The Academy’s Weapon Replicator - Chapter 186

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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 Duplicator Episode 186
Chapter 59: Sloth (2)
‘So far, so good.’
Frontdier wore a fearless smile, but cold sweat trickled down his spine.
He’d never even attempted an Out-of-Body Experience in a game before. To actually pull it off with his own body, his real soul slipping free—there was no way not to be on edge.
‘Lorie came through.’
Just before Frontdier was swallowed by the Fragment.
Lorie had been across from him. While all the monsters’ attention was fixed on Frontdier, she’d circled around and moved to a spot where she could lock eyes with him, exactly as he’d instructed.
And when the Fragment began to cascade down—the signal—she pulled his soul free from his body.
The reason this plan had gone so smoothly was that they’d tried it out beforehand.
“But my Hypnosis won’t take hold on you. How were you planning to solve that?”
Hours earlier, after hearing Frontdier’s plan for the Out-of-Body Experience, Lorie had voiced the first doubt that came to mind. More than a doubt, it was the plan’s most critical flaw.
“You set yourself a false personality before, didn’t you? How did you manage self-hypnosis?”
“Simple—I look in a Mirror. Since the effect works on whatever I’m looking at, it makes sense.”
“Then if I could use that magic of yours, I’d be able to do self-hypnosis too, wouldn’t I?”
“…? Well, that would follow, but how exactly do you expect to use my magic?”
It was possible.
Frontdier’s Weaving reached all the way to Skills. He simply couldn’t store them in the Arsenal, so he could only mimic them while his opponent was actively using them.
Frontdier wove a Mirror. Then he spoke to Lorie.
“Cast Hypnosis on me.”
“…? Well, all right then.”
Lorie didn’t quite understand, but she cast Hypnosis toward Frontdier anyway. Her eyes flared with light, etching an intricate pattern as mana flowed toward him.
As expected, since Lorie was the wrong target, the Hypnosis didn’t work on Frontdier—but he wove her skill in that same instant.
‘I know who I am.’
Frontdier looked into the Mirror. He took Lorie’s Hypnosis and directed it at his reflection.
Casting Hypnosis on himself.
It was something only Frontdier in this world could do.
‘…Is this what it feels like?’
The moment Frontdier hypnotized himself, he became aware of his own soul for the first time.
Lorie’s Hypnosis affected the mind—or so he’d thought. But it was actually work that touched the soul itself. That must have been how she could even control the black monsters.
And the instant Frontdier became aware of his soul through the Hypnosis,
he took a step backward as a test.
“Wh—what?!”
Suddenly, he could see his own body. He saw the back of “Frontdier de Roach.” His body, abandoned by his soul, went limp and toppled forward. A startled Lorie caught him.
‘It works.’
Self-induced Out-of-Body Experience was possible. After confirming this, Frontdier clenched his fist.
And time passed. Now.
Frontdier had successfully pulled off the Out-of-Body Experience just as the Fragment was about to consume him.
When the moment came, Lorie would cast Hypnosis on Frontdier, he would weave that Hypnosis and cast it on himself, then attempt the Out-of-Body Experience.
With this combo, they’d fooled Hella’s eyes.
‘Now, the remaining problem.’
Frontdier’s expression grew tense as his gaze turned toward his own body—still infested by a writhing mass of Evil Spirits.
Tens of thousands of Evil Spirits had killed and absorbed each other, fused into one. But fundamentally, it was the result of a staggering number of consciousnesses colliding.
Even if it couldn’t act or think properly, that didn’t make it any less a threat.
Frontdier had given his body to tens of thousands of Evil Spirits and slipped out as a soul. So to reclaim his body, he would have to seize control from them again. This was a burden only he could bear.
“Hella, what do you think? Can I take my body back?”
[…How dare you speak such drivel to a god.]
“Fine. I was a fool for asking you.”
At Frontdier’s words, the sinews along Hella’s form bulged.
Of course, Hella could not harm him directly. Her descent was incomplete.
Frontdier knew this well enough, yet he’d never knelt before a god anyway.
[Do you truly believe a wretch like you could succeed?]
Hella’s words dripped with something like a curse.
[You are nothing but human—how could you overcome an assembly of countless spirits? You too will be torn and broken, swallowed into that mass.]
Hella spoke as though mocking him, though she believed every word.
Frontdier was no god. Neither was he a legendary hero with great deeds to his name. Nor was he among the twelve ranks of Zodiac across the continent. He was just a boy who hadn’t even reached adulthood.
Up until now, he’d survived on luck and accomplished much—or so the story went—but the truth was, an overwhelmingly powerful Skill had done all the heavy lifting. Frontdier himself was unremarkable. His soul, then? How much more fragile could it be?
