The Academy’s Weapon Replicator - Chapter 26

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

The Academy’s Weapon Duplicator, Chapter 26
Part 8: Deception
The first thing he threw was a Short Sword.
The next, judging by his throwing stance, was some variety of spear.
What he wielded after closing distance was, most likely, a Two-Handed Sword.
Elin was watching Frondieur fight now. Watching it again and again.
Through that countless repetition, she could gradually discern the true nature of Frondieur’s invisible weapons—one after another. She could hazily grasp their type, their length, their weight.
And then, last of all.
That blade with which Frondieur had cut down the golem.
That one sword alone wasn’t transparent—Elin could see it clearly with her own eyes.
Frondieur hadn’t even used an Aura, and his technique in cutting it down still bore the marks of clumsiness, yet he’d sliced through the golem as though it were nothing.
The weapon itself must have been of a different order entirely.
And yet, somehow.
It seemed like she’d seen it somewhere before—
“Elin, Elin!”
“……!”
Elin’s eyes snapped open. She was in the classroom.
Giselle, her classmate, was waving her hand back and forth in front of Elin’s face.
“What’s gotten into you? You were the one who only slept while walking, and now you’re napping in class. Or is this actually the normal thing? Should I be relieved?”
“I wasn’t sleeping.”
She was.
Elin, whose tolerance for sleep had grown inured through constant practice, had reached a stage where she could, remarkably, dream whatever she desired.
With recent events, it was even possible for her to replay her memories this way, going over them again.
In any case, Frondieur was a truly mysterious person.
Lazy, without ambition or drive, talented only in mediocrity—just another incompetent coasting on his family name.
……Or so the rumors had certainly made it sound.
Though rumors were never to be trusted, could they possibly be this far off the mark?
What part of Frondieur had the rumor-spreaders actually seen?
“How’s your side?”
“……Ah, it’s fine.”
As she answered Giselle, Elin checked her own ribs.
Still bandaged, but there was no pain that would interfere with daily activity. Of course, that was by her own standards.
She had avoided the golem’s spear thrust, though it had still left quite a deep cut.
“I swear, sleeping all day like this and yet recovering so quickly in this department. I can’t tell if my stamina is good or bad.”
“My sleepwalking is, after all, a method of energy conservation—”
“Yeah, yeah. I know.”
Giselle waved her hand dismissively, tired of hearing Elin’s explanation.
Elin felt a little embarrassed and fell silent. Had she really said it that many times?
“No matter how much it was a friend’s situation, you were far too reckless going alone. You should have called for help or reported it to a teacher. I’m just glad it worked out.”
“……There wasn’t time for that. Edwin’s condition looked too dangerous.”
Even as she spoke, Elin felt a twinge of guilt.
As Giselle had said, the other students at Constelle believed Elin had resolved the entire incident single-handedly.
The truth was, there had been another person, an even greater contributor than herself. But Elin hadn’t mentioned it.
This was entirely at the request of that contributor—Frondieur.
-There’s no need to lie, but please don’t go around telling people that I was there that day. It just complicates matters. Besides, it could create misunderstandings with Edwin and others.
Since he’d put it that way, Elin had simply refrained from mentioning Frondieur’s presence of her own accord.
……Could it be that Frondieur had been hiding his accomplishments like this all along?
……Could it really be?
“So you need to get a new sword?”
“Yeah. I’m planning to look into it today.”
After the fight with the golem, Elin’s blade had been destroyed.
It was because of the technique for disarming an opponent—the Falling Spear.
Supposedly, the original Falling Spear from Ashe doesn’t even leave a scratch on the opponent’s weapon.
But the Falling Spear the golem had used was far too crude and rough, and her sword had already been tattered by that point.
……Being beaten by such a clumsy technique was rather annoying.
But she’d grown too far from the blacksmith to whom she owed the original favor.
Both Elin and her younger sibling Aster had come all this long distance to enroll at Constelle.
So she’d need to find a weapon shop or blacksmith nearby in Constelle.
Giselle grinned mischievously.
“Want me to come along? I have a feeling you’d be perfect prey for getting swindled when shopping for weapons.”
“……Ugh, no, never mind.”
Truth was, she’d meant to ask him first, but when he comes at her like that, asking feels wrong.
Right—she’d have to see with her own eyes and decide.
Swindled? Who did he take her for?
