The Academy’s Weapon Replicator - Chapter 2

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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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Weapon Replicator of the Academy 2
Chapter 1: The Human Sloth, Frondier (1)
The next day.
A small commotion stirred during class.
“Look, look at that…….”
“It can’t be…….”
Everyone wore expressions of disbelief, their eyes darting between one another in whispers before glancing sideways at me.
“Frondier of House Roache is……!”
Awake!
“…….”
It seemed as though every student’s eyes were saying the same thing.
Had I truly never opened my eyes once during class before, Frondier? That was remarkable in its own way.
“W-well, if we look at the next slide…….”
The teacher’s eyes showed considerable bewilderment at my wakefulness.
But there was no helping it. Father had issued his command.
Fail to rank in the top ten overall grades at Constel, and I would be cast out.
Constel — the school I attended now, this academy, this institution.
Essentially an educational establishment of some kind.
Where other schools focused on building knowledge and refinement, Constel added combat training to fight monsters. Which made it far more grueling and far more difficult.
One had to excel not merely at academics but also as a combatant.
Only by mastering both exceptionally well could one crack the top ten in overall grades.
For Frondier, it was an impossible task.
Now that I thought about it, whenever I played the game, Frondier would vanish without warning — I’d assumed he was simply forgotten, but he must have been disowned instead.
He stayed anyway, knowing disownment awaited him? Did he think it wouldn’t really happen?
Overall grades were a combination of written and practical marks.
With no divine power and no proper magic to speak of, I had to wring every point I could from the written exam. So naturally, I was concentrating in class.
My ultimate goal was to clear the game, of course, but House Roache’s position was too valuable to risk disownment.
The title of a distinguished noble family was one of the few advantages a trash character like Frondier possessed.
Without even that, clearing this game as Frondier would become even more impossible.
‘Setting that aside.’
I was drowsy.
As if Frondier’s habits and his pathetic constitution had taken root in me, an overwhelming sleepiness threatened to drag me under — a body accustomed to slumbering at this hour.
Forcing myself to concentrate was almost unbearably difficult. Worse, I couldn’t make sense of anything written on the blackboard.
I and Frondier — who did nothing but sleep in class — were essentially in the same boat: both utterly lost.
‘……Where.’
Frondier’s skill came to mind.
Weaving.
I wasn’t sure if it would work, but.
I attempted Weaving on the content the teacher had written on the board.
The text imprinted itself clearly in my mind, exactly as it appeared.
Even without understanding the content, it was stored as if I’d taken a photograph.
‘This one’s actually useful.’
On impulse, I stashed the book’s contents in my mental storage as well.
I stopped taking notes. There was no need anymore. Instead, I focused on the teacher’s explanation.
The content written on the board would save itself, and I could review it anytime later.
Once I’d stopped writing, the peculiar stares from those around me faded somewhat.
They seemed to think I’d given up on notes out of laziness.
Even the teacher appeared to relax. That’s more like it, his expression said.
Why was he reacting that way?
* * *
Written exams could be conquered through time and effort, but the real problem was the practical exam.
Without divine power or even a decent skill or magic, Frondier faced an insurmountable wall in combat trials.
All I had to rely on was Weaving, but what could I possibly do with it?
‘A replication that’s invisible and can’t affect reality.’
Frondier’s laziness likely stemmed primarily from this skill. He must have tried every conceivable application already.
Yet he’d found nothing worthwhile and abandoned it — which meant the situation was hopeless.
“……?”
While walking through the corridor, lost in thought about Weaving,
I noticed a woman approaching from the opposite direction.
Whoosh — the sound of leaves brushing past the window.
Hair the color of sunset, eyes large and deep as a lake.
With each step she took, the atmosphere that poured from her gaze drenched the entire landscape.
Without sparing me a glance, she drew slowly closer.
I recognized her instantly.
With a face like that, it would be difficult not to.
Elodie.
Elodie de Iniés Richae.
The child blessed by the Blessing of Five Gods stood before me now.
Elodie was the talent-hoarding character of the Etheus game.
The single phrase “blessed by the Five Gods” was enough to encapsulate her absurdity.
The only shame was that she never became a companion to the protagonist.
In gameplay, no matter how many times the protagonist proposed alliance, she refused. The reason was never explained.
Still, as someone who would later claim a critical role in the protagonist’s army, she was undoubtedly a reliable ally.
Among the diverse cast of characters in Etheus, one of the few named characters who gave the player any sense of security.
But that was all when I was the protagonist.
I am Frondier.
Elodie and I would be strangers, and I wouldn’t hear anything kind from her.
There were plenty of students who disliked Frondier. My grades were abysmal, my conduct was negligent.
A lazy, immature fool who hid behind the name of a prestigious house and did nothing. That was Frondier’s reputation, and it was accurate.
Elodie, meanwhile—a model of diligence and virtue, a textbook for other students. From her perspective, I was nothing but an object of revulsion.
And since I wasn’t the protagonist anyway,
I would simply slip past quietly.
“…Frondier.”
I tried to pass quietly, but she called me to a halt.
I looked at Elodie.
Her eyes, full of anger, turned toward me.
“Don’t you have something to say to me?”
I had something to say.
You know what I mean?
I couldn’t say it aloud, so I stood silent, and I heard the grinding of my teeth.
“…How is it that I—”
The moment Elodie began to murmur something,
something flew past the window to her right.
A baseball, straight ahead—
Without thinking, my hand moved. It was almost simultaneous with her hand moving.
Crash!
