The Academy’s Weapon Replicator - Chapter 22

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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 22
Chapter 6: The Golem (3)
……And so it came to pass.
Until nightfall, Edwin concealed himself in the brush nearby.
No sign of pursuit had yet stirred within Constel.
He steadied his racing pulse and waited with grim persistence.
Evening arrived at last—that quiet dark when students had departed for their homes.
Any longer here and he risked discovery by a passing instructor or porter. Edwin decided to move.
“Follow me.”
The ground split open, earth spilling loose as the Golem that lay buried beneath hauled itself upright.
He ought to think about cleaning that filthy frame, but such concerns could wait.
Edwin pressed forward with caution, eyes alert to every shadow.
Better a little noise than to risk an encounter at all, he judged.
The judgment proved sound—until he passed before the Training Hall.
“……!”
Edwin saw someone emerge from the Training Hall entrance.
He glanced about for a place to hide, but found none.
‘Wait. Hold on.’
Edwin focused his vision on the figure stepping out from the hall.
It was Ellin.
Her eyes were open, but her face was blank, her gaze distant and unfocused.
‘……She’s asleep.’
Ellin’s somnambulism was notorious throughout Constel. As her friend, Edwin naturally knew of it.
She herself claimed it wasn’t somnambulism but a deliberate overlap of sleep and action for efficiency, though to everyone else it looked the same.
‘Lucky. I’ll slip past carefully.’
When she reached that state, she rarely woke on her own. She could snap to awareness when a real threat presented itself, but there was no reason to disturb her now.
Edwin held his breath. He muffled his footfalls and drifted slowly away from her path.
The Golem made more noise than he did, so he kept it still. With any luck, they wouldn’t collide.
Step by step, she drew closer. Edwin stood frozen—even his eyes unmoving—as she approached.
Ellin advanced slowly toward where Edwin stood,
and passed right by him.
‘……Phew.’
He exhaled a breath that made no sound.
‘Good. From here to the Laboratory should be quick.’
Edwin was about to move again
when her departing silhouette caught at the edge of his vision.
He went rigid.
Ellin had
stopped.
Her gait, which should have continued forward—
that sleep from which she should never wake—
had halted, as if she sensed a threat where none was meant to exist.
Her back had turned, her body pivoting aside.
Her head tilted slightly as a voice spilled out, slow and dreamlike.
“……Blood. I smell blood.”
“!”
Edwin swallowed hard.
Focus snapped back into Ellin’s eyes. They went sharp and cold.
Her gaze locked directly onto Edwin.
“……You.”
Ellin looked at Edwin’s face.
The darkness obscured the details.
Yet the frost settling over her expression was unmistakable—he could read it in the very air that surrounded her.
“What did you do?”
Edwin didn’t answer. Instead, he stepped backward.
Her eyes narrowed at the sight.
“What’s that beside you?”
Ellin took a step forward, closer to Edwin.
Her right hand was already on the hilt of the sword at her hip.
Her gaze swept across the Golem standing at Edwin’s side.
“Is that yours?”
Premium metal, an exceptionally high level of craftsmanship, Mana rippling across its surface.
Edwin couldn’t possibly have made something like this.
It wasn’t a matter of his knowledge or skill—it was the equipment and the funds.
“It smells like blood.”
Ellin’s stride was unhesitating.
As the distance between her and Edwin closed, she glimpsed fear flickering across his face.
Surely not.
“Did you kill someone with that?”
“No, no, I didn’t!”
“Then why are you cringing like a coward?”
Hostility emanated from Ellin’s frame.
Whatever Edwin had done wrong, Ellin could usually forgive it. She was his friend; she trusted him.
But if he’d killed someone, if the murder had been carried out using a Golem, and if he was trying to hide it—
“Edwin. I’m asking you again.”
Ellin drew her sword.
The blade reflected the moonlight with crystalline clarity, as cold as the fire in her eyes.
“What did you do with it?”
“I… I only thought about it.”
Edwin’s gaze darted about as though fleeing from something.
“I just thought it couldn’t be discovered, but this Golem went ahead on its own and those Aktober bastards—”
“—it killed them on its own?”
“No! It didn’t kill them!”
