The Academy’s Weapon Replicator - Chapter 76

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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 Replication at the Academy 76
Chapter 22: Final Exam (5)
Aster reached Frontdier first, as expected.
His god, Baldur, enhanced all of Aster’s stats. Simply, overwhelmingly, brutally powerful.
“Frontdier! No cutting in line!”
At Aster’s words, Frontdier laughed.
“That’s so like you.”
Clang!
Aster’s hand thrust toward Frontdier struck something and stopped cold. He withdrew his tingling arm and stared at Frontdier.
Strange. Nothing was visible, yet something had blocked him. His fingers had definitely felt metal.
Jane and Elody began their Mana Deployment behind him. As mages, their Magic Projectile launch speed far outpaced mere running. Only seconds until manifestation. An impressive pace.
Crack-crack-crack!
But both their projectiles struck the ice wall that suddenly bloomed before them.
That scale, that chilling aura of frost. The source was obvious.
“Aten……!”
Elody spotted her. Aten had manifested her magic from a position entirely removed from Frontdier’s location.
‘She’d already claimed the high ground from the start. A Magic Circle this massive—she must have been chanting long before the test began.’
This was likely Frontdier’s team strategy. He wouldn’t be foolish enough to think he could slip away alone with the victim on his shoulders.
But if that were true, what was the aim? Even if they blocked Jane and Elody, Aster and Artzie remained. Could Frontdier alone handle both of them?
As Elody predicted, Artzie reached Frontdier’s side with breathtaking speed.
Artzie rushed at him directly. Aster, stationed nearby, needed watching, but recapturing the victim role took priority now.
Artzie extended her spear first. She already knew Frontdier possessed unseen weapons. The spear, piercing space in a straight line, deflected most of his Woven arms.
“Ugh……!”
A startled Frontdier stumbled backward. Artzie was no one to leave idle. She closed distance rapidly, grabbed his collar, and reached for the student he carried—the victim role.
—But why had Jane been so certain the student Frontdier carried was the ‘victim role’?
Because he was carrying someone, because it was an upper-year’s uniform, because the build matched.
Before Artzie’s hand could land, Frontdier’s hidden card offered a subtle smile.
Whish-snap!
The student in Frontdier’s arms reached out. A fan hung in that hand, and as its ribs spread wide, a blade shot forth from within.
“……!”
Artzie quickly swung her shaft to knock the blade aside.
That blade, and that fan.
The woman in Frontdier’s arms. Could it be.
“Would you really handle a lady so roughly, Artzie?”
Quinie de Biet. Her black fan gleamed.
Frontdier had never been carrying a victim at all. He’d simply been holding Quinie, disguised as one.
And in this moment.
The moment Artzie realized the victim role she thought she saw was actually Quinie.
‘You see what this means?’
Frontdier had no time for words. He couldn’t even move his eyes freely.
‘The situation has changed.’
Frontdier gripped the Necklace Heukryeon in his hand. In that single instant where Artzie had retreated from Quinie’s strike.
A rare opening in Artzie’s defense. But—
It wasn’t Frontdier who would exploit it.
‘Aster!’
Frontdier cried out silently, like a prayer.
As if answering, Aster pivoted in unison, driving his blade toward Artzie.
The person Frontdier carried had never been a victim. Which meant Frontdier was no competitor—he was an ally.
The situation that had pinned Frontdier reversed in an instant. Now Artzie found herself surrounded.
Evans House Weapon Art
Basic Sword Style
Horizontal Slash
Aster’s blade cut horizontal once more. Artzie retreated, her stance crumbling.
But Artzie always held one more technique in reserve.
Artzie’s Unique Spear Art
Disarming Strike
Artzie’s spear met Aster’s blade. The moment they touched, both weapons locked, and Aster’s strike lost its force.
Aster’s eyes widened.
‘From such an unstable stance……!’
By the Disarming Strike, Aster’s sword fell from his hands.
Artzie, having seen that, tried to regain his composure.
“Menosorpho.”
A familiar voice spoke an unfamiliar word. It was Frontdier. In that instant, Artzie felt mana churning across the entire area.
A Magic Circle? He was deploying a Magic Circle without even drawing it on the ground?
But before that thought could fully complete, Artzie saw a sword drive toward his face.
It was Angfer’s blade—Gram.
“……!”
Artzie’s eyes snapped open and he evaded the strike. After the vertical cut, Frontdier twisted the sword’s tip as it descended.
Artzie Basic Spear Art
Frontdier-style Sword Art Variant
Diagonal Slash
As if Frontdier had known all along that Artzie would dodge, the Diagonal Slash came without hesitation.
“You bastard!”
But the Diagonal Slash that Frontdier unleashed—Artzie was its originator. He read the technique’s trajectory completely.
Artzie raised his spear and thrust it forward at the precise moment for a parry.
Splatter!
But Gram had vanished. Or rather, it scattered into some kind of inky liquid.
‘——?!’
Artzie’s spear swept through empty air. It was a mistake he hadn’t made in years—to miss so completely.
Quinie seized that opening.
Whoosh!
Quinie ejected a blade from her fan at Artzie.
Though Artzie had given such an opening, he knocked the blade away using his shoulders and arms.
But immediately after.
“The real one is this.”
At the end of that sentence, Quinie’s fan closed in within arm’s reach of his throat. He turned his head to dodge that too, but—
“……!”
