Chapter 17 – Superposed Inverted Colors

Joshua woke up with a flat, expressionless gaze. He looked at the world with its colors inverted. It was not rare for him to see the world like this. Since finding himself in this world, he has experienced this kind vision.

He was unable to concentrate when faced with his world inverted.

He stood up.

He looked at the garb he hung before sleeping and wore it. The garb was his light armor, surcoat, and trousers tucked on his boots. He glimpsed at the pistols on his drawer. He took it then turned his attention to the workbench that his room has. On the workbench is a disassembled rifle. Sawed, cut, drawn, and covered in pencil linings.

Ever since he started staying in the stronghold of Avilla, Joshua started to learn the language. It has been a month and still, he was unable to read. He can speak to the others but not yet to the point of fluency. He was always alone and since he was a slow learner. He was told to self-study. He also has this urge to be helpful. So when he can he would cook for the others. He was not that great of a chef. But he had enough learned skills from watching and helping cooking with his mother that it could be edible. Joshua’s average on every front, luckily he knew how to do the math and how to craft.

He also had this hobby of watching online video tutorials. Hence he started ‘improving’ the rifle he got for free into a much better rifle. Joshua wanted the rifle to be superposed loaded. He wanted to integrate a sliding lock that would slide along the barrel and locked in place to each hole, then the lock would be primed, cocked, and fired at each hole to discharge the bullet. He remembered seeing such design on a website once. He remembered it so he tried imitating it while making use of the tools around the stronghold.

Of course, he wasn’t that much of a genius or a craftsman to recreate a repeating flint-lock rifle. So he instead brought the awful drawings he had and brought it to the stronghold smith, Benton.

Joshua showed the stacked charge rifle design. The smith who saw the designs raised a brow at the drawing and found it interesting enough. Joshua wasn’t able to communicate with the dwarf so the dwarf told him by stick drawings that he should mark and draw on the rifle to show him how it is done.

So Joshua drew the sequence that the barrel has along with where the hammer and prime should be. The powder, ball, the powder, and etc for each desired charge. Joshua measured the rifle and drawn sixteen rows that should allow the charges to be set. Sixteen rows, sixteen hammers that would then be controlled by a sliding lock and a lever mechanism. The design was quite hard to fully comprehend so he asked the smith to measure it with his own judgment.

Anyways, since working with the rifle’s design. Joshua has been suffering insomnia. He never got a good sleep with all the vowels, intonations, and the words practiced he did in the evening after class. One month of constant practice and working on the rifle made him fast tired.

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Right now, he sees the world in inverted colors. He already wore his garb and taking a look at his rifle. He left the room and went to where the study room is. The study room is where all the books and students of the stronghold gather. There are few noble scholars attending the session. Most of them ignore Kioko and Joshua out of pride. Sure, they snort and comment about their former status as slaves. But they don’t go shouting that they are some young master of some clan and start talking how trash they are. Noble they are, they have reasons and their reasoning tells them not to mess with the family of the current Lord Enforcer.

Besides, they won’t get much from Joshua who couldn’t understand their manner of speaking at all. They are a rude bunch but they do not overstep their bounds.

Joshua walked on the hallway before turning left. He entered the study room and looked at the desk and tables arranged together. The old scholar who teaches Joshua caught a glimpse of him and handed him a set of words he needed to memorize. Joshua looked at the set of words written on a freshly inked parcel and waited for the inverted world that he sees to return back to normal. It took minutes, after that he then started memorizing the words.

The Old Scholar was named Gale. He had worked for the Avilla ever since the warlord was young so he didn’t mind about Joshua and Kioko’s former status. What he was worried about was if he could teach Joshua. It took him a week to converse with Joshua. Gale was also well-learned so he was able to read Joshua’s body language and deal with him. To Gale, Joshua was at least not dumb. He thought of him as a well-educated lad whose only downfall was that he could not understand the common tongue of the land.

Old Gale also gave him a set of arithmetic questions to gauge how good he was with numbers. Thankfully, the young lad was versed in numbers and he used techniques that were unknown to him. Though some of the methods he used were the same principles and this made him think fairly of Joshua.

As a scholar, Old Gale wanted to learn as much as he can. He had seen a lot ever since then. And parting his knowledge to others is always a pleasure to him. That’s why he agreed to Mia’s request. And he was not disappointed.

As for Kioko however, Old Gale had this pitiable feeling towards her. Some can see that she seems like a happy-go-lucky kid. But to Old Gale’s eyes, she was only a kid who has already left reality. To cope with the harshness of life, she decided to cover her eyes with a tinted glass that would allow her to look at the world kindly without hating it.

Old Gale had seen so many kids like here. Whether human or not, such kid was not that hard to find in this world. That is why despite the urge to wake the little girl up to reality before her, Old Gale decided to hold back and let her be.