“Can you be certain of that?”
Edwin fell silent.
Ellin’s eyes turned to ice.
“Whose Golem is it?”
……
“You took something that wasn’t yours, used it to assault people, fled without even checking if they were dead, and then tried to hide the Golem away in secret?”
Each word from Ellin struck Edwin like a blade.
His lips trembled. He had no defense.
“Have you truly fallen so far, Edwin?”
“Don’t— don’t speak to me that way!”
The Golem lunged toward Ellin. It swung the spear it held with both hands in a horizontal arc.
Ellin stepped back with fluid grace.
“Edwin.”
……
Edwin stood frozen, staring in shock.
If that blow had connected, Ellin would surely be dead.
Did I… did I really want that?
Even the shadow at his feet, painted in moonlight, seemed to spin. That darkness crawling up from below, invading him from within.
“So the Golem really does move just from your thoughts. Excessively so, it seems.”
The attack had actually steadied Ellin’s mind.
Her understanding shifted.
—That Golem isn’t right.
Edwin truly wouldn’t wish to kill her. Even if such a thought crossed his mind, an attack like this wouldn’t be his style.
If that expression wasn’t an act, then he was alarmed by the Golem’s movements himself.
“Edwin, stop the Golem.”
“What, what?”
“Shut it down. You don’t want to make any more mistakes, do you?”
“Yes, yes, that’s right.”
Edwin came to his senses.
Right. He could deactivate it. If he did, the Golem wouldn’t move on its own as though it had read his thoughts again.
Why hadn’t he thought of that until now?
Edwin reached out toward the Golem—
—and still not quite himself, he looked at Ellin.
“Ellin.”
“What?”
“Are you going to tell someone?”
……
Ellin found Edwin’s appearance so utterly foreign that she was almost bewildered by it.
Where had the righteous, strong-willed Edwin she knew gone?
Even if he had been somewhat timid at times, so considerate that his posture naturally lowered, he had never wavered—never abandoned his principles.
Where was the Edwin who wouldn’t have spared a glance at anything that deviated even slightly from what was right?
“……Edwin.”
“Answer me!”
“…….”
“If this Golem killed someone—if it actually killed them—I’m finished. Just stealing a Golem is dangerous enough, but if it killed someone, I’d be completely ruined. Done for.”
Edwin had already withdrawn his hand from the Golem.
He had no intention of shutting it down.
Instead, Edwin was trying to persuade Ellin.
“Just… pretend you didn’t see. Please.”
“…….”
“We’re friends, aren’t we? You know what happens if this gets out. Don’t make me into a murderer.”
Ellin closed her eyes slowly, deeply.
Ah.
So Edwin truly has changed.
“Whether you’re a murderer or not isn’t for me to decide. You don’t even know if those people are truly dead.”
“Right? So—”
“And,”
Ellin gripped her sword and took her stance. There was no point in talking further.
“It’s not your decision to make either, Edwin.”
With those words, Ellin’s presence shifted entirely into combat.
Edwin stared at her in a daze.
Until moments ago, Ellin had been cold, yes, but at least she was venting anger at her friend.
That was the immature coldness of a friend rebuking and offering counsel to another friend.
But now all those personal emotions had vanished from Ellin. She was looking at Edwin as an enemy and nothing more.
“……Ellin!!!”
As Edwin cried out, the Golem responded by stamping the ground.
Its massive body flew toward Ellin like an arrow.
A sharp thrust.
Ellin dodged it and searched for an opening.
‘……Tsk.’
The Golem’s spearwork was precise.
The gap that should have followed the thrust vanished the moment she evaded it.
‘A Golem, as expected. It doesn’t rely on its own durability or defenses. It simply executes whatever commands were input into it.’
If the Golem had been a living creature, it would have easily exploited such openings. Sturdy bodies typically depend on that confidence.
‘My chances of winning are slim. This Golem is probably the work of some Master.’
Ellin’s swordsmanship ranked among the very top in all of Constel; because of that, her younger brother Aster had never beaten her in a mock fight.
So her swordsmanship was not inferior to the Golem’s spearwork.
It was merely a difference in raw power.
