The Academy’s Weapon Replicator - Chapter 159

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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 Academy’s Weapon Replicator — Episode 159
Chapter 52: The Workshop (4)
Once inside the workshop, I opened the hidden door beneath the floor.
Until I opened it, the floor looked utterly ordinary—indistinguishable to the eye—but when I pressed hard on the back edge, the seamless surface cracked apart, revealing a staircase descending into darkness.
Perhaps because the workshop was a Skill rather than something real, it was possible to conceal the floor this way. If it were physical, even when closed, a seam would be visible in the floor. No matter how expertly made.
A long staircase led downward into the subterranean depths. I descended slowly. There didn’t seem to be any light source ahead, yet I could see perfectly. Was this because of the Skill as well?
‘It’s long.’
The vast height of the underground chamber, glimpsed from above—the stairs descending seemed endless. My footsteps echoed loudly through the cavernous space.
At the bottom of the stairs, a massive door stood before me.
‘Is this really a door meant for people to pass through?’
The door was unnecessarily grand and enormous. It filled the entire height of the underground chamber.
I stepped forward and placed my hand against it. Even with all my strength, it wouldn’t budge. Given the door’s size, it must weigh an enormous amount, so it makes sense that it won’t open.
‘But this is my Skill.’
Could it make sense that the owner of the Skill couldn’t open the door?
A hidden door for entering the underground, and even after finding it and descending, there’s another door blocking the interior. Whatever’s inside must be very important to hide.
Whoosh!
Then the door began to glow. The light flowed like water across the patterns carved into its surface, filling from the outside inward.
When the light had completed every design, those patterns formed themselves into a complete sentence.
“……Of course.”
The completed sentence was written in Ancient Language.
[I am the keeper of truth, and also the arranger of worlds.]
“……This sentence—I’ve seen it somewhere.”
That’s right. The first Dungeon I visited with Saiber, Aster, Quinie, and Jane. It was what the stone statue in the Sanctuary there had spoken.
Then the end of this sentence must be—
[Speak the god you believe in.]
“As expected.”
Only, the statue in the Sanctuary had continued with, “I shall grant you the glory to meet the divine.”
The fact that it doesn’t say that here… does it mean that even if I state the god I believe in, I won’t be able to meet the divine?
‘Could this door be the original? Did the statue create a slightly altered version of it?’
That Dungeon was cleared by none other than me.
I didn’t even know how to clear it, but I managed to, by accident.
But regardless of the clear, my answer to this question has only ever been one.
“I do not believe in god.”
I spoke those words in Ancient Language.
Immediately after speaking—
Rummmble.
The door moved on its own with a heavy sound. As if welcoming my arrival, or perhaps luring me deeper inside.
‘In the Dungeon then, and now. This is the answer.’
When I’d cleared that Dungeon, I’d been too overwhelmed to think, and it had simply passed by.
But now that I consider it, that Dungeon was very strange.
On this continent, the Sanctuary isn’t found only in that Dungeon. Sanctuaries lie hidden in many Dungeons, ruins, and unexplored regions yet to be investigated by humans.
And the Sanctuary grants a reward to whoever first encounters it—the reward of meeting the divine. The player, Aster, discovered Sanctuaries, met Baldur, and advanced with his aid.
But most Sanctuaries have nothing to do with Dungeon clearance. In game terms, they’re like bonus points.
Yet there was only one Dungeon—the first one I entered—that made the Sanctuary a clearing condition. And the condition required answering that you don’t believe in god.
‘The statue can perceive a person’s Divine Power. Lies won’t work.’
Meaning that as long as the protagonist of this game is Aster, the player could never solve that Dungeon. Aster, who receives Baldur’s Divine Power, would never say “I don’t believe in god,” and even if he did, the statue would never believe him.
And you couldn’t expect anyone else without Divine Power to solve it either, because in a world where gods genuinely exist, no one would say they don’t believe in them.
So the only person who could possibly clear the Dungeon was—
‘Me alone.’
Someone from another world. Someone from a world where it wouldn’t be strange to not believe in gods.
