The Academy’s Weapon Replicator - Chapter 47

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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 Weapon Duplicator of the Academy, Episode 47
Chapter 12: The Traitor (1)
Aten rushed forward to check Frontier’s condition.
Panic was only a moment’s indulgence.
She composed herself instantly, her mind settling like still water.
Frontier appeared to be simply unconscious.
But.
‘Her pulse……’
She felt for a pulse, but it was far too faint.
So faint that without extraordinary concentration, one could not detect it at all.
Her breathing was the same.
“I’ll examine her.”
A healer from the Imperial Knight Order approached.
The healer spread her hands, sensing Frontier’s bodily state.
She was reading the interior of the body by channeling Mana through it.
“……This is……”
The healer’s eyes widened in disbelief.
Her gaze was swallowed by despair and terror.
“What is her condition?”
“……Every part of her body is deficient.”
“Deficient, you say?”
“Her heart, lungs, liver, stomach—all her internal organs are lacking. Her bones, nerves, and muscles are all insufficient.”
Insufficient.
Aten recalled what Renzo had said.
—Indeed indeed! Doping, perhaps! Whatever she’s done, that Mana is unbelievable!
Doping.
That’s what Renzo called it.
Certainly, it was impossible to account for such a Mana volume any other way.
How she did it, Aten couldn’t say.
But if this bodily state was the price, it was far too cruel.
“Then what should we do?”
“…….”
“Is recovery possible with Healing Magic?”
“…….”
Even as Aten spoke, the healer simply closed her mouth in difficulty.
“Why won’t you speak?”
Aten’s expression turned cold.
She had not panicked at all.
In times like these, she only grew more composed.
“……Aten. Healing is a means of recovering from wounds. But this person’s only real injury is blunt trauma to the side. Of course it’s serious, but even if we heal it……”
“Even if we heal it?”
“……we cannot restore what is missing.”
At the healer’s words, Aten squeezed her eyes shut.
When she opened them again, she looked at her mother, Philly.
“Then we must take Frontier to the hospital immediately, Mother.”
“……Aten.”
“Hurry. Surgery may not wait.”
“Aten.”
“Let’s go—”
Philly gripped Aten’s shoulder.
“We can’t move her right now.”
“…….”
“You heard what he said—it’s not just her organs, but her muscles, bones, and nerves that are deficient. We don’t know what could happen if we move her.”
Frontier’s body was weaker than an infant’s right now.
The amount of her missing parts was greater than an infant’s, yet she occupied a far larger frame.
Even placed carefully on a stretcher and transported slowly by car, there was no guarantee of safety.
“Even if we did operate, even if everything went perfectly, she would have to live as a severe invalid.”
At Philly’s words, Aten looked at Frontier’s face.
It was that same face she had always known.
Whenever they met in Constelle, it was the face she had always trailed after.
That face, those shoulders, that body.
“……So what am I supposed to do?”
No one answered Aten’s words.
“Your Highness, I’m afraid he…….”
A knight approached Aten.
Aten regarded him with emotionless eyes.
“He did everything in his power to save you, Your Highness. Having rescued the empire’s princess, it is surely the greatest honor for him—”
Crack!
Aten struck the knight’s unfinished consolation away, slapping his cheek without mercy.
Frost gathered on his struck face, cold and bitter.
“Don’t speak nonsense. Frontier didn’t rescue the imperial princess.”
“Y-Your Highness.”
“That’s not what this is.”
Glorious, is it?
Because I’m the princess?
She saved me because Frontier de Roach is the imperial princess?
No. That’s not it.
If that were so, she wouldn’t have treated me so casually.
Like all those countless others, she would have groveled before me, speaking in false courtesy.
But she didn’t.
She didn’t rescue me as the princess.
In her eyes, I was no different from anyone else—just another person.
She saved an ordinary person, that’s all.
That was Frontier’s choice.
Aten dropped to both knees.
She gazed at Frontier with eyes of purest white.
“Your Highness?”
……Royalty stands above the people to protect them.
All those excessive riches and power, all that education built upon them—what were they for?