Already, four spears hung floating in the air all around him, their points trained on his throat.
“Ha… ha… Finally, I’ve got you.”
Frontdier exhaled roughly.
Artzie stared quietly at the spear tips aimed at his neck.
Artzie thought for a moment. If he used his full strength, he had the means to break out of this situation. In the first place, had he fought with everything, he never would have been cornered like this.
But he was only playing the “Monster Role” in this exam. Knowing it was a test, Frontdier and the other students had also stopped here.
If he were truly a monster, would he have the means to escape this situation? Or could he have prevented it from ever coming to this?
After considering it.
“I lost.”
Artzie admitted his defeat. The face that acknowledged his loss actually looked refreshed.
Artzie gazed quietly at the four spears hovering in midair. A wondrous technique. Spears created from nothing, from empty space itself.
“Frontdier. Is this your technique?”
“Ha, panting… Yes, it is.”
Frontdier’s breathing was still rough, as if he hadn’t caught his breath yet. Among everyone here, only Frontdier looked this disheveled, so his still-insufficient stamina was plain to see.
“Whew.”
Aster released his Divine Power. The white light faded and he returned to normal.
“Frontdier, what if I had attacked you just now?”
“I trusted you wouldn’t. I thought if I didn’t deceive you to that extent, I’d have no chance of catching you.”
Aster let out a bitter laugh.
It wasn’t exactly a safe strategy, but since it worked, there was nothing to complain about.
“Right! How about Elody’s side…….”
With that, Aster turned to look behind.
There, Jane stood with both hands raised cleanly.
“You guys, can you tell this one to stop? I’m trying to surrender, but she won’t listen.”
Jane was pointing at Elody. She had both hands extended toward Jane.
She had apparently completed an enormous Mana Formula, as mana was churning around her, and the wristband she wore was glowing.
“Elody! It’s okay now! It’s over!”
“I know! But it’s harder to cancel Magic mid-cast!”
Elody cried out as she slowly lowered her hands. The mana gradually subsided, and a hissing sound of air escaping came from the wristband. Not just sound—smoke poured out.
Frontdier approached and asked.
“Elody, is that Vipa Steel?”
“Huh? Ah, well, yeah.”
Elody spoke casually. Frontdier had seen her bring the Vipa Steel from the auction house himself.
Upon hearing Elody’s response, Frontdier gazed quietly at the metal armband she wore.
There was something frightening in that look, so Elody hid the armband away.
“What, what is it? Looking at me like that won’t change my answer.”
“You don’t have to give it to me.”
Frontdier’s reply was odd. Don’t have to give it? But she’d just said she wouldn’t.
The question suddenly occurred to Elody.
“Now that I think about it, you bought something strange back then, didn’t you?”
“Something strange?”
“You bought that Cursed Cloth. What did you need it for?”
At Elody’s question, Frontdier went “Ah” and pointed to his necktie.
……A necktie?
“This. That Cursed Cloth.”
“Ew?”
“Hehe, it’s cursed.”
“Eeewww.”
Elody recoiled with an expression of genuine disgust.
* * *
The victory of Aster’s team and Frontdier’s team was witnessed by all who watched the screens.
During the battle, those around Frontdier who knew him to any degree felt less impact.
But the spectators were swept up in the shock of it like a great wind.
“Frontdier…….”
“How did the human sloth…….”
There had been a coordinated assault and an ambush, but Frontdier had forced Artzie to acknowledge defeat.
That fact was shocking to the students. More shocking even than the “firecracker.”
Yet among them, the most astonished were not the students.
“I’ll say this just in case, but don’t ask me. I’m just as shocked.”
“That wasn’t your work?”
“It wasn’t, I’m telling you. How would I have done it?”
But Angfer and Malia had seen it.
It was only for an instant, but that was unmistakably Gram.
It hadn’t appeared on the screen during the fight with Binkeys. But a match between Aster and Artzie was the practical exam’s greatest spectacle. There was no way it wouldn’t be shown.
Angfer’s hand moved to the sword hilt at his waist without his realizing it. The blade inside was certainly Gram.
He had seen the very same thing on that screen. Though it had vanished like some kind of liquid after just a moment.
Malia spoke.
“It must have been an illusion?”
“If that were so, Artzie wouldn’t have bothered trying to block it.”
“Given how urgent the situation was, she must have made a misjudgment.”
Malia’s words sounded plausible. In a chaos like what had just unfolded—and with multiple attacks launched so suddenly—even Artzie could be caught off guard.
And there was no other possibility besides Malia’s assumption. Angfer was carrying Gram right now, after all.
Yet when Frontdier wielded Gram, the look in Artzie’s eyes—that expression sent an inexplicable chill down Angfer’s spine.
“At any rate, this all but secures first place for Frontdier, wouldn’t you say? He resolved his own crisis and then became the linchpin leading the other team to victory.”
Malia nodded with satisfaction.
There was some concern about how grades would be assigned, but there was no doubt that no student had performed as brilliantly as Frontdier in this practical exam.
Of course, Angfer would object—
“I concur.”
“……Huh? What did you say?”
“I also believe Frontdier takes first place. I didn’t expect Artzie to lose.”
Even Angfer said that Frontdier was in first.
At how readily he yielded, Malia felt unease bloom before satisfaction.

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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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