A question and answer that seemed to know of another world’s existence.
A contradiction that offered the reward of meeting the god you believed in, yet the true answer required rejecting the divine entirely.
What was the real purpose of this question?
‘Will I understand once I enter?’
I stepped slowly forward into the darkness, carrying both anticipation and unease.
As I descended the stairs, I’d anticipated it, but inside was an enormous cavern. However, at the far corners of the four walls stood something. I walked slowly along the wall.
“……Are these statues?”
Drawing closer to the wall, intricately carved stone statues came into view. Most of them were shaped like humans, and their height matched mine. They seemed to be scaled to actual human proportions.
‘Their faces look familiar somehow.’
The statues felt oddly familiar, though not in my memory—perhaps people I’d seen somewhere while browsing game information?
Stone statues stretched endlessly, layered upon one another overhead. Their sheer number demanded the vast underground expanse that lay before me.
And then.
“……What is this?”
I saw it.
Passing among the countless statues—those whose faces I’d found merely familiar—I froze. One statue rose before me that I could not ignore.
I stared at it with an intensity that pinned me in place.
Slowly, goosebumps crawled from my fingertips across my skin, and an uncanny chill swept through me. I could not fathom what my emotions, my very senses, were reaching toward.
I could only murmur, as if confirming once more the identity of the statue before me.
“……Merlin.”
The Archmage Merlin.
He stood here as a statue—the one I had met in the sacred forest of Taeibun.
While the other statues left room for doubt, Merlin, whom I had faced directly, I could recognize with certainty.
‘Right, Merlin is dead. The Merlin in the forest was nothing but a phantom born of dreams.’
But then, why is Merlin’s statue here? What connection could there be between him and all these statues—
‘No. Wait.’
I paused and looked around again, as if something had clicked into place. I retraced the path I’d walked and examined the features of the statues I had passed over carelessly.
‘……I’m certain of it.’
I understood now. Why these statues felt familiar. Why, despite that familiarity, I couldn’t place them at once.
“They’re heroes.”
Heroes from Etius’s distant past, legends whose deeds had shaped history before they faded.
Every statue I beheld was a hero born of legend.
“The Archmage Merlin, Bellerophon, Sigurd, Roland……”
Once I recognized them as heroes, each statue’s identity came into focus. I had not memorized every hero, of course, but the most famous ones—their details were precise enough that memory stirred as I looked. The craftsmanship was extraordinary.
“……King Arthur.”
And before me, my steps halted once more. There stood Arthur himself.
Arthur Pendragon. The legendary king who had stood with the Knights of the Round Table.
He had left behind a single phrase carved in Ancient Language: ‘For the Giant who would bring down the Divine.’
Yet Merlin could not read the Ancient Language. So those words were perhaps never meant for him. Arthur must have left that message for someone who would one day find their way to Merlin. For someone yet to come.
I did not comprehend its meaning then.
But slowly, its significance was beginning to reveal itself.
‘Most mythologies contain giants.’
The Titans of Greek myth, the Jotun of Norse legend. Strangely, both stood in opposition to the divine. They were the ones who drove the gods to the brink of ruin—or ruined them altogether.
If this game too harbored a conflict between the Divine and the Giants.
Then perhaps Arthur’s words, left with reverence for the Giant, were.
The hero either stood with the Giant, or—
‘The Giant is simply another name for the hero.’
Throughout Etius’s long history, the Giant and the Hero had been kept distinct. The Giant was the ‘evil’ that sought to slay the Divine; the Hero was the ‘good’ that sought to protect humanity.
But what if the two were one and the same?
“……Is this the reward?”
Not a reward of battle or magic—something that couldn’t help but feel insufficient.
Yet it seemed I had gained something far greater.
I understood the true nature of Weaving.
“Right. Weaving was never meant for combat in the first place.”
When I thought about it, it was obvious.
What Weaving created was fundamentally illusion.
I had been using the Black Stream and Menosorpho and the like to force them into battle somehow.
But the original intent must surely have been different.
The third floor above ground, where weapons, armor, and tools of each kind were displayed in rows.