The windowpane shattered as the baseball hit. Glass shards rained down, and before them, I—
Frondier’s unique skill
Weaving
Workshop Model 3
Grade – Common
Iron Shield
I wove forward an Iron Shield that the Frondier before me had stored away beforehand.
Only then did I understand.
‘Idiot.’
This was a phantom, so blocking it wouldn’t do any good—
Whoosh!
In the moment that thought crossed my mind, the baseball and glass shards were engulfed in flame all at once.
As if the very force of impact had been consumed by the fire, they lost all momentum and scattered like flower petals.
‘Wow…’
This wasn’t something I had done.
Elodie’s right hand was extended toward the glass shards, and her eyes and hair had turned red. In an instant, she had burned it all away.
The glass shards and baseball consumed by Elodie’s flame lost their force and fell.
Just as a few fragments of glass were about to strike or graze her clothes,
Ping!
“Huh?”
“…What?”
She and I voiced the same confusion.
The baseball and glass shards ricocheted away in midair.
Her entire body and my hands—not a single shard had made contact; everything had missed.
‘It wasn’t just bouncing back into empty air. My shield…….’
The shield had blocked the glass shards. My shield—which should have been nothing but fantasy.
“……Um, thank you. Frondier. I don’t know how you did it, but…….”
Elodie didn’t understand.
Of course she couldn’t see my shield—it didn’t exist in her eyes.
Yet she was thanking me anyway. That spoke to her integrity.
“But still! You saw it too, right? Even if you hadn’t blocked it, my flames would have—”
Whatever else she chattered on about after that barely registered. My mind was elsewhere entirely.
“……Hey, are you listening? This is kind of embarrassing.”
I replayed the moment in my head once more.
My shield had definitely blocked the glass window and the baseball.
“Could you at least say something?”
That meant Weaving wasn’t purely illusion. Given the right conditions, it could affect reality.
I didn’t know what those conditions were yet. But knowing that interference was possible—that mattered more than anything.
“Hey, you don’t have to ignore me like that!”
A small thrill ran through me.
I clenched my fists and walked down the corridor, one step after another.
It felt like I’d found a faint glimmer of hope in what had seemed like a hopeless game.
Sunlight caught my face for a moment, sharp and bright.
“Hey!!!”
* * *
“Ow.”
I’d taken another baseball to the head. I rubbed my skull and picked up the ball that had rolled to the side, still cradling my aching head.
“I could have sworn that would work.”
I was testing Weaving now, trying different things.
That barrier blocking the shards had to be the shield I’d woven.
At the time, I’d thought—
What if this skill is so incredible that when the caster is in danger, the illusion becomes real?
To test it, I’d woven a shield and thrown a baseball at myself. As the ball fell toward my head, I positioned the shield upward.
……But nothing like that happened.
The baseball passed cleanly through the shield and hit my head.
Well, if the game had been that convenient, I’d have beaten it long ago.
“So how do I make it work in reality?”
The fact that it blocked the glass shards was real. I was certain of that.
That whole situation was proof that my Weaving had manifested in reality.
But I couldn’t figure out how.
“Ugh, I’m exhausted.”
I slumped halfway into a chair, feeling the weight of fatigue.
It wasn’t just my mood—my body was genuinely worn out.
Was this the backlash from overusing Weaving?
“But it doesn’t even manifest in reality. Why is it draining me like this?”
I muttered the complaint to myself.
……Wait a minute.
Why am I exhausted?
What’s this strange fatigue?
The questions lined up one after another in my mind.
I sat up from where I’d been lying back.
“……Mana?”
In the game Etheus, magic and skills exist, which means Mana naturally exists too.
I must have it as well, now that I’m Frondier.
But since I’m not native to this world, I don’t know what Mana feels like.
However, if my fatigue right now is indeed from Mana depletion……
Then ‘Weaving’ is a skill that consumes Mana.
In other words, it’s closer to magic.
‘Think back. In Etheus, what was Mana? What was the concept behind magic?’
Magic in Etheus isn’t a matter of substance.
It’s a matter of phenomenon.
Whether you cast fire, launch ice spears, or raise earthen walls—none of it can persist in reality indefinitely.
Once the caster cancels the spell or exhausts their Mana, everything vanishes.
A wildfire caused by natural means will keep burning until there’s nothing left to burn or consume, but a magical flame created by a mage disappears the moment their Mana runs dry, even if it’s spread to form a real wildfire.
So when I realized that Frondier’s Weaving couldn’t affect reality, I felt disappointed yet oddly reassured.
Magic might seem omnipotent at first glance, but it has definite limits.
It can burn, freeze, and destroy.
But it cannot make something out of nothing.
Not even a replica.
‘I need to think differently. The whole premise is flawed—trying to create something in empty space. It’s impossible. I can’t conjure a shield.’
What I need isn’t matter.
Phenomenon.
When a mage summons fire, they’re creating the ‘phenomenon of burning.’
With a sword, the ‘phenomenon of cutting.’
With a shield, the ‘phenomenon of blocking.’
Whoosh—
I tossed the baseball up into the air.
The moment it began falling toward my head,
Frondier’s Unique Skill
Weaving
Armory Third Pattern
Rank – Common
Iron Shield
Not creating the shield itself.
Creating the ‘phenomenon of a shield blocking an attack.’
For only one instant.
Clang!
The sound was light, and the baseball ricocheted off the shield, its trajectory altered as it fell away.
“…It works.”
In that single moment of blocking, it manifests in reality.
Even if it’s only a fleeting instant, reality is reality.
I trembled with a small surge of elation.

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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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