That evening, after Roy pleaded with him over and over, Old Mol and his wife agreed to let him apprentice to the Butcher.
The couple knew the son they had watched grow up inside and out. In just one day, from the moment he woke up until now, his words and behavior had become completely different. He had gone from a quiet, shy boy to an outgoing, lively chatterbox.
But the deep concern Roy showed for the old couple in his words and expression was genuine. So his simple-hearted parents thought nothing of it, and were instead sincerely relieved by the change. They felt he had weathered a brush with death and suddenly grown up a lot.
The next day, many Kaye Village residents were surprised to see a thin apprentice beside Fletcher, the burly, rough-mannered Butcher.
"Old Mol's boy just got better after being hit by a horse. Could he have gone crazy now? With a temper as delicate as a girl's, why would he come here to slaughter livestock?"
"What would a country bumpkin like you know? It'd be strange if nearly getting killed didn't change him. But I'll bet little Roy won't last a week. Butchering isn't a job just anyone can do! Besides, it's a lucrative line of work. Why would the Butcher give him such a good deal?"
No matter what the villagers said, Roy focused on following Fletcher and getting the work done. After a day on the job, he found it wasn't quite what he'd expected.
When large livestock like cattle and sheep were brought in, Fletcher first fed them a yellow powder to numb their nerves and prevent them from thrashing in pain before they died.
According to the Butcher, the village Herbal Doctor had given him the powder as an anesthetic.
After the livestock were killed came the hardest part. Cutting the meat just right, knowing how to separate flesh from bone without damaging the muscle fibers—all of it required a thorough understanding of the bodies of cattle, sheep, and pigs.
The Butcher wasn't educated enough to draw a diagram of their anatomy for Roy to study, so he could only demonstrate the motions, guiding him through it one cut at a time.
"Ugh..."
Roy watched as Uncle Fletcher calmly skinned the cow, pulled out its organs, and separated the meat from the bones. The heavy stench of blood filled his nose, and all he could see was steaming crimson flesh.
"Ugh..." His stomach churned violently. He couldn't stop himself from bending over and dry heaving. The first cut to kill the cow had been manageable, but the butchering afterward was the real test.
"Heh..." The Butcher teased him. "You weren't afraid to kill a cow yesterday. Scared now, are you? I wasn't lying when I said this trade was filthy and exhausting. After all this time, no one in the village besides young, clueless Roy has been willing to do it. And I'm not about to hand this job to just anyone. Let's see if you've got the determination and perseverance to take over from me!"
Roy recovered from his dry heaving, but his head still felt a little dizzy and his legs weak. The Butcher didn't give him any more time to rest.
"Come over and take the knife. I'll teach you how to put your weight into it. Cut along here."
"I told you to cut upward! Where are you pointing that knife?!"
"Damn it, haven't you eaten enough?"
Whenever Roy made even the slightest mistake, he got a thorough dressing-down.
He sighed inwardly. Being a Butcher's apprentice meant getting used to the filth and blood in the yard, putting up with his crude insults, and constantly swinging a knife until his arms grew sore. His Constitution was below 5, worse than an average adult's, so he tired more easily.
The physical and mental strain made him feel awful at once.
"I did this to myself. I just had to go and become a Butcher's apprentice."
Roy complained to himself the whole time, but still completed the Butcher's tasks meticulously. He knew what mattered most.
Of course, the main reason was that he snatched the killing blow from the Butcher each time, earning Experience Points.
"Got to do what you have to when you're under someone else's roof. Exercise, earn experience, and get meat to eat. It's perfect... Sob... What more could I ask for..."
Roy's difficult first day as an apprentice finally came to an end. The Butcher had slaughtered two beef cattle from another village and charged the villagers ten Crowns. According to him, business wasn't always that good. Kaye only had a little over a hundred households, and even with customers from other villages, there wasn't work for him every day.
After they finished, the Butcher wasn't stingy. He generously gave Roy a piece of fresh meat about the size of a palm. As for wages, he didn't treat Roy as free labor. During the week-long apprenticeship, he'd pay him one Crown a week, or a little over ten Copper Coins a day. Roy had no complaints. When you were first learning a trade, you couldn't expect to earn much.
"Uncle Fletcher, what should I do with the organs?"
"Take them away and throw them out in a bit."
In the Witcher World, customs were much like those of Central Europe in his previous life. Not everyone ate animal organs. After the meat was processed, the organs were often taken out into the wilderness to be buried or burned, or simply dumped in the small river outside the village to feed the fish.
"Give those to me..." Roy couldn't worry about that. In his previous life, he'd been born in Huaguo, where all kinds of ingredients could be turned into delicious dishes. He'd eaten plenty of pork, beef, and lamb offal. This was all meat...
He was still growing, so he couldn't pass up food like this.
As evening approached, Roy cleaned the blood from the yard. With a heavy, bloody sack in hand and ten Experience Points earned, he left the Butcher's house, his vision going black.
In the sunset over Kaye, wisps of white smoke rose from the village's dark gray chimneys. Men returning from a day's work carried their hoes home from the fields, while filthy children chased chickens and dogs around the little yards in front of their homes. Candlelight quietly flickered on inside the low wooden houses.
Roy took a deep breath. "How long can this peace last?"
Still some distance from home, Roy caught sight of two burly soldiers in yellow padded armor, swords at their waists, carrying several heavy linen sacks to the village entrance. They climbed onto a cart and quickly left. The villagers were used to the whole thing and didn't react at all.
Roy knew what this was. Every month, Kaye Village had to hand over a certain amount of produce to the lord of Xiabosada as tax. The tax amounted to about thirty percent of the total harvest, which was "quite generous." Old Mol's family grew Mire Grass and Hops. This month, they'd finished harvesting and handed over two sacks of dried Mire Grass.
Mire Grass was similar to tobacco back on Earth. When the villagers had nothing to do, they liked to sit in front of their homes with Mire Grass pipes in their mouths, puffing away in comfort.
Returning to the taxes, throughout the Kingdom of Aedirn and its vassal states, farmers had always been taxed more heavily than in the other three Northern Kingdoms. As a result, Aedirn had long suffered from "peasant revolutions."
From the villagers' gossip, Roy had learned that at this time, a peasant uprising had broken out in Edessberg, in southwestern Aedirn.
"I wonder what the kingdom's leaders are thinking. No wonder Aedirn will lose both its north and south and become a broken kingdom."
"This is too dangerous. I have to hurry."
Only food could ease Roy's sense of urgency. Some of the rooster they'd killed the day before was left, and now he'd brought home beef as well. Aunt Susie cheerfully stewed a big pot of meat soup. It had no real seasoning and tasted bland and a little gamey, but at least it had some fat in it.
As for the offal the Butcher didn't want, Roy didn't mind the mess. He washed it clean, gathered some wild celery and greens, and begged the old couple for a tiny bit of their precious salt before stir-frying the lot.
The finished dish of meat and offal smelled oily, with a lingering gamey stink. In the past, Roy would never have been able to swallow it, but his current body didn't mind at all. Food was precious and meat was scarce; besides, people here only ate two meals a day, and a growing boy like him wasn't about to pass up a chance to eat meat.
Unfortunately, the meal only gave Roy 0.1 Experience Points. He understood that killing was the best way to level up.
"Even if I only kill a head of livestock every few days, I'll level up much faster."
Roy was full of anticipation.
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