* * *
“A sword, you see, is a companion you’ll carry for life. Surely you’d want to choose carefully?”
“……That’s certainly true, but then again—”
“Precisely. Which is why you really ought to use one of our Bippa Steel blades—”
The room tilted around her.
Elin’s eyes were spinning as the merchant poured his endless pitch over her, one grand explanation after another.
At first, she’d been inspecting the swords carefully, studying them herself with genuine care.
But then the merchant had sidled closer, recommending this weapon and that, each one pricier than the last, until here she was—drowning in his words.
The momentum, the flow of it all, was sweeping her along. She could feel herself being herded toward the purchase. And a small voice whispered inside her: *This is fine. This is worth it.*
The decision to buy had already been made; what remained was only the justification she’d construct to convince herself.
The merchant, sharp-eyed as they come, caught the shift and deepened his fervor.
“What do you say? A true blade of highest-grade Bippa Steel doesn’t haggle on price. But once you hold it, you’ll have a steadfast companion—one that guards not just your safety, but the very lives of those you cherish—”
“Bippa Steel, you say?”
A voice cut through the merchant’s words.
The merchant’s head snapped around, his face brightening into an easy smile for the man who’d interrupted.
“Ah yes, indeed. Steel forged from ore mined in the Eternal Glacier Basteres up north, refined through our special process.”
The man gazed at the blade without acknowledging the explanation, as though the merchant’s words were merely background noise.
And Elin, startled, stared blankly at the man’s face.
It was Frondieur.
“And what of you, friend? If you work with a blade, surely this is exactly what you need—”
Frondieur laughed. Elin couldn’t tell what struck him as funny about the merchant’s pitch, but he spoke.
“Cubic zirconia presented as diamond.”
“……?? I beg your pardon?”
The merchant’s face went blank for a moment at Frondieur’s flat remark, then his brow furrowed. Elin, listening, startled and looked at the blade again.
That meant—this was counterfeit?
“What are you doing here, starting trouble like that? Are you saying this is fake?”
“Yes. This isn’t Bippa Steel—it’s base metal, impure and poorly refined, nothing more.”
“Base metal? What?! You little—hold on! You have proof?! Where are you getting this nonsense—”
The merchant’s rage shot through the roof, his indignation filling the shop. Frondieur, standing mere paces away, remained perfectly calm.
At that point, honestly, his composure was almost worthy of respect.
Proof, he murmured to himself peacefully enough, and then—
—he took the supposedly magnificent blade in one hand, held it level, and with the other hand swept down through the air before it, a sharp whisking motion.
Clang!
Somehow, impossibly, his palm passed through empty space above the blade and produced a ringing crack.
And the sword shattered in half.
“Ah—aah!”
The merchant staggered backward in shock.
It wasn’t the fact that the blade had broken—it was that he’d broken it with his bare hands. To any ordinary eye, that would be the stunning part. Elin, of course, understood the method somewhat, but she knew better than to speak here.
She kept her mouth firmly shut.
“If you advertise a blade like this as Bippa Steel, the Smissind won’t let it slide.”
“I, I didn’t know! I’m just a merchant—I receive goods and introduce them, that’s all!”
“I see. So you and your suppliers have all committed fraud. They’ll all need to be arrested.”
“That’s… that’s even possible?”
“Absolutely. The name Loarh is enough.”
The moment the name Loarh left his lips, the merchant fell to his knees. His entire torso crumpled downward.
“My sincerest apologies. The fault is mine alone. I’ve done this a few times before, made decent profit from similar deceptions. But no one else was involved.”
Without being asked, he was confessing to every past crime.
Frondieur shrugged and looked toward Elin.
“What should we do, then?”
“……Me?”
“Of course. You were nearly swindled, after all, senior.”
Elin’s eyes darted about, unsure how to respond.
So this was it—she really had almost been duped.
“I suppose we report him?”
Nearly swindled or not, Elin was merciless when it came to crime.
She wasn’t weak—deception hadn’t trapped her because she lacked resolve.
Simply put, I didn’t know any better.
A groan of despair drifted from the merchant.
* * *
“But why are you looking for a sword? Don’t you already have one?”
“It’s broken. Damaged by the golem’s Falling Spear.”
After leaving the weapon shop, the two walked down a brick-paved street.
