The Academy’s Weapon Replicator - Chapter 112

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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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Academy’s Weapon Replicator Episode 112
Chapter 32: The Kraken (4)
Aura and Mana are the same substance.
Until now, I believed Weaving was something entirely separate.
But Weaving is not something separate.
As I myself said before, Weaving is a “spell” that consumes Mana.
However, Weaving requires no incantation whatsoever. If a weapon is stored in the Workshop, you can use it at once.
……A spell that requires no incantation.
[You’re beginning to understand, it seems.]
Seeing my expression, Pascal moved his lips.
I adjusted my stance. I discarded one of the blades I’d made from Heukcheon. I gripped the real short sword in both hands. Dual-wielding would only hinder my focus now.
‘Breathe.’
What I’m about to do is nothing short of reacquaintance.
I had not used Weaving by sensory perception. It was merely like pressing a skill button in a game.
I used it because I could, yet I had no understanding of how my Mana transformed into Weaving.
Now I must do exactly that.
Just as mages do not simply press buttons to cast spells.
I must circulate the vital energy within my body, and grasp with my flesh the sensation that becomes Weaving.
[It’s good that you’ve realized this. But Frontdier.]
[Yes?]
Whoosh—
Crash!
I hastily met Pascal’s sudden strike.
[Since we’re deceiving the Kraken, I cannot simply wait.]
[That’s… true……!]
[Awaken through battle. No one will wait for you to gain enlightenment.]
A merciless Sparta.
Yet Pascal was right. I could not know how much longer the Kraken would wait, or if it would even notice. Already it seemed to be growing restless.
‘……Very well.’
Then let’s do as you wish.
I swung my blade, and with it I drew forth the Mana that dwelled within me.
Following the trajectory of the sword rebounding from Pascal’s, I recall the method of Weaving.
My body already knows. My body already succeeds at Weaving. What lags behind is not my body. It is my self, my soul that cannot keep pace.
——Think. This is my technique.
Swish!
What’s needed is not merely to master the sensation of Weaving. If I can succeed at a spell without an incantation, then surely I can also infuse my vital energy into a weapon.
I swing the sword. I block Pascal’s blade. I draw it back and raise it high, slashing down as if tearing the air itself.
With each stroke of my blade, wind began to trail in its wake.
[……!]
I saw Pascal’s eyes widen. I too felt it. The vital energy flowing across my entire body was rotating at high speed. And then, gradually, that energy began to settle into the blade.
Pascal slashed diagonally toward me, his trajectory appearing frozen before my eyes.
My right foot planted deep, becoming my anchor. From there my waist, shoulders, and arms extended in one line. All that momentum was poured into the sword.
Artzie Basic Spear Art
Frontdier-style Sword Art Variant
Diagonal Slash
[……Splendid.]
Watching Pascal’s lips move as if I could hear his voice,
Boom—!
I deflected Pascal’s Aura-infused blade.
My deflected Nil Jack’s Short Sword
was enveloped in a colorless Aura that filled the blade’s length where it had seemed insufficient, stretching upward.

* * *
The Kraken, who had been watching the battle between Frontdier and Pascal with boredom, rose to its feet.
‘……Colorless?’
Frontdier, who until moments before had shown no sign of Aura at all, had suddenly manifested it.
That alone would have been remarkable, but the fact that his Aura was colorless made the Kraken’s brow furrow.
‘What is that? Is that an Aura too?’
Frontdier’s Aura was so transparent that even a swordmaster with keen sensing ability would find it nearly invisible—it had no color whatsoever.
Ordinary people cannot see Aura in the first place, but Kraken had never once encountered an Aura that was transparent in itself.
Meanwhile, Frontdier gazed at his blade, now wreathed in Aura, and found his own brow furrowing. He certainly hadn’t expected colorless Aura to erupt from his own steel.
Frontdier quickly reset his stance. With Aura now manifested, surely the complexion of their battle would shift.
Slash!
Seeming to have found his confidence, Frontdier launched himself at Pascal this time.
With Aura now awakened, the speed of his charge intensified dramatically. Sensing the threat, Pascal sidestepped.
“…I suspected as much. Exactly as I thought.”
Frontdier pressed forward in that same charge, now bearing down on Kraken.
Pascal had simply opened the way. He’d kept his wits about him from the start.
Frontdier approached at a speed barely short of wind itself, yet Kraken only snorted, his sneer dismissive.
Whip—Kraken transformed his right fingers into tentacles and launched them at Frontdier.
A moment ago, Frontdier hadn’t reacted to even this simple attack. Had that been mere bravado—claiming he’d needed no defense—or could he now prove himself capable?
‘What—?’
But suddenly Frontdier halted. Though one might have expected him to drive straight through with his blade, instead he killed his momentum, lowering his stance. Bending at knee and waist, he bowed his head.
—Behind the shield of Frontdier’s body, a crescent of Aura streaked forth.
“No—!”
Crunch!
Every tentacle Kraken had fired was severed by that Aura.
Pascal, standing at that distance, had launched an Aura from behind him. This man was no common knight. At least where Aura was concerned, his mastery was extraordinary.
Besides which, he was mad.
‘If Frontdier had hesitated even slightly, wouldn’t it have been he who was severed?’
Whether the tactic came from one mind or both, the one firing Aura from behind his shield or the shield itself—neither was thinking clearly. That much was certain.
This time, Frontdier finally swung his blade. Pascal extended his left hand. His severed tentacles would take time to regenerate, but a trifle like Frontdier required only one hand—
“Come out.”
Frontdier spoke. Come out? What? Me?
“Understood.”
And yet something did emerge. From nothing. Directly before Kraken. A girl in a maid’s uniform—
Thud-thud-thud.
“…?”
His left hand simply fell away. Not cut—but disassembled like a toy pulled apart at the seams, dropping clean off. The severed hand bristled with dozens of needles.
Needles? My hand fell because of needles? Why? My tentacles don’t sustain wounds from—
“Die, you squid bastard.”
Crunch—
Before the thought could even finish.
Colorless Aura swept away Kraken’s head.