To save.
That’s your duty, Aten.
Aten’s mana surged upward.
With it, the temperature around her plummeted.
Ice Magic was Aten’s specialty to begin with.
But beyond even that.
As if her own breath would freeze, Aten grew colder and colder still.
“N-No! Your Highness, it’s dangerous!”
The voice of a knight trying to stop her.
She couldn’t hear it.
It was distant, like a voice from across water.
Aten had reached a state beyond ordinary thought.
‘Think.’
Find a way.
What do I need to do to save Frontier?
I’ve never learned Healing Magic.
And besides, healing won’t work.
What’s lost cannot be restored.
‘……But what if it wasn’t truly lost?’
Frontier had amplified her mana.
The backlash cost her vast portions of her body.
In other words, all that matter had been transformed into mana.
The solution wasn’t to heal the wounds.
Just as she had changed her body into mana, now she had to reverse it—transform mana back into body.
Reversion. That was the answer.
She’d never attempted such a thing, and whether it was even possible, she couldn’t say.
Yet somehow, Aten knew with certainty that it could be done.
Aten’s hands rose above Frontier’s form.
With each movement of her hands, the empty air shimmered.
The particles of air were crystallizing, freezing solid.
That cold mana seeped slowly into Frontier’s body.
‘……I see.’
Through that process, Aten understood the state of Frontier’s body.
She had just accomplished a technique that would normally take a healer years of training to master.
By examining her internal condition, Aten could directly perceive how perilous Frontier’s state truly was.
She wasn’t dead.
She was unmistakably alive.
And yet that life’s flame was slowly, steadily dimming.
Missing organs, muscle, blood, and bone.
Everything had withered so drastically that it was now too small to sustain Frontier’s life.
‘All right. If I can just spread the Mana evenly like this…….’
Aten slowly poured Mana into the parts of Frontier’s body that were lost.
The precision of that Mana Manipulation, distributed almost like thread, was breathtaking.
But.
‘……It’s impossible, Aten.’
Philly, watching it unfold, swallowed down a complicated expression.
Even if Aten succeeded in channeling her own Mana with such remarkable control.
Even if Aten truly could convert Mana into physical form.
Knowledge was the barrier.
“……!”
Aten’s fingers trembled.
It was exactly as Philly had thought.
She had succeeded in channeling the Mana, but it ended there.
Aten had an intuition that Reversion might be possible with her ability.
But the unknown cannot be done.
“……Aten…….”
Everyone was watching her.
That cold face twisted with anguish.
Blood trickling from her bitten lower lip.
‘Find it…….’
Find the way, Aten.
You are Royalty.
You are one meant to save people.
‘……No.’
That’s not it.
Having come this far, having reached this point—am I still going to lie to myself?
Not as Royalty.
Just as Frontier saved Aten Terst who was not Royalty,
I want to save Frontier.
I,
Aten Terst myself!
I want to save Frontier de Roach!
……What?
In that moment, she witnessed something.
A sight that was not reality, yet reached only her eyes.
A step forward.
Philly, who had been watching, took a step closer.
She would stop Aten.
Afterward, she would reveal her Foresight to Aten.
That Aten would one day have a future where she could perform Reversion.
Aten would surely come to hate her for it.
For not telling her sooner.
For the possibility that Frontier could have been saved.
Aten, whose life’s purpose had always been to cherish her, would curse her for a long time to come.
But that was all right.
Such hatred—she had steeled herself for it long ago.
“Aten, let go now-”
Philly began to say so, then stopped.
Aten’s gaze was fixed not on Frontier, but on empty air.
Curious about that strange behavior, Philly looked into Aten’s eyes.
And she understood.
What was Aten seeing now?
‘Aten, surely not…!’
-I am a Descendant of Bala, after all.
-Mother was able to do it, or so I’m told.
-I wish my daughters didn’t have this ability.
Philly spoke to Frontier.
The reason Philly could use Foresight was because she was a Descendant of Bala.
Philly’s mother had also been able to wield that Foresight.
