The Academy’s Weapon Replicator - Chapter 111

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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 Weapon Duplicator of the Academy Episode 111
Chapter 32: Kraken (3)
Quinie swallowed hard without realizing it.
Anen stood motionless for a moment, then looked around before moving toward Quinie.
“Ugh……!”
Quinie stepped backward. Anen’s unfocused eyes drew closer.
As Quinie walked a few steps to the right, Anen passed by her to the side.
Anen wasn’t looking at Quinie. She was simply searching to see if Frontdier was somewhere in this classroom.
“……Frontdier. Kill him. Die.”
Anen muttered the words, and that eerie sound made Quinie swallow again.
Witnessing her friend’s condition with her own eyes, Quinie could grasp just how grave Frontdier’s situation had become.
An enormous number of students were hunting him down right now. And they meant to kill him.
‘Did the teachers fall victim too?’
If the culprit’s goal was to kill Frontdier, they would naturally think to control the teachers first.
Given that the situation had escalated this far with no response from the instructors, it seemed almost certain they were being controlled.
“……Anen.”
Quinie looked at Anen’s blank, unfocused face. There was no emotion there, no will—that face truly resembled a corpse.
And yet.
“……No. That’s not it.”
When she looked at her friend, she knew it for certain. This wasn’t a corpse. There was no such thing as a corpse here. How could she entertain such thoughts while looking at her friend? Quinie bit her lip hard.
“I’ll be back, Anen.”
With firm resolve, Quinie headed to her own seat in the classroom.
She grabbed the bag sitting there and left the classroom.
The Constellation Academy was now so chaotic that specifying an exact location was meaningless—noise erupted from every direction.
Things broke, shattered, and collapsed. Students not under control were fighting to protect Frontdier.
Quinie walked down the corridor, checking the situation through the windows.
But something felt off. The noise was deafening, yet she could barely see students here. Only a few who appeared to be free from control were visible.
‘Why? Just moments ago there were plenty of students around.’
Then a thought struck her. A hypothesis formed—and even as the suspicion crossed her mind, her legs were already moving.
Clack-clack-clack, she raced up the building’s stairs and reached the rooftop.
Clang!
She pushed open the door and scanned the area from the rooftop. Building 2 Main Hall where she stood, Building 1 Main Hall visible before it, and down and to the right, the Sports Field, and beyond that—
“The Auditorium……!”
Quinie saw it. Countless students were converging on the Auditorium. Frontdier’s location had been discovered.
Before it, Ice Walls and Wind Magic spread around the Auditorium’s perimeter. Magic wielded by Aten, Elody, and other mages.
But there were too many students; containing them all without causing injury was impossible.
“……Tch.”
Quinie drew out her fan. She sprinted full-speed across the rooftop.
At the edge, she leaped and swung the fan. Each time she fanned the air, she seemed to bounce upward into the sky again.
Feeling the light buoyancy, the wind lifting her hair, Quinie landed on the next building.
Onward to the next building, and the next, drawing ever closer to the Auditorium.
“No! Stop! Back off!!”
“Why do these bastards keep coming even after we hit them?!”
“Didn’t I tell you?! Knocking them out doesn’t work!!”
As she drew nearer, the figures of Elody, Aten, and other students came into view.
They were all giving their all to prevent the controlled students from approaching the Auditorium.
Quinie, then, was the latest to arrive.
‘Ugh……!’
Quinie was startled by the mass of students visible up close. The closer she looked, the more corpse-like they seemed. Like corpses rising and moving. Just watching them made her breathing quicken.
“Oh! Quinie!”
Saiber, who stood at the front of the mob pushing people back, spotted Quinie. Her face drained of color, and she barely managed to raise her hand in response to his voice.
Others who heard Saiber’s voice glanced at Quinie for a moment, but stopping the student mob took priority.
“Saiber, Frontdier is inside the Auditorium, right?”
“Looks like it! But there’s a barrier or something keeping us from getting in—we can’t figure out who put it there!”
“Is it the culprit’s doing?”
“I’m not sure, but if it is, we need to deal with the students first!”
Saiber was diligently shouting toward Quinie even as he worked to hold back the crowd.
“But are you okay, senior? Your face looks really pale!”
“That, that’s fine. I’m fine. Though things are probably about to get worse.”
“Huh?! What do you mean?!”
Leaving Saiber’s question behind.
Quinie drew a deep breath repeatedly—in and out, in and out.
‘Ugh, I really don’t want to do this.’
Quinie knelt and opened the bag she’d brought. Her face fell as she rummaged through it.
And what she slowly withdrew was a transparent mask pack.
Quinie held up the mask pack and pressed it—click—onto her face. Then she rose slowly.
Countless students flowed toward the plaza. Holding them back had reached its limit.
Quinie drew a deep breath. The latent energy within her began to roil rapidly.
For a third-year student like her, the manifestation of Aura was child’s play, and her level stood apart even when compared to her peers in the same year.
Quinie filled herself with Aura and cried out.
“I am Frontdier──!!!”
A voice like thunder that echoed not only through the Auditorium but across all of Constellation Academy. It was a manifestation similar to what Aster had done before to stop a fleeing horde of monsters.
That tremendous voice was enough to seize the attention of the students heading toward the Auditorium,
and remarkably, the entire crowd turned away from the Auditorium and began walking toward Quinie.
‘Eeeek!’
Beneath the mask pack, Quinie’s face drained of all color.
Elody and Aten, who had been holding back the crowd, tilted their heads in confusion.
“What’s this all of a sudden? The students just…”
Their eyes naturally turned toward Quinie. And when they saw her, they froze.
It was Frontdier. Frontdier was standing right there.
With long jet-black hair, holding a black fan, a slender and delicate frame—everything except the face that was exactly Frontdier.
A decidedly poor-looking version of Frontdier stood before them.

