The Academy’s Weapon Replicator - Chapter 61

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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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Academy Weaponsmith 61
Chapter 16: Assault (6)
In a rush of sound, Chimera surged past Frontdier and reached Philly, skidding to a halt right before her.
──Chimera’s legs had ceased moving long before its body did. It simply slid forward on the momentum of its charge until it stopped short of Philly.
“……A lie.”
At Elissia’s murmur beside her, Philly felt the same. She couldn’t deny it.
Philly stared at Chimera’s left side. A wound, grotesquely long and gaping. Split open along Chimera’s torso by exactly as much as Frontdier’s blade had cut.
That simple, undeniable fact chilled her to the bone.
“Well then.”
Frontdier’s dry voice. Elissia swallowed hard with a slight gasp. Her eyes, fixed on him, brimmed with terror.
“Elissia.”
Still casual, still disrespectful in his tone. Yet she didn’t think to correct him—she only stepped back a pace.
Frontdier’s lazy face looked different to her now.
“Did your conversation with your mother end well?”
“I—I… that is… no……”
Elissia faltered over her words. Her lips trembled despite herself.
Her mind spun frantically, but nothing coherent would come out.
Which made sense—Frontdier must have been the one who brought Philly here. Empty excuses wouldn’t work.
He’d already failed to persuade Philly, so a man like this would see through any lie.
“Philly, what becomes of Elissia?”
“……Death, I imagine.”
Philly spoke in a flat, measured tone.
All her other crimes might be forgiven, but she tried to kill the Empress. There was no other possible outcome.
“She won’t die easy. She’ll suffer enough to wish death would come.”
Elissia shuddered. Frontdier glanced at her without expression.
“Then, as a mother, wouldn’t you show mercy one last time?”
“What do you mean?”
When Philly asked, Frontdier opened his palm. Black droplets gathered there. As his hand closed, they solidified into a dagger.
Philly and Elissia watched this impossible phenomenon—no magic, yet utterly inexplicable—in stunned silence.
Frontdier held the dagger out to Philly.
“Use this. Mind the blade.”
“What is this?”
“A dagger laced with Lethal Poison. The slightest touch ensures death.”
Philly took the dagger and swallowed.
So this was what Frontdier meant by mercy.
End your daughter’s suffering painlessly.
With your own hand. With this blade.
“I told you, didn’t I—that I wouldn’t tell you who truly did it. That you would come to know.”
“……Yes, you did.”
“The same applies now. What you do with Elissia—that’s your choice to make.”
Philly stood motionless, still holding the dagger.
Her face was blank, unreadable. Her thoughts lay hidden. And that uncertainty terrified Elissia.
“……Mother.”
Elissia forced the word out, her voice strained. Philly turned to look at her.
“Elissia, you know this too, don’t you?”
“……”
“The Empire is hell for you now.”
Elissia bowed her head.
It was true.
Elissia had undeniable evidence against her, and two witnesses—one of them being the Empress, who outranked her, her own mother.
A living death. That was all that remained for her in the Empire.
The ambition she once harbored, to stand above that Empire and look down upon its people, had scattered like ashes.
“……Just tell me one thing, Mother.”
Speaking softly, Elissia sounded younger. Or perhaps she simply sounded her true age.
“Did you love Aten more than me?”
“……”
“Is that why you kept Aten in the foreground, why you cultivated the family’s image through her?”
At Elissia’s words, Philly closed her eyes.
She remembered. Just as Elissia said, she had made most of her public appearances alongside Aten.
She could not forget something young Aten had said back then.
I hate it, Mother.
Being used as your symbol.
What do you think of me? Do you think of me as your daughter?
If you don’t love me, then I….
Politics, after all, is the art of dealing with people.
Philly had thrown herself into that arena from childhood and survived it.
Everyone assumed her daughters would naturally manage the same. That they could.
But what Philly had done for her daughters — one envied, and the other saw as using her as a tool.
Bringing Aten to the forefront came from a conviction that it was the soundest judgment.
She believed Aten was optimal in every regard: her beauty, her abilities, her character.
Yet just as certainly, it would be Elissia who would inherit the throne.
Just as she had wielded Aten’s image without hesitation.
Just as she entrusted the empire to Elissia without the slightest doubt.
“Elissia. I’ve always told you this.”
Philly spoke. A sorrowful smile crossed her face — one she showed to no one else.
Philly was always like this before her daughters. She tried to show them something beyond politics, something honest.
She believed that alone would convey her sincerity.
“I love you all differently.”
Elissia’s eyes flickered at those words.
Each time she closed and opened them, tears glistened in her gaze.
As tears began to fall, Elissia squeezed her eyes shut. They leaked through anyway, streaming down her cheeks. Her shoulders trembled, quivering as she lifted her face.
Elissia had made her choice.
Philly slowly raised the hand holding the dagger. Even Frontdier could see that hand trembling. He could not fathom the heart of a mother about to kill her own daughter.
Yet if this was the gentlest way to send Elissia off — then perhaps Philly was doing what was right.
There was a way for Elissia not to die.
If everything that happened in this tower were hidden.
Elissia would not die.
Though she had committed numerous grave crimes, she was the First Princess of the Empire.
Of course, this assumed Constellation Academy had handled the monster attack response well.
Both Philly and Elissia herself knew this well.
But Elissia had not spoken of it.
She had made no attempt to escape.
She had chosen death of her own accord.
She had chosen to repent her own sins.
Philly placed the blade’s edge over Elissia’s collarbone. Then she pushed. The tip made only the smallest wound in Elissia’s skin, and a single dewdrop of blood beaded at the end.
Beyond that point, strength would not enter her hand.
“…What, Mother.”
Elissia felt the sensation of the wound and laughed, her eyes barely open.
“It doesn’t even hurt.”
And so.
With those simple, hollow last words.
Elissia fell.
“…!”
Philly watched, stunned.
A dagger bearing Lethal Poison — one so potent that even the smallest graze brought death.
A human life could be so utterly fragile.
“Ha, ha…! Hah…!”
Philly’s breathing quickened. Her eyes blinked uncontrollably. No mask she had worn could hold.
She had killed Elissia. With her own hands. By Elissia’s own choice.
“Ah, ah…!”
She could not say she had harmed no one in her life, but this was different. Only after the killing did she feel it.
“Eli, sia…!”
Philly touched the fallen Elissia with trembling hands. She gathered her into her arms.
The wound was so small — barely a drop of blood spilled. Yet that alone was enough.
Just as Elissia had drunk her own tears moments before, now Philly’s tears fell.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Mother is sorry. Elissia, I’m sorry…!”
Philly had done anything and everything for her daughters.
But if the end of it all was to kill her own child, what had it been for.
Only after the killing does one feel it. This is not what I wanted.
Philly could not possibly accept this reality—
“Do you regret it?”
A dry voice reached her ears.
Philly looked at Frontdier. He was exactly as he always was—languid voice, languid face. The sight of him kindled her fury.
How could this man be so composed in a situation like this? How could he act as though it weren’t his doing?
“……Of course I regret it! Of course I do! She’s my daughter!”
“……Then.”
Frontdier paid no mind to Philly’s outcry.
“Let’s go to the hospital. To get her treated for the poison.”
He uttered something absurd.
“……What? What did you say?”
Philly was about to respond, carried along by her own momentum, when she stopped. She couldn’t make sense of what Frontdier was saying. Her tears dried up.
“What do you mean? I don’t—what are you talking about?”
“If you regret it, shouldn’t you save Elissia?”
Philly looked at Frontdier as though he were something utterly inexplicable. She glanced down at Elissia, cradled in her arms, then back at him.
Struggling to understand, Philly asked:
“But you said it was Lethal Poison—that even the slightest contact means certain death?”
That was right. Which is why he’d stabbed Elissia with that dagger. With the resolve to kill her.
Frontdier nodded calmly. That gesture made her skin crawl.
“Yes. Within twenty-four hours, without treatment, it’s fatal. It’s Paralytic Poison.”
Paralytic?
Twenty-four hours?
So Elissia, lying unconscious right now, is just… paralyzed?
Ha. Philly let out a hollow laugh. That was all she could manage. She teetered on the edge of laughter and fury, so she simply gave up.
But desperate to say something—anything—she fixed Frontdier with a glare.
“……Do you happen to know what ‘Imperial Contempt’ means?”
“I’m afraid not. It sounds like quite a difficult term.”
Ha. Unbelievable.
There was nothing else to say in the face of Frontdier’s shameless answer.

