The Academy’s Weapon Replicator - Chapter 168

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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 168
Chapter 54: Lingering Shadows (5)
Loriae watched me, her long blonde hair cascading down her shoulders.
Fierce hostility and tension etched across her hardened face; her right hand rested near her waist, ready to draw a weapon at any moment. It was a good stance—from my vantage point, I couldn’t see where she kept her blade.
“……Frontdier de Roach.”
Loriae repeated my name, as if confirming it once more.
“Yeah, Loriae. Though I suppose that’s an alias too?”
I replied calmly while studying her appearance.
The way Loriae constructed her fake personalities fascinated me in countless ways. Her present form was no exception.
While Loriae inhabited a fake personality, what state was her true self in? Did it feel like sleeping? If so, when she returned to her original personality, would she remember what happened while wearing the false one?
Was the reason she’d just called out my name because the “real” Loriae was seeing me for the first time in this very moment?
“How did you know? My acting should be absolutely flawless.”
“Well, it would be—if it were actually acting.”
I’d posed several questions to the fake personality earlier, and the answers had been almost entirely sound. The surface-level information was exceedingly shallow, but all the past history and social connections had been thoroughly established.
There would be no chance of exposure unless someone actively suspected her from the start.
But I possessed Analysis, so methods that relied on acting to conceal one’s true identity wouldn’t work against me.
‘Loriae isn’t her real name, but then again, she doesn’t seem to have a real name to begin with.’
According to what I’d learned through Analysis, while “Loriae” was indeed an alias, there was no registered true name on record.
Selena had simply forgotten hers, but “Selena” remained her genuine name. Loriae didn’t even have that much.
Loriae was different from Selena. Perhaps she had been born for this very purpose from the start.
‘If I ran more Analysis on how her fake personality is constructed, I could probably figure it out.’
Just as learning about Selena’s family connections had required an astronomical amount of mana, Loriae’s other information was likewise demanding an absurd quantity.
Even consuming a Dragon Heart might have let me uncover it, but eating something like that inside the barracks would expose me immediately.
“What’s your goal? Why did you target me?”
When I asked, Loriae let out a scoff and smiled bitterly.
……Honestly, it didn’t suit her at all.
“You won’t answer my questions, so why should I answer yours?”
“……Hmm, there’s something archaic about the way you talk now.”
The tone was completely different from the fake personality’s. She wasn’t influenced by it? If that were the case, memories wouldn’t be shared between them either.
“So with the fake personality, you’ve only set up the routine of putting on and removing the mask precisely, and you’re not involved with anything else…….”
“……You.”
Loriae’s face twisted viciously. What brought that on? I hadn’t cursed at her or mocked her in any way.
I’d simply tried to reason through the situation myself since she seemed unwilling to speak.
Clang.
A blade slid free from Loriae’s waist—a one-handed sword, about the length of her arm. She clearly had no intention of concealing her weapon anymore.
“You know far too much. I was only going to test your skills, but it can’t be helped. You’ll have to die here.”
“And that’s exactly why your speech doesn’t match your appearance. Now your lines are stale too.”
“Shut up!”
Thud!
Loriae pushed off the ground with force and rushed toward me. She was fast and agile, clearly trained.
Thwip!
“?!”
But her advance didn’t last long. Loriae grimaced in pain and dropped to one knee.
A wound had opened on her thigh—deep and severe, blood gushing from the puncture.
“What—what is this! What did you do?!”
Loriae couldn’t comprehend what had happened.
Well, I’d thrown the Weaving Dagger, so naturally she couldn’t see it with her eyes. Struck defenseless in the thigh, of course it hurt. And worse, the wound remained visible while the weapon itself had disappeared—no wonder she was panicked.
‘Plain Weaving—it’s been a while.’
Invisible Weaving had the tremendous advantage of being unseen, but recently I’d only faced monsters, so I hadn’t had the chance to use it.
Crude weapons could be blocked simply by wrapping one’s body in an Aura, and deploying strong weapons through Weaving meant they’d vanish after one strike or stab, making the efficiency abysmal. Weaving consumed far more mana when creating than maintaining.
Besides, Weaving was magic, so anyone with good Mana Sense could feel it even if they couldn’t see it. With caution, a simple attack like that would cause almost no damage if one just wrapped themselves in Aura beforehand.
Loriae had been too careless with me, charging recklessly, so she couldn’t evade and took the hit.
“Don’t rush. We still have things to discuss.”
“I said shut up!”
This time, Loriae pulled something from her clothes and hurled it at me.
To be honest, I couldn’t see it clearly, so I simply blocked it with a Weaving shield.
“……!”
Loriae was startled again. It must have looked like what she’d thrown bounced off mid-air.
Looking at what I’d blocked, it was a throwing star resembling a shuriken. The faint gleam suggested poison had been applied.
“Ugh!”
Loriae charged at me again. Her thigh had to be aching considerably, yet her speed hardly diminished. If that had been a real dagger, it would have sunk deeper. A missed opportunity.
I tried throwing a few more daggers as an experiment, but she’d learned her lesson—this time she wrapped herself in Aura before I could strike. The daggers bounced off harmlessly. She must have felt it. A smile bloomed across her face.
─This is something.
Weaving
Rank – Rare
Imperial Palace Armory
Lion’s Shield x1
Crack!
“Ugh?!”
This time I wove a shield and swung it at Loriae as she drew close. Her dagger managed to intercept it just in time, halving the damage, but the impact sent her stumbling backward.
No matter how much Aura can block, it doesn’t work like that. Aura—I can use it too.
“From the beginning, you see.”
I spoke as I fell back, watching her struggle to regain her stance. Honestly, she was taking so long to recover that I could have struck her down several times over in that interval.
“When you were testing me earlier, I noticed something as you used those goblins.”
“…?”
Her face filled with confusion as I spoke. *Why is he talking now?* she must have been thinking. *This is my chance to attack. Why isn’t he moving?*
What is this feeling?
I felt something similar the first time I met Selena.
“You know nothing about me, do you?”
“…!”
Yes, that’s it.
All those days hiding, training in secret, never letting my cards show—whether at Constellation Academy or anywhere else.
Crafting my own image, watching enemies fall for the false picture, seizing on their slightest mistakes and carelessness, clinging to those gossamer threads of error to survive.
This was the moment those days proved they meant something.
“…Ha, this really is something.”
I laughed, tasting an odd sensation.
The opponent I’d just faced before was Renzo. Renzo, who’d abandoned all caution about me and equipped himself with every weapon at his disposal.
When Renzo—someone who stood among the world’s strongest—judged that he needed to pour his full power into facing me, that itself was respect. That was pride.
I’d worried that news of that fight, or of Indus’s dissolution, might have spread wildly and bloated into useless rumors everywhere.
Truly a needless concern.
“Fighting an enemy who knows nothing about you, who makes no preparations at all—”
Even Kraken had kept up some minimum guard.
I watched Loriae, still hesitating.
“It’s rather pleasant, Loriae.”
“─How dare you speak such arrogant—!”
“Menosorpho.”
I activated the spell array.
Weaving
Rank – Legendary
Dragon Heart
I swallowed the Dragon Heart and drew out Nil Jack’s Short Sword. Then I wrapped my entire body in Aura.
Still, Loriae stared blankly at me. Whether shocked by my suddenly amplified Mana or simply caught off-guard—her judgment was regrettably poor.
“Loriae, you won’t remember this, but.”
Thud.
I took a step toward her. A step into close combat, just as she wanted. Yet she retreated the same distance.
“In the eyes of that fake personality, fear of me was dwelling.”
“…!”
As I said, Loriae fascinates me in many ways.
There’s much I’d like to test with her.
“If you lose your memories, does that fear disappear too? Or does emotion alone reach even the real you?”
Thud.
Another step. And she retreated once more, matching my advance.
I spoke softly.
“That’s what I want to know, Loriae.”
Whoosh!
As if it were a starting signal, Loriae spun away from me and bolted. In other words, she fled.
I doubt she’d felt true fear already. Probably something like a tactical withdrawal.
I could have pursued an opponent with an injured leg without much trouble, but rather than that—
Void Weaving
Rank – Unique
Arsenal
I materialized an arsenal directly in front of the fleeing Loriae.
“What—what in the world?!”
A massive structure had appeared without warning. The forest offered no convenient way around it.
I pressed forward, pursuing Loriae as she bolted—
Thud!
“Ugh!”
—and kicked her straight through the arsenal’s entrance.
“I don’t recall extending an invitation. You’re an uninvited guest.”
I spoke, watching her stumble inside.
Not that the accusation made sense, given that I’d forced her in myself.
Loriae scrambled to her feet, desperate to leave, but I shut the arsenal door behind her.
“Ordinarily I wouldn’t resort to such measures.”
This was the far northern edge of Yeran Hess—the Barrier my father guards.
I was here not as a Constellation student, but as Angen’s son, as the youngest of House Roach.
So, well, one makes allowances.
“Turning away uninvited guests without reason hardly befits a nobleman’s courtesy, after all.”
I would extend every hospitality I could offer.
And while entertaining, another form of hospitality would surely suggest itself.

