The Academy’s Weapon Replicator - Chapter 150

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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 150
Part 48: Conflagration
The moment Frontdier stepped through the portal, he was bound to a chair.
It was Kian. She had wrapped his hands and feet tightly with cord in multiple layers, securing his legs with meticulous care to each chair leg.
Frontdier tested his strength gently against the bindings. They didn’t budge an inch.
‘This place.’
Frontdier looked around. A chandelier hung from the high ceiling, various paintings adorned the walls—some he’d seen before in the Lemuse Museum.
Luxury furnishings and artworks that spoke for themselves. Furniture that hinted at considerable wealth.
Though he’d never been here before, somehow Frontdier sensed he knew where he was.
‘Heldrey’s Grand Residence.’
He’d been dragged straight into the enemy’s headquarters.
“Well, well. How are you feeling?”
A voice he’d heard before reached his ears. He turned his head to see Thomson enter through the open doorway. Kraken and Skyler were with him.
Skyler was now clad in Plate Mail—a rather expensive set of armor, judging by its quality, likely belonging to this residence.
Since Kian had been at his side from the start, binding him, the entire leadership was now gathered in this room.
“I’m in your debt from last time, wouldn’t you say?”
Thomson, who’d been walking at the front, asked with a casual air.
Frontdier met Thomson’s gaze—eyes glinting with killing intent. He’d certainly beaten that body to shreds with explosives, enough to justify a wellspring of ill will.
‘Still.’
Frontdier noted Thomson’s missing right arm.
“I’d say Renzo got it worse.”
Frontdier spoke without mockery, with genuine sincerity.
The remark was a small bait.
Displeasure gathered between Thomson’s brows.
“The mad dog is outside the equation.”
Thomson bit at the bait without fail.
Mad dog. So Renzo wasn’t truly accepted by Indus yet.
‘If Indus doesn’t trust Renzo now, then neither does Kraken.’
Kraken was the one who rescued Renzo. He’d done it at the cost of his own life.
Frontdier observed Kraken discreetly. His face seemed calm, but behind that composure, a thousand flames must be burning. He’d sacrificed his life for the revolution, brought Renzo out, and already the man was being treated as a traitor.
“You let your guard down, Frontdier.”
Another figure appeared. Heldrey.
He still wore thick bandages around both arms. Frontdier examined them with Analysis.
‘…As I thought, full recovery is impossible.’
Those arms would never fight again. Heldrey as a member of Zodiac was already dead. The fact that he wasn’t rotting away was a mercy in itself.
“I told you, didn’t I? You’re going to die. Once words leave your lips, you must follow through.”
Heldrey was smiling, but his aura was thick with murderous intent. Everyone in this room radiated it.
Frontdier smiled back.
“Did you forget? That you begged me for your life? That I saved you? Treating your benefactor this way is rather ungrateful.”
“Bullshit—!”
“I watched you throw away your own granddaughter and scramble to escape. Now you stand here with your head held high? It’s laughable.”
Thump!
Heldrey kicked at Frontdier’s abdomen. Unable to use his arms. Frontdier made no sound, merely watching Heldrey.
‘He didn’t use Aura.’
Frontdier’s silence meant the blow, while painful, was bearable.
Heldrey must have felt considerable humiliation, yet he didn’t intend to kill Frontdier. Because he was a ‘vessel.’
Frontdier was beginning to understand what ‘vessel’ meant.
‘Should I provoke a bit more?’
Frontdier smiled with a bitter edge and spoke with brazen audacity.
“And I saved that granddaughter as well. You have not one but two benefactors here. Won’t you help me?”
“Your mouth still works, I see!”
Heldrey’s patience seemed to snap. His momentum surged. Frontdier felt Aura rising.
Frontdier observed it keenly. Was this bluster? Or was it genuine? Did he truly intend to kill? Was it merely theater?
“Grandfather, stop.”
It was Kian who restrained Heldrey.
Heldrey’s Aura subsided. At a single word from Kian.
Yes, now he understood. What ‘vessel’ meant.
To effectively exploit this understanding…….
“Hey, Frontdier.”
Thomson called out to him then. The timing was perfect.
“If you value your life, answer me. Who are you colluding with? How do you know our plans and each of our identities in such detail?”
At those words, Kian’s eyes narrowed. Kraken’s expression darkened similarly.
Thomson’s question was what any member of Indus would wonder about. It was something they needed to know.
But hearing it from Frontdier’s mouth was far too dangerous.
With that question alone, they’d already revealed too much information to Frontdier.
Skyler, who’d been watching, even moved to stop Thomson.
“That doesn’t matter right now. What matters is succeeding with the revolution. Isn’t that enough?”
“Enough? Nothing’s enough! I need to know who the traitor among us is!”
Thomson still hadn’t caught on, pressing his argument forward.
Frontdier smiled inwardly. Of course—Thomson was the easiest to manipulate among them all.
Not because Thomson was stupid, but because he was at the most emotionally volatile moment right now.
A madman who wasn’t even an original member had burst in and torn off his arm. If he weren’t upset, that would be the real loss of sanity.
“…Thomson.”
“…!”
Thomson flinched at the sound of his own name. He had no memory of introducing himself to Frontdier.
In that moment, Frontdier had essentially confessed—that he was receiving information from the traitor.
“Kian, Skyler, Kraken, Heldrey.”
Frontdier then called out the names of those before him, one by one.
