The Academy’s Weapon Replicator - Chapter 124

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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 124
Chapter 38: Cora
“Ugh! Cough, cough!”
Cora spat out a cough. The powder that had burst from his pocket scattered into the air.
“What is this?”
Cora frowned at the Red Powder dispersing before him.
But only for a moment.
“Ah, ugh! Aaagh……!”
The change came at once. Blood vessels bloomed across Cora’s eyes. He tensed every finger on both hands and wrapped them around his own body. White fur was slowly sprouting across his entire frame.
Seeing it, I moved toward Artzie.
Crack!
“Gah!”
I struck the bastard’s face once and rifled through his pockets. Though I could have searched him without throwing a punch—I just felt like hitting him.
I found a Syringe. It already contained liquid inside.
“……Tsk.”
So it’s possible to enrage Cora with mere powder, but the antidote requires jabbing him with this needle.
I shouted.
“Selena!”
“Yes!”
Selena appeared and stepped directly in front of me at once.
“I’ll cover your retreat! Go!”
“No! Block the students coming this way! Don’t let anyone near this area!”
“Yes?”
Selena turned to me in surprise.
“Wait—you mean you’re going to face that monster?”
Typical Selena. She hadn’t said a word, but she already knew everything about Cora.
“Yes. I don’t know what will happen, so turn away any students heading home in this direction. Chase off anyone curious enough to come near—except the teachers.”
“This is reckless! Frontdier! You know what kind of Bestial Cora is! You should evacuate! I’ll hold the line with my life,”
Clench.
I gritted my teeth. I felt the tendons rise at my temples.
Selena had merely spoken by rote. The way she always had. Words without meaning, without sincerity.
She was only performing loyalty to me, the way she’d been trained in Constellation.
And yet I could not contain my anger, and I cried out.
“Why should your life end here!!”
“……!”
I felt a gentle tremor ripple from my voice. It was Aura Manifestation. Selena’s eyes widened in shock and her mouth went silent.
“Go. Move as I command. There’s no time.”
“……Understood.”
Only then did Selena run. I watched her disappear into the distance, then turned to Cora.
Cora screamed as if fighting against himself. Yet his body only grew larger with each moment.
I spoke to Quinie.
“Senior, watch Artzie from here. With those wounds, he won’t be able to move anyway. A Fan to keep him in check should be enough.”
“……Is that child your bodyguard?”
Quinie glanced at Selena’s retreating figure and spoke.
“That girl’s right. You should run from here. Before Cora completes his transformation.”
“I can’t. If I do, the same thing that happened thirteen years ago will occur.”
“……What? How do you know about that?”
“And this time, Cora will die too.”
If Cora ran amok and harmed the students, and worse, committed murder—
then the only path left for Cora was death.
Since he was a Bestial rather than human, the Constellation Academy teachers would show no hesitation.
“So you’re saying you’ll subdue Cora without killing him?”
“That was my plan from the beginning.”
Otherwise I would have waited for a teacher to arrive. If Cora had been just an ordinary Monster.
“It’s impossible. You’re insane. Stop it. Give up.”
Quinie tried to approach me, but I held up my hand to stop her. The Cora before me now bore almost no trace of humanity. He had become a White Tiger in truth, standing on four legs and exhaling a chilling Mana.
“Don’t move from there. Even if Artzie is wounded, leaving him unattended is dangerous.”
“No, you—!”
“It’s fine. I have a plan. There’s just one thing I need to ask of you.”
I spoke to Quinie, whose expression was clouded with concern.
“Lend me your Mask Pack.”
“……A Mask Pack?”
“You have one, don’t you? For disguise.”
“Well, yes, but are you really sure about this?”
I nodded. Quinie bit her lower lip and studied me for a moment, then took out a Mask Pack and handed it over.
“Don’t worry. I’ll come back safely. So will Cora.”
I pressed the Mask Pack onto my face.
I took a deep breath and gripped the Necktie in my hand.

