The Academy’s Weapon Replicator - Chapter 144

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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 Replicator of the Academy — Episode 144
Chapter 44: Resurrection
At the alert from Obsidian, the guards moved with swift precision. Leading them was Warden Esther—or rather, the mirror version of her.
[Intruder detected, intruder detected, intruder has killed three guards in the Containment Chamber. Respond immediately. Intruder detec—]
Following the announcement, the guards made their way toward the Containment Chamber. The prison’s entrance had already been sealed. An encirclement was formed, cutting off all exits from the outside.
But then.
Clang-clang-clang-!
A different alarm sounded—not the one triggered manually by staff.
At the same moment, water sprayed from the sprinklers installed in the ceiling.
‘A fire?’
The intruder had set a fire. But why? Esther and the guards pressed forward through the cascading water without hesitation.
The Containment Chamber door had locked automatically the moment the alarm sounded. Which meant the intruder was still inside.
It was difficult to fathom why anyone would start a fire in a sealed space, but then again, whoever had infiltrated Obsidian was clearly insane.
Beep.
Click.
Esther at the front opened the door without delay. It was a biometric lock enchanted with magic.
Esther had already opened her Aura. And she wasn’t alone—all guards at Obsidian could use Aura. It was a basic requirement for the position.
“What in the—”
But the intruder had already vanished. There was no sign of Lenzo’s corpse either.
The guards who followed fanned out to search the room, but it was futile. The culprit had already fled the Containment Chamber.
‘Teleportation Magic, then. And remarkably sophisticated at that. Likely a portal.’
The CCTV would make it clear, but she was almost certain.
Esther assessed the escape method from what she’d observed.
The criminal had entered through the front gate. He’d spouted nonsense about owing Lenzo a favor. If his teleportation had been Spatial Teleportation grade, there would have been no need for such theatrics.
He could have extracted that prisoner from his cell before Lenzo even died.
Which meant the criminal’s teleportation was one-way only—capable of nothing but Return.
Yet that raised a question.
‘Then what was the fire for?’
Esther had been focusing her sense of smell since earlier. The sprinklers had extinguished the flames, but a faint smell of char lingered. The criminal had definitely set a fire in this place.
Why would someone capable of returning via portal bother starting a fire inside? It wasn’t easy to deduce.
‘Perhaps fire is necessary to create a portal. Or perhaps water…’
While Esther developed her thoughts, the guards cleaned up the Containment Chamber and continued their search throughout the prison.
If Esther’s judgment was correct, the intruder had already left the facility, but her reasoning could be wrong, and even if it were right, there was no reason to halt the search.
“Warden, I have something to report.”
At that moment, one of the guards approached Esther.
“What is it?”
“According to the staff member who triggered the alarm, the CCTV footage from inside the Containment Chamber shows that the intruder changed his face.”
“Changed his face?”
“Yes. When he entered through the gate, he appeared as a slender woman, but inside the Containment Chamber, his face became more androgynous. The staff member said it looked like clay being molded, if I understood correctly.”
“Hmm. So the intruder didn’t know there were cameras?”
“On the contrary. He was looking directly at the camera. Deliberately showing himself, it seems. The message appeared to be: he can change his appearance at will, so they’ll never catch him. That sort of display.”
Esther’s eyes darkened.
She traced her chin and lips lightly with her fingertips, then spoke.
“Then the culprit is likely an Outer Monster.”
“…An Outer Monster.”
“If he can change his face and deliberately flaunts his abilities, then his very existence has probably never been documented in the Empire. That’s why we’re caught off guard and no one knows what he is. His provocation carries that meaning.”
“Indeed. So it was the work of a monster.”
The guard nodded as if impressed by the deduction.
Yet Esther still seemed unconvinced.
‘But provocation alone doesn’t account for it. I’ve heard that Outer Monsters possess superior intelligence. Moreover, with other powerful monsters around them, they’d be constantly wary of each other, making them even more cautious and insidious by nature.’
If it were merely a simple beast, the display of power could be seen as mere bragging.
But if it’s an Outer Monster, that display itself might have been aimed at something else.
‘Lenzo’s corpse. The portal. Shapeshifting. The display…’
Keywords condensed in Esther’s mind, passing through in sequence.
‘Fire or water—something required.’
Then her eyes grew cold and sharp.
‘An Outer Monster.’
The fire or water wasn’t for the portal.
Perhaps the monster itself—
Having reached her conclusion, Esther spoke softly.
“I understand.”
“Pardon?”
“He demonstrated his abilities. It was a show of confidence—that we could never find him. But look at it differently, and what do we see? We reach one conclusion: only a ‘monster’ could do such a thing. An unconfirmed monster, at that. One we’ve never encountered before.”
“Y-yes, that’s true.”
“In other words, he deliberately revealed that he’s a monster. There’s no reason for him to take such a risk unless he meant to.”
“But he’s not human, so perhaps he thinks differently? Creatures whose minds we cannot fathom.”
Esther shook her head at the warden’s words.
“That’s because you’ve never encountered an Outer Monster. Creatures whose minds we cannot fathom? True. But that doesn’t mean they’re stupider than us. It means they think beyond us.”
The intelligence of Outer Monsters and humans is nearly equivalent. Esther knows this. She had actually encountered an Outer Monster and barely escaped with her limbs intact.
The difference is that humans are guided by emotion, logic, conviction, and values—all of which shape their choices—whereas Outer Monsters have none of these.
They have no one they must protect, no heart. That brilliant intellect serves only their own purposes.
If you fail to understand that way of thinking—
“—you’ll find your body torn in half while you dismiss Outer Monsters as mere beasts, and you’ll ‘deserve to die.'”
“…….”
The warden swallowed hard at Esther’s cold words.
He asked again, slowly.
“Then, Director, what do you believe this creature is thinking?”
“This isn’t the work of a lone individual.”
“What do you mean?”
“He is a monster—that much is certain, as he demonstrated his power himself. But if we fixate on that fact, we’ll only track a monster. That very fixation will drive us further from the truth.”
“I… what are you saying?”
The warden still didn’t understand Esther’s meaning.
Esther realized she’d spoken too sparingly, so she simply clarified further.
“He’s working with humans.”
“……!”
“That’s why he knows that the more he plays the monster, the safer he becomes. Every time we turn our eyes outward, he can simply hide within.”
The warden finally understood. His eyes trembled.
He was beginning, at last, to grasp what kind of beings Outer Monsters truly were.
In that moment, Esther exhaled softly.
‘I’ll need to contact the principal.’
He shouldn’t have arrived at Constellation yet, so there was still time.