* * *
Boom!
The door sealed shut before Loriae could even exit. She hammered it with fists and kicks, but it wouldn’t budge. Her hand drifted to the handle—
‘…What is this?’
The handle didn’t move. If it were merely locked, it should at least rattle—but it didn’t so much as quiver.
Which meant it wasn’t a functional handle at all. It was merely a shape fastened to the surface, a facade.
‘No seams in the door. No hinges. No gaps to see through.’
As she grasped this, Loriae understood.
It was a wall. When she’d entered, there had been a door; the moment it closed, the door had vanished entirely, replaced by seamless wall. It had been nothing but a pretense.
“Damn.”
Loriae wiped cold sweat from her brow and gripped her blade. She checked the tools at her belt.
She still had plenty of throwing stars—enough to kill an enemy at close range. She’d meant to deploy them stealthily once combat tightened, but Frontdier had never given her the distance to close in.
‘Stay calm. A magic as absurd as this can’t last forever.’
Whatever structure Frontdier had thrust her into, it had appeared from nowhere.
Process and principle unknown, but unmistakably magic. It would consume considerable Mana.
‘But why is it so dark?’
The arsenal admitted no light whatsoever. Even for eyes trained to night vision, absolute darkness meant blindness.
‘No choice, then…’
Loriae drew through her Memory for a light spell. She began to chant, slowly and deliberately. A magic to conjure illumination.
Accomplished mages required neither incantation nor catalyst—but Loriae, who relied only on minimal magic as needed, had to follow every step.
“…Will of the Wisps.”
The moment the incantation left her lips and a small flame kindled beside her—
Loriae found herself surrounded by blades.
“Ah—ah!”
Throwing stars in abundance. Thirty enemies’ worth of lethal arms, fully stocked.
But all of them were designed to face humans and monsters.
Against weapons suspended in empty air, her throwing stars were useless.
She couldn’t kill. Couldn’t flee. Couldn’t escape. Couldn’t defend.
“Please—let me go—”
Before she could even count them all, the blue-gleaming blades rained down in unison.

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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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