Personal Template

"Open Personal Template!"

At a thought from Roy, a strange stream of information flooded into his mind.

Attribute Template

Roy

Age: 13 years and 7 months

Sex: Male (omitted from now on)

Identity: Commoner

(You are a farmer's son. So far, you have received virtually no specialized education or training, mastered no skills, and have yet to discover any of your innate talents.)

Health: 40 (Healthy)

Strength: 4 points (5 points). Strength determines the power of some physical attacks. It also increases your carrying capacity, allowing you to wear or wield certain heavy, powerful armor and weapons. It also partly affects your resistance to impacts.

Agility: 5 points (5 points). Agility determines your movement and attack speed, as well as your reaction time and balance. With sufficient agility, you can deftly dodge, parry, and block attacks, and perform all kinds of difficult physical maneuvers.

Constitution: 4 points (5 points). Basic endurance: Constitution determines your resistance to impacts and your ability to run and fight for extended periods. It also partly affects your rate of recovery.

Perception: 5 points (5 points). Perception encompasses your hearing, sense of smell, vision... intuition, and more. It gives you a chance to detect nearby dangers in advance and lets you observe your surroundings more quickly and thoroughly, uncovering hidden traces. The higher your perception, the more likely you are to anticipate danger. With high enough perception, you will be able to sense the mysteries of the void.

Willpower: 4 points (5 points). Willpower determines your resistance to mental conditions and how quickly you recover from negative states of mind, such as pain and distress. The higher your willpower, the better you can stay calm in dangerous situations and make full use of your abilities. With high enough willpower, you will be able to affect physical objects.

Charisma: 5 points (5 points). Charisma is a direct reflection of your appearance, demeanor, eloquence, and other such qualities. It primarily helps you communicate with living beings; high charisma makes it easier to win their favor. When your charisma reaches a certain level, living beings will naturally grow close to you.

Spirit: 6 points (5 points). Spirit determines your ability to focus, allowing you to concentrate fully on the task at hand. It can also improve your ability to absorb, contain, and manipulate the four elements—in other words, Chaos Energy—and therefore affects the power of spells and spell-like abilities.

Skills: None

Storage Space: 1 cubic meter.

Other: Unknown

Experience Points: 1/100 (Once your experience is full, you can choose to level up. Each level grants one attribute point and one skill point.)

This template was Roy's Golden Finger, the cheat he'd received after transmigrating. He'd spent three whole days basking in the sun, and the template must have had something to do with it. After all, absorbing energy from sunlight had helped clear his muddled mind, and his Experience Points had risen from 0 to 1.

"Sunbathing gives me about 0.33 Experience Points a day. If I do it for 333 days, my experience will be full, and I'll get stronger!" Roy felt a little more at ease. It was a ridiculously stupid method, but without a doubt, it was the safest and most reliable way to gain Experience Points.

However, since sunbathing could increase his experience, he couldn't help wondering whether eating could earn him Experience Points too.

But reality was cruel. He was already struggling just to eat his fill. The energy he got from food was only enough to sustain his basic needs and physical growth, leaving none to convert into Experience Points.

"So, if I want to improve my attributes, I'll first have to find a way to earn some Crowns and get better nutrition."

(In the game, the currency in circulation was the Crown. In reality, the only currency used throughout the Northern Kingdoms was the Temerian Oren, while the Kingdom of Aedirn used Ducats and Marks as its basic currencies. To avoid confusing and troublesome conversions, Crowns and Orens would be used primarily from now on. 1 Crown = 1 Oren = 100 Copper Coins.)

If he could earn enough Crowns, he could even hire mercenaries or reputable Witchers to take his parents and flee this troubled place for good. They could head northwest to Redania and settle in Novigrad, the City of Freedom.

Redania had taken part in the Northern Wars, but the fighting had barely touched the country. Ordinary people there could at least live in peace for many years.

"Making money can wait. Right now, I need to find out whether there are other ways to earn Experience Points."

Based on his experience with the game, Roy figured that killing "Monsters" and "beasts" had a good chance of granting Experience Points. The Witcher World was full of Monsters, and he suspected that if he went out into the wilderness beyond the village or down to the riverside, he'd run into a Drowner sooner or later—especially if he was unlucky.

Unfortunately, he was small and scrawny, with no fighting ability whatsoever. If he went outside the village to hunt Monsters, wild dogs and jackals would swarm him before he got halfway there, and he'd die for nothing.

Clearly, this wasn't like the game. There was no second life here.

"I need to be careful. Legends all start out small. For now, Lord Roy will set himself a modest little goal."

He entered his family's small yard, his eyes settling on the most conspicuous animal in the pen: a big white sheep. But sheep provided milk, and it was so large that his skinny arms and legs would probably be unable to subdue it. He quickly gave up on that target.

Just then, several lively roosters strutted past him. He gritted his teeth and went back inside to fetch a sharp knife.

"Dad and the others said they'd kill a chicken tonight to help me get some nourishment. I might as well take care of it myself ahead of time."

Roy's murderous gaze soon settled on a fat, large gray rooster. As if sensing something, it let out a harsh cluck and darted wildly around the chicken coop.

A ridiculous scene unfolded in the sunlight: a scrawny boy and a mighty gray rooster chased each other around, one after the other, making quite a spectacle.

After eating dirt several times, Roy was drenched in sweat and his legs were shaking. At last, he managed to grab the rooster by the wing. He moved the knife in his right hand back and forth against its neck, but couldn't bring himself to strike.

"Thinking over my past and present lives, I've never had blood on my hands. Who'd have thought my first kill in this life would be a stupid old rooster?" He thought of the legendary monster hunter Geralt of Rivia, who was known by such fearsome titles as the White Wolf, Butcher of Blaviken, and Giant Slayer.

"Today's events absolutely cannot get out. Otherwise, when I become a legend, the bards will mock me as... uh... the Rooster Killer, won't they?"

At that thought, Roy moved faster. He clumsily slashed at the rooster's neck, and blood spurted out like a fountain, a few drops splashing onto his face.

With a series of piercing "cock-a-doodle-doos," the rooster stretched out its legs and neck and let out its final cry. A few minutes later, it lay on the ground, twitching as it breathed its last. A faint smile appeared on Roy's face.

2/100. His Experience Points had gone up by one!

"It really works!"

He was congratulating himself when a panicked shriek suddenly rang out from beyond the yard. "Oh, no! Roy the idiot... possessed by a Monster... killed his own chicken!"

A snot-nosed brat of seven or eight was frantically shouting, his face full of terror. His voice was deafening; he sounded just like a marmot screeching.

But when Roy saw him, his eyes lit up.

"Brandon. Son of the Butcher."

As the go-to butcher for Kaye Village—a place in the middle of nowhere—his father handled the slaughtering whenever anyone in the village killed a sheep or cow.

"If I become the butcher's apprentice, what need will I have to worry about Experience Points?"