One of them was the traitor. Frontdier had dangled the bait, and Indus had bitten.
Now he had to play along.
“Do you know what that means?”
Frontdier spoke.
“That the collusion hasn’t ended yet.”
“What did you just say?”
Thomson reacted predictably, objecting as though he didn’t believe it, his pupils visibly trembling.
“The information I recently learned was about a ‘Vessel.'”
“…Shut your mouth and answer my question! Who is the traitor?!”
Thomson shouted. He was beginning to panic. Why was Frontdier so calm? They were surrounded on all sides, yet he showed no fear.
Frontdier spoke in a voice that had grown quieter.
“Once you hear it all, you’ll understand. So don’t be so hasty. We were a good team, weren’t we?”
“You… snake…!”
Thomson’s eyes blazed as he trembled. Frontdier had subtly exploited the gap. He’d made Thomson’s outrage itself seem like a coordinated performance between them.
Of course, no fool would believe Thomson was the traitor based on a single remark, but it was enough to make the members of Indus wary of one another.
“Since my partner’s on edge, I’ll keep it brief.”
Frontdier paused and drew a breath. He looked at everyone’s faces, gauging how they might react to what he was about to say.
“The Vessel—that’s it, isn’t it? You were planning to draw in my father, Angen.”
“…!”
There was no need to look closely. Thomson’s reaction was especially transparent. Unless he were acting alone, the others’ expressions matched his.
“If you killed me and made it look like the Emperor did it, Angen would stop at nothing to kill the Emperor—that was the calculation. Even if the logic doesn’t quite hold together, Angen wouldn’t care.”
This scheme, crude as it appeared, actually held merit if you understood Angen’s nature.
It worked not because Angen loved Frontdier.
Regardless of his feelings toward Frontdier, Angen hates the Imperial Palace. He speaks of Zodiac as “the Empire’s dogs.” So with any justification, Angen would strike at the Emperor’s throat at any moment. Frontdier’s death was the perfect material for that.
In other words, the Vessel—the sacrifice Indus needed to turn Angen against the Empire. That was its true nature.
When Kraken had mentioned the Vessel before, Frontdier had already suspected they were targeting not him, but his family.
And the fact that they hadn’t killed him even now, as they moved against the Emperor, confirmed it.
“…So what? What does knowing that change?”
Thomson ground out the words.
“So who’s the one who spilled it? I’ve asked you how many times now?”
“What? You’ve heard all this and still don’t know who the traitor is?”
Frontdier tilted his head.
Thomson’s brow furrowed. What was he saying—that the traitor could be deduced from what he’d just said?
Frontdier tilted his head still, then spoke as casually as if making ordinary conversation.
“You’re going to fail.”
“…?”
At that peaceful tone, everyone hesitated. The content utterly contradicted his voice and expression.
“You’ll fail, and you won’t even reach the Imperial Palace. You won’t be able to kill me. This grand thing you call a ‘revolution’ will quietly disappear without the Empire ever knowing. Just like the common criminals arrested now and dragged into prison cells every day. That’s what will happen to you.”
It sounded like a curse. The content had almost exactly that feeling.
As everyone began to radiate killing intent toward Frontdier, only one person—Kraken—thought differently.
‘Something’s wrong.’
Kraken felt a discord. There was one more piece of information about Frontdier that no one else knew—something only she was aware of.
‘Why hasn’t the Mangot child shown himself yet?’
Frontdier was in danger.
When Heldrey kicked at him, couldn’t he have blocked it easily enough?
As if he were waiting for something.
As if Frontdier’s current stalling were deliberate—
‘Ah!’
Kraken understood. His hand shot forward with startling speed. His fingers became tentacles in an instant, surging toward Frontdier’s head.
An ambush no one had anticipated. An attack that would utterly destroy their plan to make Frontdier a Vessel.
Yet unbeknownst to Indus, it was in fact the finest move they could have made at that moment.
Clang!
But even that failed.
“……Lord Frontdier. I have arrived.”
Someone materialized before Frontdier. From nowhere, without so much as a portal.
She rose abruptly from beneath Frontdier’s shadow, placing herself between him and danger.
“You’re late, Selena.”
It was a maid. More formally dressed than when Frontdier had first met her, she knocked aside Kraken’s tentacles with practiced ease.
Kraken barked an order.
“Kill that woman! Now!”
The command came quickly, but Kraken alone had the presence of mind to act on it. The others struggled merely to comprehend what was happening, let alone anticipate and respond.
“One more woman isn’t going to—”
Thomson’s blustered words died in his throat.
Another emerged, this time from beneath the maid’s shadow. From the newcomer’s shadow came another, then another, the cascade of shadow-transference summoning reinforcements in mere heartbeats.
Indus members instinctively retreated. This was a different kind of transference than their portals—a unique method they all recognized at once.
“……Mangot.”
Heldrey murmured the name. Mystery figures were flooding the chamber. An incursion they had never foreseen.
The last to rise from the shadows was a face Heldrey already knew.
“……Hagly.”
Mangot’s linchpin, the one who had approached Frontdier before Selena.
Hagly did not answer. His cold eyes swept across the Indus members, pausing briefly behind him—at Frontdier seated in his chair, and at Selena standing guard before him.
After a moment’s observation, Hagly fixed his gaze forward.
“I hereby issue operational orders to the Mangot cadres.”
His voice was calm and measured.
“Protect Frontdier.”
And the empire’s uprising kindled in Heldrey’s Grand Residence.

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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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