Firearms in a Fantasy World

Chapter 57: Distress Signal

Translator: Cinder Translations

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Since a series of agricultural decrees were announced, Paul Grayman lived a busy and fulfilling life every day. Apart from reviewing reports on agricultural union construction sent by local officials, he occasionally rode his horse to nearby villages near Alden Town for inspections.

A letter disrupted this routine. It came from Lord Malon Ganard, his childhood "bosom friend."

The letter was written on new type of paper produced in Alden. Paul felt secretly pleased that his "invention" of paper was gradually entering people's lives.

Initially, the contents seemed ordinary, just casual inquiries and updates on recent amusing events in his domain. However, some sentences were awkwardly constructed, which made Paul grimace.

"Really, one would think a child just learning to write penned this."

The Earl shook his head, mercilessly critiquing his childhood friend.

Wait a minute, Paul thought. In his memory, the two used to correspond by letter, and that fellow's writing skills weren't this poor.

Unless... it was one of those situations...

He hurried back to his bedroom and began rummaging through drawers and cabinets. After a frantic search, he finally found what he was looking for—a box containing several thin wooden pieces. What made them special was that each piece had irregularly arranged rectangular holes carved out.

These were the "code" they had agreed upon in the past, used to hide small secrets only meant to be shared between them in their correspondence.

For instance, "Last night I got another spanking; father is such a tyrant," or "I secretly poured out the steward's wine; his expression was priceless," or "Today I saw father sneakily patting the maid's bottom"—incidents that, if seen by parents, would lead to dire consequences.

Each time they wrote a coded letter, they would lay the wooden pieces on the paper, fill in the words they wanted to write in the hollow spaces, remove the pieces, and then fill in the remaining blank spaces with other words to form a normal letter.

However, because of this method, sometimes the sentences they composed weren't very smooth, or the context didn't quite match up, leaving others puzzled.

To prevent detection from repeatedly using the same positions, they had prepared many pieces of such thin wood, each set with a different arrangement of hollow holes.

The sender randomly chose a piece to use, and the recipient had to place each piece on the letter one by one to read until a coherent sentence was formed.

"Candlestick... flying up... into the river... this one isn't it."

"Butler... knight falling down... caught fire... not this one either."

"Delicious taste... mouse... fell into the ditch... let's try another."

Paul took out the wooden pieces from the box and tried to decipher the coded message by placing them one by one on the letter paper. The first 9 attempts revealed nothing, but finally, when he covered the paper with the 10th piece of wood, the first half of a very coherent sentence appeared:

"I overheard the steward talking; father was murdered, and now they're coming after me, help, ..."

The latter part of the sentence's words were jumbled.

The terrifying information revealed in the code shocked Paul. To rule out any misunderstanding, he tried each remaining piece of wood one by one on the letter paper, but none of the word combinations formed as smooth a sentence as the one he had just read.