* * *
Frontdier advanced with the Necktie loosened in his left hand.
Quinie watched his retreating figure with an anxious face.
Until now, Frontdier had never done anything without a basis.
It was the same during the First Semester Final Exam when he’d teamed up with Quinie. He always prepared diverse strategies and had a talent for striking at his opponent’s psychology.
Because such a Frontdier had said he “had a plan,” she’d wanted to trust him.
‘The opponent is the White Tiger. Do you understand what that means?’
Every time Frontdier drew closer to Cora, she felt as though he were walking into a trap.
“Krkh, krkh-hrkh-hrkh.”
Artzie, sprawled on the ground, let out a low laugh.
“It’s impossible. There’s no way to quell Cora’s fury.”
“……No way?”
Quinie aimed the Fan at him. The meaning of that gesture was transparent—speak.
Artzie continued.
“The powder Cora drank doesn’t incite rage. It strips away rationality. He’s reverted to the wild nature of the White Tiger. Think about it—what does a mere wild tiger do? He’s become a beast. You can’t quell rage that he isn’t even conscious of. There’s no mind left to quell anything.”
At Artzie’s words, Quinie’s eyes wavered.
Did Frontdier know this fact as well?
“That bastard spouted off about subduing him without killing. No method will work. In moments, Frontdier’s body will be pierced through by those fangs.”
Quinie’s gaze shot to Frontdier at Artzie’s words, then shifted to Cora.
Cora had already transformed completely into the White Tiger. After witnessing it directly, Quinie understood.
The Incident 13 Years Ago—the slaughter had been Cora’s doing. He’d lost his rationality, become the White Tiger, and harmed people.
‘……Cora.’
Of course, she knew now that it hadn’t been his will—it was Indus’s doing.
But what of Cora? What of Cora now that he knew the entire truth?
Frontdier had said he would subdue Cora without killing him. That was what Quinie desired in her deepest heart, but was it truly possible?
Grrr-rr-rr-
As Frontdier approached, Cora spotted him and growled low.
Just as Artzie had said, not a shred of rationality flickered in those eyes.
It really was impossible. Restoring the current Cora to his right mind.
Crack!
Then, within Frontdier’s right hand, Mana wove together like thread, and something took shape.
Its form was like a thin rod bent into a triangle, gleaming with the brilliance of a jewel.
“Huh?”
Frontdier swallowed it.
And with that, the Necktie he held in his grip began to glow.
Boom-!!
Immediately after, Frontdier transformed.
Quinie felt explosive Mana surge from his body.
‘What is that? How is Frontdier channeling such Mana……?’
Before Quinie’s thought could even finish—
Frontdier shattered the Necklace. The black liquid contained within gathered in empty air, flowing to Frontdier’s right hand.
And within that right hand, a sword gleamed with brilliant luster, gripped and ready.
‘What is that……?’
At first, she thought it was the Gram she’d seen during the First Semester Final Exam.
But it wasn’t. She felt a power different from the Gram.
Moreover, that form. The moment Quinie saw it, a certain blade came to mind. A sword shape that no Constellation Academy student—or anyone with even passing interest in documents and legend—could possibly fail to recognize.
Yet she simply couldn’t believe it, and the fact that Frontdier was now holding it didn’t make sense at all.
“……Excalibur……?”
It took a considerable moment before that whisper escaped her lips.

* * *
When Cora began to rampage, most of the students had already sensed the disturbance. It was an enormous pressure unlike anything they had felt before.
Some evacuated; others moved toward the source of the Mana.
But standing before them, Selena blocked the students’ path and cried out.
“Turn back! The Main Gate is dangerous right now! Do not approach it under any circumstances!”
“What? What’s happening?”
“A Monster! Don’t go near the Main Gate until a teacher arrives! Evacuate immediately! There’s no guarantee this area will remain safe either!”
The students knew well the danger of Monsters, so most obeyed without protest.
Aten was among them.
‘……Unsettling.’
Following Selena’s instructions, Aten turned her steps toward the Rear Gate.
Yet she couldn’t shake the thought of Frontdier’s strange behavior earlier that day. He had left after classes, but it was brief; she had assured herself nothing was amiss.
Then—a bird cutting through the air.
[Main Gate in danger! Main Gate in danger! A Monster has appeared! All students evacuate through the Rear Gate!]
It flew about the students, earnestly delivering its warning.
It was a Raven. There was no mistaking it, even from a distance.
Aten watched the Raven carefully.
“……No way.”
She stopped in her tracks toward the Rear Gate.
That talking Raven—it had to be. The one Frontdier had Tamed.
A Raven spreading warnings about danger at the Main Gate, and if it belonged to Frontdier…
Then Frontdier was right now—
“No way.”
Aten fell into deep thought, her eyes narrowing. After a moment, her feet carried her toward the stairs.
Heading to the Main Gate would be reckless. It was far wiser to survey the situation from the Rooftop.
She wouldn’t intervene. Aten’s eyesight was keen; she would only check whether Frontdier was there.
Clang.
As she pushed open the Rooftop door and stepped outside, a tremendous surge of Mana scraped across her skin. The ferocious energy felt far more visceral here than it had inside the building.
Aten quickly moved to the edge of the Rooftop, concentrating Mana into her eyes. Two figures locked in confrontation came into view. One was an enormous tiger with thick white fur; the other was—
“Huh?”
Constellation Academy uniform, jet-black hair, a sword gripped in his right hand, drowsy eyes.
The man standing before the tiger was—
“……not Frontdier.”

* * *
The teachers, too, sensed the Mana and moved at once.
The closest was Malia de Roach, who worked in the Infirmary.
‘This feeling, from somewhere…….’
An enormously dangerous, ferocious presence. If not addressed immediately, it could escalate into a major incident.
Even as that intuition struck her, a strangely familiar sensation washed over her.
The scent of a distant past, so long ago it could only be called longing.
“Oh, Malia!”
As she hurried forward, she encountered another teacher. It was Jane.
“Let’s move quickly. This doesn’t seem like an ordinary situation.”
“Yes. We can’t seem to catch a break these days.”
Jane muttered as she walked. Indeed, lately her face had grown increasingly gaunt.
“……Now that I think about it, all these recent incidents involved Class Five students.”
“It’s not Class Five! It’s Frontdier who keeps getting caught up in everything!”
Jane corrected herself.
True enough—it was Frontdier alone who was connected to these events; the rest of Class Five had nothing to do with them. Perhaps Aten was the exception. The problem was simply that Frontdier was in Class Five.
“Please, just this once, let it not be Frontdier.”
Jane murmured her prayer, and even as she did, she dutifully drew up her Mana, preparing for what lay ahead.
When Jane and Malia arrived, they beheld a most peculiar sight.
Malia in particular rubbed her eyes and looked again.
“……My goodness.”
The exclamation escaped her lips unbidden.
At first, of course, what demanded attention was the enormous frame and ferocious presence of the White Tiger.
But the moment Malia confirmed the face of the man confronting it, her thoughts came to a halt.
It was not the sword he held that had seized her attention. It was his face.
The man was Angen.
He stood before the White Tiger wearing the face of his much younger self—the face of more than ten years ago.

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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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