Roy a piece of meat the size of his hand. Fletcher didn’t see him as free labor either. He’d pay Roy one crown per week, but Roy didn’t complain. He was just starting out in that line of work, so money wasn’t important early on.

“What should we do with the innards, Uncle Fletcher?”

“Toss ‘em out.”

The world of “The Witcher” was similar to the European continent in Roy’s past life. Not everyone could stomach the innards of livestocks. After the bigger livestock were butchered, their innards would be buried in the wilds and burned. Either that, or they’d be fed to the fish in a river.

“Can I take them?” Roy didn’t care that much. He lived in C Nation in his past life, where everyone ate everything under the sun, and he had his fair share of innards. Innards? So what? Meat is meat. He was a growing boy, and he’d get his hands on any food.

As dusk started to fall, the shadows became longer, connecting them to the twilight world. Roy washed the blood from the butcher’s yard and left with a heavy, bloody bag of innards. The weight of it almost made him pass out, but he endured. The day of butchering also netted him ten EXP.

As the sun started its descent down the horizon, smoke started billowing above the chimneys of Kaer’s rickety houses. The men who’d toiled in the fields for the whole day came back with their hoes thrown over their shoulders. The children, filthy after a day’s worth of games, played chase with their livestock in the yard. As the sky darkened, candlelight started illuminating the houses, providing a shred of warmth to the night.

Roy took a deep breath. “I wonder how much longer this peace will last.”

***

When he was just a short distance away from his home, Roy could vaguely see two soldiers coming to the village. They were clad in yellow armor, and they had swords hanging from their belts. Once the soldiers took a few heavy bags, they went back to their cart and left in a hurry. The villagers were already used to the soldiers’ arrival, so they didn’t react to them.

Roy knew what was happening. Everyone in Kaer had to give the ruler of Lower Posada a part of their harvest as tax. The ruler took a whopping thirty percent of the villagers’ harvest, leaving them with just enough to live their lives. Moore had skullcaps and common hop in his yard, and after collecting the harvest, handed two bags of dried skullcaps to the ruler.

Skullcaps were similar to tobacco leaves on Earth. Whenever they had time, the villagers would whip their pipes out, pop the skullcap in, and puff the smoke. It was their way of living life.

Taxes were common everywhere, especially Aedirn. Every nation under its rule, including proxy nations, had to pay higher taxes compared to the other three northern kingdoms. Because of that, Aedirn was constantly under the threat of peasant movements.

As Roy went around to chat with the villagers, he found out that a peasant movement had blown up in Aldersberg, southern Aedirn.

“What the heck is the monarchy thinking? No wonder Aedirn lost its rights to both the northern and southern part of the nation in the end. No wonder it became a broken nation.”

“Danger is approaching. I have to race with time.”

Food was the only thing that could stave off Roy’s stress for a while. He still had some rooster meat from the kill from a day ago, and after coming home with beef, Susie cooked up a big pot of meat soup. It still wasn’t seasoned, and it was still tasteless, and Roy could still taste the meat’s stench. Even so, they at least had meat.

Fletcher might have discarded the innards, but Roy took them back and cleaned them up. He then scrounged for some celery, wild greens, and salt he gleaned from his parents after a bit of begging. After that, he stir fried the ingredients.

The aroma and stench of meat wafted throughout the house from Roy’s stir-fried meat and innards. If it was the old him, Roy wouldn’t have eaten a crude dish like that, but his new body didn’t mind it. Food was precious in their era, and meat scarce. Also, people only had two meals here, so a growing boy like him wouldn’t let go of any chance to gobble meat up.

Meat was great, but it was a shame Roy only gained 0.1 EXP from it. And he understood that killing creatures was the best way to level up. “I can level up quickly even if I only make a few kills every other day.” Roy was starting to look forward to his butchering life.