If that Golem simply devoted itself to defense, it would easily parry Ellin’s Mana-infused attacks without effort.
Even if she managed to pierce an opening, whether she could deal proper damage was another question.
‘I need to end this quickly.’
While she still had Mana reserves.
She had to create a fatal strike with a single attack.
Boom!
The Golem pursued Ellin with heavy, thunderous steps.
Having committed to her strategy, Ellin switched to a defensive posture.
She would find an opening within the Golem’s assault and aim for one attack.
The Golem pursued Ellin relentlessly as she wove between its strikes.
Every time it took a step, the Golem flew through the air—a sight that would tire anyone who watched it.
But if the opponent moves strictly according to its programming,
“There.”
Ellin dropped her blade slightly away from her body.
An opening created deliberately.
An opening far too obvious for any living opponent to miss, but a Golem would certainly attack it. That would be what it was programmed to do.
With a whistling rush of wind across her shoulder, the Golem brought its spear down from above.
Ellin angled her blade forward, meeting the spear’s flat against her sword’s edge.
The moment shaft and blade connected, her eyes blazed.
Evans House Martial Art.
Ellin’s exclusive swordsmanship.
Ilsa.
Her blade wreathed in Aura, it climbs the spear shaft and draws a perfect line.
At the end of this trajectory lies the Golem’s neck.
A single straight line extending to that point, clean and precise as if measured by ruler.
‘That’s it—!’
Clang!
But the trajectory broke mid-flight.
Ellin lost her grip on the sword.
A technique that lightens the force channeled into the spear, then simultaneously generates rotation and impact to nullify the opponent’s attack—something nearly mystical. Ellin had witnessed it before.
‘…This technique belongs to Aster…’
The thought lasted only an instant.
Disarmed, she had no way to defend against the Golem’s strike.
The Golem withdrew its spear quickly, thrusting forward as if to cleave the moment itself—toward Ellin.
“Ugh!”
Ellin wrenched her body with all her strength.
A long gash tore across her ribs. The force sent her tumbling across the ground. The scent of earth gave way to the taste of blood flooding her mouth.
“Ellin! Surrender!!”
Edwin’s voice carried from a distance.
Damn it.
A friend you’d trusted suddenly shows his teeth. The mere fact of it swept away all the sleepless nights she’d been suffering through.
And her side ached.
“Ellin!!”
As if responding to Edwin’s cry, the Golem approached slowly.
The spear’s point aimed downward, toward the woman sprawled on the ground.
When the Golem stood over her, the spear was already poised above like a guillotine blade.
‘Edwin. I never thought you’d come to this.’
If he truly killed Ellin here—
then Edwin would cross a threshold from which there was no return.
Foolish boy.
The Golem released its spear without waiting for Edwin’s command.
Ellin closed her eyes.
—Clang. Suddenly, a metallic ring pierced the air.
“…What?”
When Ellin opened her eyes, the Golem’s spear lay embedded in the ground, having missed her entirely.
Why?
For a moment, Ellin couldn’t make sense of it.
Had someone disrupted the spear’s trajectory? How?
It seemed something must have been thrown—yet nothing was visible nearby. The Golem itself appeared equally bewildered.
The Golem’s gaze shifted toward something,
and—Smack!
its jaw snapped upward.
Crack!
Clang!
With each harsh metallic sound, the Golem’s head jerked and swayed.
As if struck repeatedly by something.
Something invisible to Ellin’s eyes raked across the Golem’s face in rapid succession.
“What—what is this! Golem! Come to me!”
Edwin, unsettled by the inexplicable assault, called the Golem to his side.
The Golem leaped and took position beside Edwin.
Then, from a distance, an unfamiliar voice.
“Hah, the distance has improved. Training bears fruit.”
Ellin turned toward the voice.
A man stood there.
His shoulders heaved as if from haste, and his breath came rough beneath those first words.
Eyes catching the moonlight met hers.
A reassuring smile. That small laugh lit the evening darkness.
‘…Ah.’
Even as her mind registered how ill-suited the thought was for such a perilous moment.
Ellin found herself lost in thought.
‘I always knew we’d have to meet someday.’
And here it was, happening like this.
Frontier de Loach.

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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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