The Academy’s Weapon Replicator - Chapter 106

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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The Academy’s Weapon Duplicator, Episode 106
Chapter 31: Rumors (4)
“Ugh!”
The rear wheels lifted first, and the car flipped. I felt intense pressure crush my chest, the back of my skull, my lower back.
In the moment the vehicle hung suspended, my eyes confirmed what lay beneath.
“Meno, Sol, Por——!”
The spell circle activated. I rolled my eyes toward the back seat and locked gazes with Artzie, who had wrapped Philly protectively in his arms.
The look in both our eyes spoke the same language.
─Save yourself.
Bang!
Artzie kicked the rear door open with brutal force. It flew away with a tremendous clang. In one fluid motion, he clutched Philly to his chest and vaulted clear of the vehicle. The fall to ground level was considerable, but worry was a luxury I couldn’t afford to indulge on his behalf.
The car now held only me and the driver. His eyes were vacant, stripped of focus. There was no panic at having pressed the accelerator and flipped the car himself, no terror in the face of approaching death—no emotion registered in his gaze at all.
Something isn’t right here.
Aerial Weaving, simultaneous duplication
Imperial Palace Armory
Spears, first through third grade
Shields, first through fourth grade
I wove spears in the open air outside the vehicle and drove them through the back seat.
With a crack, the car—plummeting vertically—lurched sideways from the impact. I drove another spear into it, then another, timing each strike to its trajectory.
The vehicle’s descent curved and bent in the air, until it collided with the upper trunk of a towering tree.
Thud!
I caught the underside of the falling vehicle with a shield. Then again, and again—three more times—each impact stopping the car’s fall mid-air, suspended, suspended, suspended.
Crash——!
It landed on solid ground.
The car was utterly demolished, but the driver and I remained unharmed.
“……Hah……”
Relief flooded through me as I confirmed the driver was intact.
But then—
Thump!
There was no time for relief. The driver hurled himself at me, both hands clawing for my throat. I caught his wrists.
“Ugh—hey! Sir! Snap out of it! Wake up!”
I was so panicked that formal and casual speech poured from my mouth in a jumble.
The man trying to kill me wore a completely blank face. It was more terrifying than I could have imagined.
And where was all this strength coming from——!
Aerial Weaving
Workshop, blunt weapon, first grade
Wooden Mallet
Crack!
I conjured the most harmless weapon in my arsenal in mid-air and brought it down on his head. His strength ebbed slightly.
I seized the moment, grabbed his shoulder with my right hand, and yanked. His back came into view.
Snap—I twisted his arm behind him and seized his hair. Then—
Smash——!!
With every ounce of force I possessed, I drove his head into the steering wheel. The horn shrieked—still working despite everything.
“Snap out of it!”
Even driven against the wheel, his expression didn’t change. Did he feel no pain at all? His vacant eyes rolled, focusing on me. A chill ran through my entire body.
Trembling.
I held the man down with all my strength. Even as I pinned his arm, he was lifting his body as though it would snap under the pressure—using pure strength to override any control pain might have granted me.
“Frontdier! Are you all right?!”
Philly’s voice came from a distance. Hearing it, my mind finally began to work again.
‘……The phone.’
There’s no question—something in that call changed him. The moment he answered, his eyes went blank and he hit the accelerator, ramming us head-on.
What did he hear? What could have made him do this?
‘……No, maybe not.’
The actual content of what he heard might not matter at all.
There was a scraping sound outside the driver’s side door. Through the window, I saw Artzie.
“The door’s locked, Frontdier.”
“Do I look like I’m in a position to open it right now?!”
“Fair point.”
I felt something odd emanate from Artzie through the window. An Aura. The instant I recognized it—
Crunch!
The car door opened. Or I thought it had—it was ripped clean off. Artzie held the door by one handle and hurled it to the side.
Then he threw out the driver I’d been restraining, straight through the gap.
The man skidded and tumbled across the ground with a long scraping sound. Artzie pinned him from above and bound him with practiced efficiency.
Watching that familiar motion, I asked him a question.
“Do you always carry rope with you?”
“Once you become a professional, you’ll need to carry it too. There are far more situations where you need to keep someone alive than ones where you need them dead. Handcuffs are fine, but rope has more uses.”
Artzie finished tying the driver and dusted off his hands. The driver, who’d thrashed about for a moment, went limp. As if he’d suddenly fallen asleep.
“Are you both all right?”
Soon Philly hurried over. She examined the driver’s face, and I caught a flicker of relief in her eyes.
This was the same man who’d been driving when I first met Philly. She must have trusted him quite a bit.
“Check him.”
Artzie rifled through the man’s pockets, found a wallet, and tossed it to me.
“Find his ID. He could’ve been switched out somewhere. These days, masks are nearly impossible to distinguish with the naked eye.”
I opened the wallet as Artzie instructed, while Philly kept protesting—”No, I can tell the difference. This is definitely my driver”—and other such things. I didn’t bother answering.
And then.
I found it.
Tap.
The wallet fell from my hands. I’d dropped it. I’d always thought people in dramas who fumbled objects in shock was ridiculous—yet here I was doing exactly that ridiculous thing.
No, it wasn’t ridiculous at all.
‘What… what is this?’
What I’d found wasn’t an ID.
It was a business card.
[Serf Daniel]
– Indus Member No. 9
Such sparse, economical text.
Yet that name—a name I could never forget—made my hands tremble.
Serf Daniel.
Serf Daniel, whom I’d met at the cabin.
Shot with the bow I’d made, with the arrow I’d created.
Serf Daniel, struck by an arrow that could never, absolutely never have missed.
‘That bastard…’
Unable to believe it, I looked at the unchanging business card again and again.