* * *
On that day, Obsidian’s reputation suffered a grave blow.
An intruder had stolen Lenzo’s corpse.
A shameful reality that belied the Empire’s most secure prison.
A single monster had accomplished this. It was almost unbelievable that a non-human could manage it, and it only deepened the terror gripping the Empire’s citizens.
Yet the very architect of this remarkable feat—
“……Lenzo, please listen to me.”
—was in an extraordinarily tense state, staring at the man before her.
“Ah, I’m listening, yes?”
Lenzo grinned widely, looking at Kraken.
Kraken was smiling as well, though her expression had grown somewhat rigid.
Lenzo spoke.
“Once, the Empress of this Empire told me something. Don’t bark, she said. I was furious at first, but thinking it over, I realized I really am a beast cub. She spoke quite truly.”
Lenzo scratched his ear, using his left pinky to scratch the opposite side of his head—a peculiar, awkward gesture.
“So just now, when you—whoever you are, female or otherwise—said what you did, I listened very carefully. I’m a beast, I thought, so if I hear beast sounds, surely I can understand them.”
But right after uttering those words, Lenzo’s demeanor changed. Killing intent blazed from him—a heat so searing that being consumed by it would mean burning alive. Kraken felt as much.
“But tell me, what was it you said? That you hold the power over my life and death? You fool. Wasn’t that exactly what you just claimed?”
“……Your heart is now kept alive by my core. If I merely wished—”
“Huh. How something.”
Lenzo shook his head slowly, as if he genuinely could not comprehend.
It was true—Lenzo’s heart had been replaced by Kraken’s core. That core belonged to Kraken, and if she so chose, she could stop that core and kill Lenzo.
“So go ahead. Try it, then. I’m curious how fast your ‘merely wishing’ is, truly?”
“…….”
“You gave me your own core to resurrect me, Lenzo, and now you speak of holding power over life and death? You’ve invaded Obsidian itself.”
“……Obsidian didn’t seem all that impressive?”
At Kraken’s words, Lenzo drew in a sharp breath.
Then he burst into raucous, thunderous laughter.
“What’s so funny?”
“Nothing special? That’s right. Is that really all the information that reaches the Outer Monsters?”
“……What do you mean?”
“You seem to think that just because you’ve escaped that ‘building’ right now, you’ve successfully fled Obsidian Prison. That’s a grave mistake. You’ve just rung the bell on your own execution. You don’t know what happens when you catch the warden’s attention—that lunatic—or why the vicious inmates in that prison keep their mouths shut.”
Among the Empire’s criminals, none understood Obsidian Prison better than Lenzo. The world’s worst criminal was naturally bound by fate to the world’s most formidable prison.
“You came here whimpering that you needed my help, offering up a life of your own, and now you’re trying to threaten me? You should have heard what happens to everyone who tries to play games with me before you came crawling to me. You and your ignorance—you damned squid.”
“?!”
Kraken’s face went rigid.
Squid. The slur itself was offensive, but the very fact that he’d mentioned it meant something else.
“……How did you know?”
“You mean that you’re a squid?”
Lenzo laughed coldly. Kraken sensed his aura was not to be taken lightly.
──If Kraken had been Frontdier, she would have seen it.
The violet mirage rising from Lenzo’s body.
“He told me. Ares did. Said that if I died, you’d definitely come and bring me back.”
“Ares—you don’t mean Ares himself? You’ve met a god?”
“Less ‘met’ and more he just spouted nonsense and left.”
Kraken found nothing to say in response to Lenzo’s brazen tone.
Of course, Kraken herself was hardly in a position to lecture anyone on manner of speech, but still—calling the god who granted him Divine Power a blatherer.
“……So you knew you’d be revived, and you deliberately died counting on it?”
“Exactly. Ares told me so.”
Lenzo’s voice remained irreverent.
“He said the squid would come and bring me back, and since Ares and I share the same goal, he’d lend me real power.”
“……Goal?”
“Yeah, obvious, isn’t it.”
Lenzo’s eyes blazed wide open. The killing intent that had been burning bright now surged up like molten lava.
“To kill Frontdier. It’ll be the most entertaining event of my life.”

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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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