* * *
Sleb’s Sinister Dagger.
A blade I’d given to Philly.
In the dungeon, it had made me shudder with fear. A weapon that meant certain death upon contact—but not immediate death.
There were moments when this kind of lethal reprieve held significance. Exactly like now.
What mattered to me was the choice Philly would make.
More precisely, I wanted her to experience what it was like to kill her own daughter by her own hand.
Philly was a figure suspended perpetually in shades of gray.
From a player’s perspective, Aten seemed to embody all of Philly’s white qualities, while Elissia embodied all her black qualities.
Which meant Philly could become another Elissia if she chose to—higher performance, more ruthless. And those hands could reach even Aten if circumstances demanded it.
No matter what came later, even to prevent that.
She needed to lock those impulses away in her heart.
In the game Aetheus, Philly killing Aten was rare, but it happened.
Yet in every single instance, Philly always regretted it afterward—to the point of shedding tears of blood.
But now Philly understands the weight of it. She has felt clearly what it means to take her daughter’s life. Even if her heart changes in the future, at least Aten won’t suffer for it.
In any case.
I’d dealt with Chimera, and Elissia was unconscious.
Now the magic circle laid beneath Constellation—Laflesia—should lose its effect.
Just then, my phone buzzed in my pocket.
I pulled it out. It was Malia de Roach, as expected.
I brought the phone to my ear.
[Frontdier, Frontdier!]
Malia de Roach’s voice. She’d shared my vision through Sensory Sharing.
Which meant she’d seen everything that happened here through my eyes.
She must have confirmed that things here had concluded.
“Yes, Mother. How are things on your end? Have the monsters withdrawn?”
I asked, troubled by the urgency in Malia de Roach’s voice.
At first, I’d thought she sounded excited, calling out to congratulate me, but the atmosphere didn’t match that.
Throughout all this, I could hear Philly muttering—”Ha, honestly, me, hah-ah, wow, really”—and the like.
[Yeah, the magic circle seems to have vanished. But that’s the problem!]
……What do you mean?
While I stood there frowning, unable to make sense of it, Malia said one more thing.
[The monsters freed from the spell are fleeing Constellation Academy! But the direction they’re running—there’s a village right in their path,]
“……!”
I froze at words I hadn’t anticipated.
I hadn’t considered it. I’d only thought about stopping them. What came after—I hadn’t planned for any of it.
I was an utter fool.
[Elodina and the other mages are doing their best to kill them, but there are so many……, and the others can’t keep up with the ones that escape!]
Malia spoke urgently, relaying the situation, and the meaning certainly reached my ears.
But my body remained rigid. I couldn’t bring myself to move.

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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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