The Academy’s Weapon Replicator - Chapter 154

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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 Weapon Replicator Episode 154
Chapter 50: False Resolution
I was in a dream.
But it wasn’t my dream.
[Artzie inherited the Roach family’s Bloodline Ability.]
[That’s right. So we had reason to expect a Bloodline Ability from Frontdier too.]
This was probably Frontdier’s dream.
Frontdier’s past, before I possessed him.
[It seems Frontdier received neither Divine Power nor a Bloodline Ability.]
[It’s alright even without both. He’s our son, isn’t he?]
Frontdier stood in the hallway, listening to a conversation between his parents in the room beyond the door.
Seeing Frontdier through my eyes was a strange sensation—as if I were experiencing an out-of-body moment.
The boy eavesdropping looked young. He couldn’t have been more than ten years old.
Unmistakable emotions radiated from the child’s eyes: anger, inferiority, wounded pride.
Malia de Roach and Angen didn’t notice Frontdier listening. The sensory perception of mages and warriors specialized in detecting enemies and bloodlust.
Malia spoke persuasively.
[And Bloodline Abilities don’t pass down to descendants unchanged. Artzie inherited your ability, but its form is somewhat different.]
[Either way, if Frontdier doesn’t demonstrate some talent of his own, there will be no place for him in the Roach household.]
Angen appeared even more resolute and cold than he did now. Malia seemed to regard that rigid demeanor with some caution.
She hesitated, her mouth working soundlessly for a moment, before she spoke.
[I think Frontdier inherited my ability.]
[Your ability?]
Angen reacted to her words. Frontdier’s tense expression eased, and his ears perked up.
[It’s about when I went to the temple with Frontdier.]
[You mean Hera Temple.]
Angen’s words prompted Malia to nod.
Malia’s birth family worshipped Hera as their goddess, and she naturally visited Hera Temple periodically. Since Hera was also the guardian of the household, Angen had visited the temple following her on occasion.
[Frontdier saw the statues and paintings in the temple. At that moment, I felt as though Frontdier did something. I sensed something familiar.]
[Are you saying Frontdier inherited your Bloodline Ability? ‘Sensory Sharing’?]
[That’s my belief. Of course, I’ve never sensed Frontdier using the ability since then, and he doesn’t seem to know about it himself.]
Hearing their conversation, Frontdier’s eyes widened. As if he’d grasped something crucial.
……But from my perspective, this was entirely new information.
‘Frontdier inherited Malia’s ability?’
I hadn’t the faintest idea such a thing existed. Had it been the case, Frontdier during gameplay would have already known how to use a Bloodline Ability. Yet he never did, and nowhere on the internet was there any such information.
[So Frontdier’s ability requires conditions? Is it related to Hera?]
[I’m not certain yet. But I share the suspicion. Since he only sensed something in that temple, it’s likely connected to Hera somehow.]
I fell into thought as I listened to their exchange.
Frontdier and Hera’s connection.
Honestly, I couldn’t guess. Even if his mother Malia revered Hera, that didn’t mean the goddess particularly loved her son Frontdier. If that were the case, he would have received Divine Power.
More than anything, if what Malia sensed in Frontdier was the Bloodline Ability ‘Sensory Sharing,’ then it had nothing to do with Hera at all.
‘The one involved isn’t Hera.’
Listening to Malia’s account, a connection formed in my mind.
I recalled what Hestia had once told me.
—You can observe the past by witnessing the Divine Eye. That’s what I heard from Hephaestus.
I perceive the past by seeing the Divine Eye. When I first glimpsed Hephaestus’s past, I stored Artemis’ Bow and Arrows; when I saw Hestia’s past, I stored her forge.
At first, I couldn’t understand how it was possible when I first discovered Hephaestus’s past.
‘If that was the ‘Sensory Sharing’ Frontdier inherited from Malia, transformed…’
The condition wasn’t Hera.
The gods themselves were the condition.
‘When young Frontdier saw the statues and paintings of gods in the temple and responded, it must have been because traces of their essence remained in those depictions.’
But since those weren’t true gods, naturally he couldn’t perceive their past.
The dream progressed rapidly after that.
Frontdier believed his parents’ words absolutely, visiting Hera Temple repeatedly, observing statues and paintings in succession.
Those memories accelerated over time, fragmenting and breaking apart in places.
Through the fragments streaming past, what I saw was Frontdier aging and growing at rapid speed, while simultaneously descending into despair.
[Why do I have nothing? Why is there nothing for me?]
[If even this fails, then I’m certain Father will…….]
[I don’t want to disappoint him. I can’t destroy his expectations. There has to be something, anything.]
[Frontdier!! Why are you like this?! Why were you even born?! You worthless wretch!]
[Mom, I’m sorry. Mom. I’m sorry. I’m sorry…….]
Frontdier’s voice echoed repeatedly against the walls of the dream, as if bouncing back.
Words swam through the dream—whether shouted aloud or yearnings repeated in silence—tangled together with despair, fear, self-reproach, and sorrow, spilling over like floodwater through everything.
‘Now I understand.’
Why I’m dreaming Frontdier’s dream now.
Meeting Hestia and witnessing her past had awakened Frontdier’s memory within me.
For Frontdier, who had always believed he possessed no abilities at all.
His Bloodline Ability must have been the last lingering attachment he held onto.