* * *
To be honest, Elody had missed Constellation Academy during the break.
Life at the Magic Tower was exhausting, grueling, and grueling and exhausting.
Elody’s main duty at the Magic Tower was research assistance, and research there meant stepping into uncharted magical territory.
But the person actually stepping into that territory wasn’t the researchers—it was Elody. That was the job of an assistant.
If something went seriously wrong, it couldn’t happen to the researcher. That was the reasoning.
Of course, when Elody had observed those experiments from the sidelines, absorbed everything, and then brazenly demonstrated the techniques before the Magic Tower mages, their expressions had been quite entertaining.
In any case, Elody had missed Constellation. The Magic Tower was where exceptionally high-level mages came. There wasn’t a single mage her age.
So when the break ended and she returned to Constellation, Elody felt inwardly thrilled.
For exactly three days.
“Elody, I heard rumors. Is it true?”
“…Sigh.”
I was sitting quietly in the classroom when someone approached, eyes gleaming.
The beginning of Constellation’s Second Semester was nothing but a tide of rumors. Elody and Aster in particular were subjected to an enormous wave of interest.
The rumors were naturally about succeeding with the Three-Element Combination. Of course it was true, and there was no shame in being proud of it. Naturally, Elody had been delighted at first and answered enthusiastically.
But repeating this same conversation for three straight days, and now again today—it was only natural to grow tired of it.
“Yeah, it’s true, it’s true. Over a hundred people have already asked. Stop asking me about it.”
“Kyaaah! You really did it? Oh my, my goodness, wow!”
But something about her classmate’s reaction was off. It wasn’t so much admiration for Elody’s growth as it was a mixture of anticipation and entertainment in her eyes.
Why would someone else’s Three-Element Combination make hearts race like that?
“So why’d you stop?”
“…? Stop? There’s just no need to continue here.”
“Oh, and here I thought… That’s right. How could you manage it without Frontdier?”
…Frontdier?
Only then did Elody realize the conversation had taken a strange turn.
“Wait, what are you talking about?”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“What rumor did you hear?”
“Well, you know—”
It must be about the Three-Element Combination, naturally.
I must have heard that talk and answered ‘really’.
My classmate answered.
“That you and Frontdier used to be childhood friends.”
“……What?”
“And that you chased after him all the time, calling out ‘Front~’ like that.”
Elody’s time stopped. She wondered what she’d just heard.
Elody’s blue eyes stared blankly into the void, then her pupils trembled like an earthquake, and heat flooded her face.
“Wh-what are you saying—!!”

* * *
This wasn’t Elody’s situation alone.
The rumor had twisted strangely—so subtly that no one could pinpoint when, where, or how it had changed.
In Aster’s case,
“A love triangle between me, Frontdier, and Saiber……?”
“Uh-huh!”
One corner of Aster’s eye twitched. It was a strange sensation he’d never felt once since enrolling at Constellation Academy.
“Why is that kind of talk spreading?”
“You went to a dungeon together before, remember? Saiber and Frontdier got separated during it, and the story goes that you got jealous and cleared the dungeon at lightning speed!”
Aster rubbed his face. His head throbbed.
They did go to a dungeon together before. It was true that Frontdier and Saiber got separated partway through. And it was true that he’d tried to clear it as quickly as possible.
All of it was true, yet somehow the connections had twisted into something like this.
‘Who started this.’
They’d built lies into the gaps between facts. There had to be intention behind it.
For the first time in ages, Aster felt genuinely irritated.
……And meanwhile.
“Aten is just so kind!”
“No! Aten is actually being blackmailed right now!”
In the Constellation Academy Garden, strange factions had gathered and were quarreling with each other.
In the middle of them stood Aten, perfectly still.
“Um, excuse me……?”
“Aten! I heard the rumors! I should have seen through that garbage from the start! Let me go kill him right now!”
“Kill him, nothing! Aten! Your boundless compassion and mercy are truly admirable. From this day forward, we shall follow you, Aten Terst, for all our lives.”
Indeed, when a situation escalates this far, even Aten would break a cold sweat or two.
She’d caught the gist of it.
The two factions were each spouting their own theories about why Aten was spending time with Frontdier.
One side insisted Aten was being blackmailed by him; the other claimed Aten pitied Frontdier and chose to stay with him out of kindness.
‘Both wrong. And both unbearable.’
How was it possible for opposing opinions to contain not a shred of truth between them.
“Aten gathered eight people at a dinner with Frontdier not long ago! That alone shows how merciful you are!”
“Don’t you know that the first one to approach was Frontdier’s bodyguard, Selena? Frontdier clearly gave you a signal!”
Sigh.
Aten exhaled and raised her right hand.
Ice Magic
One Horn
“Gasp!”
An ice wall erupted between the two factions.
“Please stop, and everyone calm down.”
“Ah, Aten…….”
“Both sides are spreading false rumors, so don’t listen to baseless gossip anymore.”
With that, Aten turned and left.
She’d come because there was a quarrel about her, but it was a waste of time.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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