And the vast underground where heroes were preserved as statues.
Weaving was not a skill meant for weaponry.
From the beginning, its true nature was an archive. A record repository.
To preserve what would not perish under any circumstance, to pass on to future generations the truths that history and time had concealed.
I looked at King Arthur once more.
“……I wish I could meet him someday.”
The statues of countless heroes sleeping within my Workshop.
Someday I want to hear what they have to say.
They have given many hints, yet there is still so much I do not know.
To clear this game in the end, there will come a day when I must unearth the truths that this world has hidden away.

* * *
Heldrey was dead, and Indus, which had clung to the Constellation like a leech, was disbanded.
After that, life at the Constellation became nothing but peaceful for Frontdier.
By the game’s original timeline, Indus wouldn’t have risen in revolution for quite some time yet, so its rapid collapse left him in a strange void—as if the schedule had emptied out, stretching before him in days of tedium.
For Frontdier, of course, this was invaluable time won for maintenance and consolidation.
First, he trimmed the excessively tight daily schedule. He couldn’t afford to fall asleep unpredictably again, not like last time. That had been sheer luck; had the timing been different, Indus’s members might have woken first and slipped through his fingers once more.
The principle was simple: reduce fatigue without ceasing—yet keep training with Weaving and Artzie alive. That was Frontdier’s core guideline.
The other named characters, too, threw themselves into training throughout the Second Semester with an intensity that rivaled nothing from before. Aster’s growth, in particular, was remarkable.
‘Though it might just be baseless rumor.’
Aster reflected. Of late, there was a rumor circulating that caught his ear.
It was said that Frontdier had been deeply involved in Indus’s collapse.
Having suffered once from an unfounded rumor before, he’d resolved not to be swayed by hearsay without source or evidence—yet when it came to rumors about Frontdier, things were different.
‘I was right from the start, then.’
Aster had suspected Frontdier all along.
Frontdier had been absent from the school trip.
Ostensibly he was doing volunteer work, and he had indeed done Lifeguard duties—but that alone wasn’t enough to dispel suspicion. Nowhere but Lifeguard had Aster spotted him.
Worse, the manner of Indus’s collapse was strange.
It had seemed as though the Constellation orchestrated an operation, yet the location where they were arrested was Heldrey’s Grand Residence—the enemy’s own stronghold.
At the time, most of the Constellation’s instructors had been busy escorting students back from Cropol to the Constellation. How could they have captured every member of Indus, let alone Zodiac Heldrey himself?
‘I can’t fall behind.’
Frontdier had annihilated Indus.
Whether this absurd rumor was truth or lie mattered nothing. For Aster, it was merely fuel to burn in his ascent.
Others seemed to share the sentiment, for the eyes of Aten, Saiber, and the rest had changed as well.
Not to fall behind, to draw closer, to protect him.
Each held a different purpose, yet what needed doing was clear.
Grow stronger.
The passion of the named characters kindled into a great conflagration, burning bright with the existence of Frontdier as its center.
——Time flows onward.
The Second Semester’s midterms and finals both passed.
The process was ordinary. In written exams, Frontdier secured perfect scores with Weaving’s aid, and in practicals, he’d by now reached a position where he could rank among the best.
And the Second Semester’s finals meant one thing more besides.
The continent, cooling with each season’s turn, felt a vast cold seeping slowly down from the north.
Winter. The season when the monsters outside grew more savage, trampling southward into human lands.
The Empire sent more soldiers to the Barrier, those within prayed daily it would not fall, and those guarding it steeled themselves for death. Winter.
When the finals ended and winter break arrived at the Constellation, as it always did.
Knock. Knock.
Frontdier rapped his knuckles against a door.
Hearing the answer from within, he opened it slowly and met the eyes of the room’s master.
Angen de Roach. The household head looked upon Frontdier’s serene face. They knew each other’s thoughts. And they both knew, better than anyone, that neither would yield.
Facing the lion-like intensity of Angen’s gaze, a fire that made his very skin tremble, Frontdier spoke.
“Take me to the Barrier.”

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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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