“Yes.”
Whether Frontdier had heard Hella’s words, whether his reply was affirmation or negation or indifference—none of it mattered.
He walked slowly toward his own body.
And before he reached for that body, he saw Selena first.
Selena couldn’t see Frontdier as a soul, so she had no idea he was there—only her tears fell endlessly.
Something about her expression moved him, and Frontdier managed a thin smile.
“I’ll be back soon, Selena.”
Then Frontdier reached toward his own body.
“Breathe……!”
What he felt first were the restless spirits swirling within the mass—the sharp stench of killing intent and death. It was better than when the evil spirits had poured in like a deluge, perhaps, but the current situation was no trivial matter either.
Frontdier drew a shallow breath,
and in a single exhale, thrust his soul back into his body.
“……!”
His vision shifted, and Frontdier’s feet descended into pitch darkness.
Before his eyes churned something like a fetid mud omelet, bubbling with viscous intent.
“The stench is unbearable.”
Even as Frontdier’s brow furrowed, his lips still curved upward in a smile.
He’d been wondering since moments ago why he was smiling of his own accord. Because everything had gone according to plan? Because he’d deceived Hella?
But the situation remained difficult for him still, and a harsh trial now loomed directly ahead.
“……That’s it.”
Soon Frontdier understood. The reason he was smiling. How he could afford composure even amid the reek that naturally made him grimace and the piercing resentment of these creatures that stung his eyes.
“Somehow, I don’t think you’re much at all.”
He didn’t know the reason. Intellectually, he knew this opponent was tremendously dangerous. With every conceivable type of evil spirit mixed together, if anything it was like a cauldron bubbling over with a chaotic brew of all manner of poisons. Frontdier was now planning to plunge his head into that very cauldron.
And yet.
An intense exhilaration flooded through Frontdier—something he’d never felt before.
Unlike when he’d faced Zodiac Heldrey or Renzo, racking his mind in every conceivable way without the certainty of victory.
What he felt now was simply,
“Listen.”
Confidence in himself.
“This is my body. Get out.”
An inexplicable certainty that he would never lose in a fight of this kind.
Screeeee!
The mass of evil spirits shrieked with grotesque sounds as it lunged toward Frontdier. Everything—its reek, its form, its howl—struck him with revulsion.
Tens of thousands of evil spirits fused into one collective mass. That enormous bulk rose like a great wave and swallowed Frontdier whole.
[Yes, die like that! Frontdier!]
Just as Hella was certain of victory, watching Frontdier, not moving a single fingertip until that moment.
Crack!
Shhhrrrrip—!
Frontdier seized the mass and wrenched it outward.
In that single motion.
“Ha…… what……?”
Selena’s tear-streaked face swam into Frontdier’s view.
That one simple gesture. In the instant his right hand grasped and pulled the mass of evil spirits, Frontdier had reclaimed his body completely.
He saw his own right arm extended, his hand. What he had done as a soul, his body now did in perfect mimicry, and in that right hand he clutched the mass of evil spirits.
“F-Frontdier……?”
Suddenly his arm stretched outward. Startled, Selena couldn’t form words properly.
Was this truly Frontdier? Was he truly alive? Had he been driven mad by touching that fragment? Was that why he suddenly had his arm stretched out like that—
“Selena.”
His plain voice cut short her darkening spiral of thought.
Crunch!
Frontdier clenched his right fist. The mass burst apart like a water balloon. Tens of thousands of evil spirits—that monstrous collective—simply ceased to exist.
Frontdier examined his right hand, scanning through his body to ensure no other spirits lingered within.
There were none. Instead, an enormous tide of Mana surged through and around his body.
Having consumed every fragment of the Fragment’s Mana and seized all its dominion, he felt Mana of an utterly incomparable magnitude flowing within him now.
Because it carried the magical force of Helheim, it differed slightly in character from the standard Mana of the continent, but it was already wholly his own.
Confirming this, Frontdier turned his gaze back to Selena.
“I’m sorry, Selena.”
Knowing well what she was worried about, Frontdier smiled at her.
Though he’d rarely practiced it, he offered her a gentle smile.
To his own surprise, he managed it with unexpected ease.
“I just took a brief nap.”
Watching Frontdier make a joke that seemed both perfectly fitting and wholly out of place,
Selena blinked her startled eyes, and as her tears finally ceased,
“Waaaaaaahhhhhhh!!!”
She wailed even harder.
“Hey, Selena.”
“Huuuuh! Uhhh, waaaaahhhhh!!”
Selena cried like a child, as if the world itself were falling apart. Frontdier placed his hand on her head.
He stroked her hair as he always did, and while she wept, he glanced upward for a moment.