* * *
How long had I been asleep?
When I opened my eyes, the familiar ceiling of the manor greeted me.
I had no idea how much time had passed. But the fact that I was still bound and the surroundings were quiet suggested that quite a bit of time hadn’t actually elapsed.
‘The dream felt longer than the time I spent sleeping.’
I’d only watched Frontdier grow and mature in a single scene, compressed and accelerated, yet afterward I felt as though I’d dreamed for an eternity.
‘Those three…’
The first thing I checked was whether Thomson, Skyler, and Kian were still here.
All three remained unconscious, mercifully. The fact alone told me that not much time had passed since I fell asleep.
Then I examined the space below the stairs.
‘…That person.’
That uniform and cap. The sharp, piercing gaze contrasted against a slender frame and delicate features.
‘Esther, then.’
The warden of Obsidian’s prison—Esther herself.
I wasn’t sure how she’d managed to reach this place, but it wasn’t particularly surprising. If she’d been pursuing Kraken, she would’ve arrived here in no time. No one was better at tracking criminals than Esther.
‘What is she doing?’
Esther examined the corpses scattered around her with a grave expression, paying particular attention to their wounds.
Granted, quite a few people had died in this manor. It was natural she’d want to understand what had happened.
But her actions posed a problem for me.
‘Could she have figured out Mangot was responsible?’
She wouldn’t be able to determine who’d inflicted the wounds just from examining the cause of death and the injuries themselves. But this was Esther, after all. Even if she couldn’t pinpoint the exact culprit, she might be capable of making reasonable inferences—particularly if she analyzed the nature of the Mana or Aura embedded in the wounds rather than just their appearance.
And if suspicion pointed toward Mangot, then logically I, standing here unharmed, would come under suspicion as well.
I called out to her quickly.
“Hey.”
Esther looked up at my call, startled—far more than I’d anticipated.
“Could you untie this for me?”
I made a casual request to hold her attention. Besides, it was true that I needed to get free from these bindings.
But after hearing my words, Esther remained silent for a moment before speaking.
“I have a question first.”
“What is it?”
“Did you kill all the dead people nearby?”
At Esther’s question, I started to answer no, then stopped myself.
If I said no, I’d have nothing to offer when she asked who did it. An honest answer—that Mangot did it—would be foolish here.
I paused to consider, then spoke.
“Who knows?”
Playing dumb was the right move here. Acting as though something was there without committing to an answer was my best option.
“Kill all these people with my own hands? Would that even be possible? I’m tied to a chair—I can barely move.”
The key was maintaining a slight smile while I said it.
The fact that Esther asked such a question meant she’d already entertained that possibility to some degree. For someone with such a cold temperament, she was oddly prone to outlandish speculation.
Esther’s expression hardened.
“Don’t joke with me. I am,”
“Esther, the warden of Obsidian.”
Esther’s eyes widened sharply.
Her face clearly read: ‘How could you possibly know that?’
“That uniform, that cap—the design itself is standard issue, but looking at the wear marks on the fabric tells me what kind of work you’ve been doing. Your hands and arms especially show signs of dealing with rough individuals. The left side of your pants is particularly damaged. That’s likely where you wear a radio? You could pass for local police, but the police in this region don’t wear those uniforms. More importantly, they don’t operate alone at crime scenes. And considering the relationships between the people here and recent incidents in the area, Obsidian is the most likely candidate.”
I rattled off an answer, essentially improvising.
I was matching the answer I already knew with the appearance of Esther before me, filling in the gaps between them. When you know the answer already, even a clumsy explanation becomes one she can’t help but accept.
“Even if I accept that you deduced I’m from Obsidian, how did you know I’m the warden? And my name?”
Fortunately, Esther was willing to believe me.
She’d likely done investigative work like this before. Having similar experience, she was actually quicker to accept a plausible story than most ordinary people would be.
I spoke up.
“Naturally. I’m the one who called you here.”
“……You called me here?”
There was a grain of truth to that statement.
When Kraken extracted Renzo from Obsidian, I’d already predicted that Esther would intervene.
But I never expected her to show up at precisely this moment, this place.
“That’s right. To annihilate most of Indus’s forces and bind the majority of their leadership here—in this very location, at this very hour. I need you, the warden of Obsidian’s prison, to complete Indus’s total destruction.”
“……Wait. You’re saying you lured me to come here? That I followed your guidance?”
Esther asked, her voice etched with disbelief.
I smiled at her.
I didn’t say yes. I simply smiled.
Esther’s hand rose to her lips.
“Then when did this start……. Don’t tell me you predicted I’d search for your records? That you saw this far ahead even then?”
“You can guess where this is going, can’t you?”
“……That’s impossible.”
I didn’t know exactly what “then” Esther was referring to, but since she was doing the reasoning herself, there was no need for further explanation.
They say that sometimes the truly brilliant are undone by their own intellect.
When this many coincidences pile up, even Esther starts to wonder about possibilities that don’t exist.
“I’ll ask you one more time.”
I spoke to Esther, whose eyes still churned with a mixture of suspicion and fear.
“Will you undo these bindings?”
At my words, Esther’s brow furrowed, her gaze sharp as a blade.
It made sense that she’d find it suspicious—a stranger, meeting her for the first time, asking her to free him.
Esther, befitting her position as warden of Obsidian’s prison, had a truly intimidating face when she looked at you that way.
But I let it roll off me. I didn’t feel any tension.
I could entrust my body to her without a single worry.
Because I knew Esther was on the side of good.
She would eventually become my ally, and so I could smile at ease.
At least this smile of welcome for Esther was genuine.

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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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