Rubanu, a district near Constelle famous for its diverse shops and food stalls.
Frondieur bit into a Twin Egg Bread, a specialty of Rubanu, and tilted his head thoughtfully.
“By the Falling Spear…?”
“Yeah. Turns out the golem’s Falling Spear wasn’t a fully-formed one.”
Frondieur seemed to be considering something at those words.
A murmur emerged—so an incomplete Falling Spear destroys the opponent’s weapon. That must be it.
“What about you? Your weapon was knocked away by the Falling Spear too, wasn’t it? Though you managed to catch it again.”
Elin recalled the weapon Frondieur had displayed at the end.
Come to think of it, something seemed odd. That weapon should have been damaged by the Falling Spear, yet Frondieur showed no sign of concern whatsoever.
“Ah… well, mine was already in poor condition from the start. After that incident, it deteriorated even further, and I wondered why, but I had no idea it was because of the Falling Spear.”
Frondieur took a moment but delivered a plausible answer.
Elin recalled the appearance of that sword.
True, the design and casting method did look antiquated.
The more she thought about it, the more she had the strange sensation of having seen that sword somewhere before.
“Still, it’s better to bring your sword to a trustworthy blacksmith rather than a weapon shop.”
“I would have, but since coming to Constelle, I don’t have those connections.”
Elin spoke matter-of-factly, but as her circumstances had become this dire, she realized she was in a more difficult position than she’d thought.
If she was in such straits, her younger brother Aster must be facing something similar.
She needed to find some solution.
“Then, would you like me to introduce you to someone?”
Frondieur spoke up.
“You know a blacksmith?”
“Yes. Oh, though not exactly an introduction—I’m not acquainted with them.”
Frondieur said something strange.
“You know a blacksmith but aren’t acquainted with them?”
“Well, there are circumstances too complicated to explain. But they’re truly trustworthy.”
Elin deliberated for a moment. But the deliberation was brief. She decided to trust Frondieur.
After all, if she didn’t, she might get swindled again. Frondieur, who had just caught a con artist red-handed, was far more reliable.
“Then I won’t stand on ceremony.”
“Think nothing of it.”
Frondieur answered curtly, as though it were truly no great matter.
Elin gazed at his profile for a moment.
Frondieur’s face was certainly languid. He looked sleepy.
If I saw myself sleeping with my own eyes, would this be the expression? The thought crossed Elin’s mind.
“…Frondieur.”
“Yes?”
“Why are you helping me?”
“…”
“Why is it like this every time—last time and now.”
Elin had asked before. Why did you save me? In his final moments before losing consciousness, Frondieur had looked at her and said she was someone who couldn’t be allowed to die.
She still didn’t understand what he meant by that.
If she thought about it in the simplest, most one-dimensional way, she ended up with a rather childish conclusion.
The favor Frondieur was showing her might be—
“…You know,”
Frondieur opened his mouth. He gazed at Elin quietly, seeming to deliberate over what to say.
Even in that pause of consideration, it was as if Frondieur saw Elin as—
“Like a child abandoned by the water.”
“…What?”
“You have sleepwalking.”
“…No, that’s not sleepwalking—it’s a sleep technique I developed to conserve energy in preparation for emergencies, and—”
“Just now you nearly fell for a scam.”
“There’s nothing I can say to that.”
Elin’s honest admission made Frondieur laugh.
“I don’t have many people I worry about. Everyone just worries over me.”
Now that I think about it, am I really the one being worried over by that slow-moving fool Frondieur?
Me—the swordmaster called the finest in Constelle?
……It’s rather humiliating.
“That worry of yours is a misunderstanding. Just now, it’s because I haven’t seen this happen often, but I’ll adapt quickly, and even when I’m asleep while walking, if something dangerous comes up I’ll wake on my own, and I’m more careful than you think.”
“A most apt observation—that’s what one says at times like these.”
Frondieur answered playfully.
That was clearly him turning back the very response Elin had given to the merchant moments before.
……Wait.
Then that means—?
“……How long have you been watching me? Since I was talking to that merchant?”
“From when the merchant asked, ‘Customer, that sword is fine, but what about this one here?'”
Almost from the beginning.
“So you were just watching the whole time while I was being talked into things by that person?”
“Ah—well then, regarding the blacksmith, I should contact you separately—”
“Aren’t you going to answer properly?”

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————