Having absorbed the black monster, performed an Out-of-Body Experience, and reclaimed control from the Evil Spirit, Frontdier now perceived an entirely different world.
It was not merely what human eyes could see—he could now observe spiritual and supernatural substances and entities.
And among them, naturally, was the divine.
[…….]
Hella regarded Frontdier with eyes that could scarcely believe what they were witnessing.
What in the world was that just now? One grasp from Frontdier’s hand had annihilated the Evil Spirit’s aggregation. It was better than the onslaught of Evil Spirits that poured forth when the Fragment was touched, yet that aggregation was hardly a trifle to contend with.
Hella had foreseen Frontdier’s defeat, and she had believed that even if he were to win, his soul would bear scars that could never be healed. And yet.
─Hella.
Frontdier’s lips moved, forming words in the silence.
─You’ve lost the Fragment and Soul that would manifest within you, and right now there is no way for us to reach each other.
His gaze was gentle, as though he were soothing a child.
─Shall we call it a draw?
[……!]
Hella ground her teeth. It may have been spoken as a draw, but it was nothing less than Frontdier’s decisive declaration of victory.
Yet in the face of that provocation, Hella had nothing she could do. Now that the ice was shattered, she had no immediate means to gather the Faith of Monsters.
Hella turned her head, seared Frontdier one final time into her wrathful eyes, and vanished from sight.
Seeing her depart, Frontdier exhaled with inner relief. A god could surely manage something else, he’d thought. That was why he’d made the “draw” remark—only to have inadvertently provoked her instead.
“Come on, let’s go back. Selena.”
“Waaah! I… hic… I thought you, hic—”
“I said let’s go back.”
“Hic… I thought you were dead! Sniff sniff!”
Though Frontdier had accomplished every objective,
it would still take a little time to make the journey home.

* * *
All the Fragments of Helheim that had become Heukcheon were loaded into the newly fashioned Heukryeon.
Once the Fragment—that focal point—vanished, the Monsters regained their senses.
Of course, some of them, driven by an inherent hatred of humans, still lunged at Frontdier or Selena, but after Frontdier conducted a few “tests” with his newly acquired Mana, they fled of their own accord.
He set down the Workshop, freed the Dark Organization operatives who had been inside, and reconfirmed their mutual pledge with the Leader.
They had never met; they were simply to complete their mission and depart. He also spoke separately with Lorie, impressing upon her his wishes. Lorie nodded, her face tense with anxiety.
And so Selena and Frontdier, just as they had come, mounted Cassian and rode back toward the Barrier.
On the way back,
“…….”
“…….”
Frontdier found Selena’s prolonged silence behind him somewhat uncomfortable.
After crying herself out, Selena kept her head bowed the whole while, lost in thought.
“……Hey, Selena.”
At last, Frontdier broke the silence first.
“Selena, you helped me a great deal today. I really must repay you somehow—”
“Please forget it.”
Selena spoke suddenly, her voice barely a whisper.
“Forget what, exactly?”
“…….”
“You crying just now?”
“I was not crying.”
What was this.
Even someone who’d shed a single tear watching a sad film would not answer with such shameless insistence.
“And, Frontdier.”
“Mm?”
“Please speak to me as you normally do. This is strange.”
“Normally?”
“……Right now your tone is… far too kind.”
Ah.
At Selena’s point, Frontdier realized his own mistake.
She couldn’t afford to show Selena any weakness; she’d deliberately adopted an imperious manner to establish the hierarchy between them.
She’d believed it would stay that way for life, but now that the tension had eased, that tone somehow wouldn’t come.
‘Or perhaps it never did, not entirely.’
—Selena, thank you.
Just before the Fragment consumed her, the moment those words left Frontdier’s lips.
It wasn’t only Selena who’d changed in that instant—something within Frontdier herself had shifted as well.
“……That’s right.”
But Frontdier decided to slip back into her usual manner, as Selena had suggested.
Sudden changes destabilize a relationship. Even if they were drawing closer, Frontdier and Selena weren’t in a position to allow such things yet.
Returning to how they’d been before these incidents—that served them both.
Selena’s plea to forget her tears came from the same thinking. She too was doing her best in her own way.
……Or perhaps she was simply embarrassed.
“Selena, compose yourself before we arrive.”
“Understood.”
“And wipe away any traces of tears.”
“I wasn’t crying.”
Yes, this was the proper tone for them. Frontdier swayed gently with Cassian’s rhythmic gait and allowed herself that thought.
Yet something still felt incomplete.
“That’s right, actually.”
“Yes?”
“Since this incident has ruined my clothes as well,”
Frontdier glanced back.
For someone supposedly returning to an imperious, commanding tone, her face was far too warm.
“When we go to buy you new clothes, I’ll need to replace mine too.”

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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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