Then Aten, her daughter, would be able to as well—!
‘…I see.’
Aten had seen it.
Unlike Philly, who sensed every possible future through instinct, this was different.
The blood of Bala grew thinner with each generation.
What Aten could see now was only herself alone.
Her own future, and nothing more.
‘So that’s how it is.’
She had glimpsed herself standing as a healer at some point in that future,
and she had perceived the knowledge within it.
Aten poured forth her Mana.
Aten’s cold Mana flowed ceaselessly into Frontier.
Within that chill where the air froze and shattered into light, Aten’s eyes gazed upon Frontier warmly.
As if carefully waking someone from sleep.
Frontier, Frontier.
Wake up.
Frontier’s eyes trembled at the corners.
Those eyes opened slowly, and she saw Aten crying and laughing at once.
“…Aten.”
“Frontier.”
“…Why are you laughing, or rather, crying?”
Seeing Frontier offer her usual pointed remark, Aten let out a laugh that was rather unlike her.
“I could see the future.”
“…Aten.”
Frontier exhaled sharply at that answer.
“From the moment we first met until now.”
We really can’t communicate.
* * *
Renzo’s intrusion had triggered emergency protocols throughout Constelle.
All lectures were suspended as damage assessment and cause analysis were underway.
But truthfully, that was merely the surface reason.
There was a far more obvious explanation for why Constelle had halted its classes.
“──There’s a rat in here.”
The Central Conference Room.
Ales, the combat instructor, growled from within the gathering of Constelle’s faculty.
Even Jein, a teacher who constantly clashed with Ales over disagreements, maintained silence.
They were of the same mind.
Jein, in fact, opened her mouth slowly to show her agreement with Ales.
“…Previously, while third-year students were on a professional internship, an outside demon beast infiltrated that location.”
The outside demon beast Frontier had warned Quinnie about.
Even though Quinnie had handled it well, there had still been casualties.
Many teachers had left Constelle to mourn the bereaved families of the deceased and investigate the cause.
Osprit, the principal, was no exception.
“Of all times, Renzo attacked at this moment when a considerable number of teachers were absent.”
“According to reports, Renzo appeared suddenly and attempted to abduct Aten. As if he had simply popped out of nowhere.”
“…Teleportation Magic.”
Teacher Vinkis, who had been listening, made this assessment, and everyone nodded in agreement.
However, Teleportation Magic was not as simple as it sounded.
And if one were attempting to move not mere objects but living beings—people, no less—it became all the more difficult.
“It’s fortunate the student handled it well, or far more catastrophic damage would have occurred.”
Jein said.
Malia, the school nurse, wore a bitter smile.
“You handled that remarkably well.”
Everyone nodded in agreement.
They didn’t know that Frontier had severed Renzo’s arm.
They’d heard a somewhat altered version of events.
During the practical exam, a student named Frontier de Roache had happened to discover Renzo.
She then slipped away and informed Eden and the others, and through swift initial action, they’d thwarted Renzo’s plan.
This was the narrative they understood.
Frontier didn’t want her exploits to become known.
Of course, those present had no choice but to learn the truth.
But she already knew Philly, Aten, and Elin; Eden was naturally tight-lipped by temperament; and she’d entrusted the Imperial Knight Order to Philly.
Having placed the matter in Philly’s hands, there was no reason to expect the details would leak among the knights.
‘Frontier seems to have handled this almost too well.’
Malia reflected.
Though she didn’t know the precise circumstances of how Renzo had infiltrated, he wouldn’t have entered without careful planning.
And considering there was a traitor within these walls, all the more so.
The fact that Frontier had discovered him before he could even begin his plan didn’t quite sit right.
‘Could Frontier be the traitor? ……That’s a stupid thought.’
Malia’s mind raced.
‘But if she meant to stop Renzo, most students would typically call for a teacher.’
Yet among the teachers, not a single one knew of this incident.
So why hadn’t Frontier alerted any of them?
‘……That’s it.’
Somehow, Frontier had already deduced the truth.
That there was a traitor among the teachers.

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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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