* * *
Kraken’s head rolled across the floor before finally stopping.
True to his octopus nature, not even blood spilled from him.
‘…It doesn’t feel like I actually cut anything.’
Whether it was because Aura was so new to me, I felt no real sense of having killed him.
But first, there was something to check.
I approached the fallen Gregory.
“Gregory, are you all right?”
Gregory didn’t answer. His shoulders rose and fell gently—he appeared to have lost consciousness.
I felt relieved, though a worry gnawed at me: I’d need to wake him to stop the students.
I glanced at Selena, standing beside me.
“You did well.”
“Yes. I did consider emerging sooner, but had I done so, the result would not have been as favorable.”
“That’s right. Well done.”
I placed my hand on Selena’s head.
The moment I did, I startled myself. It was an unconscious gesture, utterly without intention.
Selena too seemed taken aback, her eyes alone lifting to meet mine.
“…Ah, about that.”
It was then.
“—Did you really think I was dead?”
That hateful voice soiled the air once more.
The headless Kraken hauled himself upright. Then, awkwardly, a mass of matter began pushing upward from his chest toward his neck, twisting and writhing until Kraken’s head had reformed completely.
“So you truly are immortal.”
“No, well—it’s just difficult to kill, not quite immortal.”
Selena, Pascal, and I reset our stances.
Pascal shook his head slowly.
“I’m afraid not. This head isn’t my real one at all—I’ve simply shaped one of my tentacles to resemble a face. It’s still the case now.”
What we’d believed to be Kraken’s head was, in fact, a tentacle. The octopus possessed a truly uncanny ability to reshape its body.
“……Indus never changes. Always up to something vile.”
It was then that Selena spoke, her voice dropping lower still.
Kraken’s gaze turned toward Selena. He was still smiling, yet deep within his eyes lay a thick, unmistakable loathing.
“And you—you’re from Mangot, aren’t you? Your techniques give it away. The continent’s exiled, discarded, the dregs who abandoned their humanity and fled.”
Ha—Selena laughed without fear.
“A leech sucks blood from people and mistakes itself for human speech. All you do is cough up blood for ages.”
……It seemed Indus and Mangot were on decidedly bad terms. Terribly bad, in fact. In the game, they’d felt disconnected, like sequential main events with no relation to each other.
“Well, in any case, I should be going. It’s been an entertaining time—informative, too.”
“You think I’ll let you leave?”
“Of course you will.”
Immediately after Kraken’s reply, something like an elliptical door opened behind him.
The boundary of the ellipse rippled like water being pulled inward, tinged with violet—exactly like a Portal. There was no doubt that’s what it was.
But at its center, not at its boundary, lay the backdrop beyond the portal. Shadowed surroundings, gray space, what seemed to be water flowing. It appeared to be some kind of Sewers.
“Frontdier, don’t forget. The Business Card and the Recorder. Your life rests in Indus’s hands.”
Kraken drew a business card from his breast and waved it.
Tch.
From his first appearance until now, everything about him rubbed me the wrong way—but just now he’d completely severed my restraint.
Weaving, Heukcheon.
Grade—Divine Rank.
Crisselacatos, Iokeira.
“Oh my, turning grim now, are we? I’d better flee quickly.”
But by the time I’d finished Weaving and taken aim at him, Kraken had already escaped beyond the portal.
“……He’s gone.”
Selena muttered, displeased.
“In any case, the matter’s been settled for now……, Frontdier?”
Selena looked at me with confusion.
It was only natural.
I was still drawing the bowstring.
“What are you trying to do…….”
I gazed silently at the empty space where Kraken had vanished with the portal.
And once more, I released my Aura.
─Aura draws forth the true power of a weapon.
Just as all people choose their weapons, so too do all weapons choose their masters.
Unlike now, when I have merely wielded weapons far too potent for me to handle.
The Divine Rank Bow, suffused with Aura, slowly opens its eyes.
“Frontdier…… ……?”
“Frontdier, he’s already fled. What are you thinking…….”
My Aura is colorless.
Yet the Divine Rank Bow, infused with that Aura, now gleams with a light unlike any before.
Infusing a weapon with Aura does not necessarily grant it new abilities.
But.
– Sure Hit: The user’s intended target is struck without fail.
In my mind’s eye, before my gaze, the image of Kraken just before his flight and the sight beyond that portal still lingers.
Holding Crisselacatos now, that scene crystallizes before me, vivid and near—more solid than this Grand Hall itself.
“……Kraken.”
You haven’t yet escaped from me.
Whoosh—
I released the bowstring.
The arrow vanished.
It must have flown, yet even my eyes, sharpened by Aura, could not follow its path.

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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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