* * *
The mask pack that Quinie wore could transform her face into that of someone she knew.
However, since it relied on the user’s memory, it lost accuracy with unfamiliar faces or those she hadn’t seen in a long time.
Quinie had first conceived of this item after the monster attack.
Before the monster attack, Quinie had been one of those who heard Frontdier’s warning.
Yet not only she, but quite a few people believed Frontdier’s words.
Several students, and nearly all the teachers, had prepared their responses to the attack in advance.
How could they have believed Frontdier’s word?
That answer came from Malia, Frontdier’s mother.
“Ales confessed.”
“Confessed?”
“Yes. Frontdier pretended to side with Elisia, and threw out a bluff at Ales—something like ‘you seem suspicious’—and it worked perfectly.”
A bluff, indeed. That’s very much like Frontdier.
“What sort of bluff was it?”
“That he’d been switched. Ales was in league with Renzo and Elisia, wasn’t he? So if Renzo’s plan failed, it means Ales had been switched. The real Ales vanished somewhere, and you’re the fake Ales. Something like that. So shameless. When he was the one who actually interfered with Renzo.”
Quinie heartily agreed that Frontdier was shameless.
But a switch…
“There certainly are such items.”
“Well, of course. Magicraft has reached incredible levels these days. But those products that mimic someone else’s face—the higher the fidelity, the more absurdly expensive they are. And most are single-use.”
“In other words, if you have enough money, it’s possible?”
“…Quinie.”
Malia looked at Quinie with half-closed eyes. Quinie simply grinned innocently.
Understanding Quinie’s intent, Malia sighed. With a resigned air, she offered a light warning.
“Don’t use it within the academy, all right? It’s against school rules.”
…And now.
‘School rules really are important, aren’t they!’
Quinie regretted her choice as she watched the students rushing toward her.
She should have listened to her teacher after all.

* * *
Thud—I hit the ground again. The sound of Kraken yawning beside me—a long, languid yawn—grated on my nerves.
As I struggled to my feet, Pascal approached with an impassive expression, his footsteps steady.
Pascal shaped his words with his mouth.
[Focus!]
[Does it look like I’m not concentrating?]
One mistake and I’d be dead.
Even knowing that Pascal’s attacks were meant to train me, they showed no mercy. I was certain of it—Pascal had never taught anyone before. That’s why his control was so all over the place.
Clang, clang!
The impact of blade against blade sent a shock through his hands.
[Frontdier, you’re letting your weapon rot.]
[I know that! But it makes no sense to ask me to use my Aura right here!]
If it had been any other crude blade as Pascal suggested, it would have shattered against his Aura by now. But because it was Nil Jack’s Short Sword, it held.
[I think you’ve misunderstood my meaning.]
Pascal twisted his blade, driving it toward the shoulder. Scrape—the clash of steel shrieked against friction.
[When I said ‘weapon,’ I meant you. You yourself.]
[……What do you mean?]
[In that final moment of our last match, you struck away my weapon, didn’t you?]
[As you should know, that wasn’t Aura.]
[Whether it was Aura or not doesn’t matter.]
What is he talking about?
I knocked his blade aside and created distance between us.
[Frontdier, think about it.]
Pascal spoke those words, but my mind only grew more tangled.
Yet Pascal looked through me as if reading my thoughts, and slowly opened his mouth again.
[You already know how to use Aura.]
‘What……?’
That was when it happened.
I thought Pascal’s claim was nonsense, yet something stirred in me—a strange, impossible sense of déjà vu.
It wasn’t quite the same, but I felt as though I’d heard something similar before.
The first voice that came to mind was, oddly enough, that of Sleb—the monster I’d killed in the very first dungeon.
-Is that so? Can I still reach that person’s blade?
I couldn’t explain why that voice surfaced now.
Next came Renzo’s voice.
-He looked rather amusing, but in the end he’s just a greenhorn.
Then the voice of the Empress Philly.
-Frontdier, you don’t know how to use Aura?
Every word I’d ever heard flickered through my mind. Fragments from the past, words I’d never once dwelled on, now brushed against my ears.
And finally.
When Artzie’s words grazed the surface of my thoughts.
-You can already use the Disarming Strike. Clumsily, but.
“……Huh?”
I spoke without meaning to.
How could I use the Disarming Strike? No matter how carefully I’d studied it through the Wizergram and mimicked it, the Disarming Strike was originally—
It was only after I’d gotten that far in my thinking.
That I remembered something I’d known all along, and had been turning over in my mind even recently.
A simple, commonplace rule of the Ethius World.
In the Ethius World, Mana and Aura are fundamentally the same substance.
And in the moment I grasped it all, what finally escaped my lips was.
“……Huh?”
Still hopelessly dense.

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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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