The Academy’s Weapon Replicator

Chapter 1

Chapter 1 - Frondier, the Human Sloth (1)

The next day.

There was a small commotion in class.

"Hey, look at that......."

"No way......."

Everyone whispered to each other and glanced at me, with a disbelieving expressions on their faces.

"Frondier de Roach is......!"

…Awake!

"......."

All the students' eyes seem to say that.

Frondier, he’s never been awake in a class before. That's pretty impressive in and of itself.

"Well, if you look at the next screen......."

The teacher also looks quite surprised that I was awake.

But there's nothing to be done. I have my father's orders.

If I don't rank in the top 10 overall at Constel, I'll be excommunicated.

Constel is the school I'm currently attending now.… The same academy...… It refers to the same school.

In any case, it's like an educational institution.

While other schools generally focus on knowledge and culture, Constel combines that with combat training to fight monsters and demons. It's much more rigorous, and thus much more difficult.

I don't just have to be a good student, I have to be a good fighter too.

Only by excelling at both of those things can I hope to make it into the top 10 overall.

Frondier has a difficult task ahead of him.

At one point in the game, Frondier disappears without a trace, and I thought he'd been forgotten, but it turns out he's been excommunicated.

Did he sleep knowing that he would be excommunicated? Did he really want to be excommunicated?

The overall grade was calculated by combining written and practical scores.

And with this body, which doesn’t have any divine powers or proper magic, I have to get the maximum score on the written test. So it was only natural that I was paying attention in class.

Of course, the ultimate goal was to clear the game, and the position of House Roach was crucial to that, so excommunication was out of the question.

The title of a prestigious aristocrat is one of the few advantages I have as a Frondier.

And without it, clearing this game as a Fondier becomes even more impossible.

"That aside.

I was feeling sleepy.

As if Frondier's habits and poor stamina have infiltrated me, sleepiness that was hard to shake off was drowning me. I'm always asleep by this time.

Suddenly, it became hard to concentrate in class, and above all, I had no idea what the words on the board meant.

I, who was taking my first class after only playing games, and Frondier, who was always asleep, were in a similar situation.

......where.’

I suddenly remembered Frondier's skill.

Weaving.

I don't know if this will work.

I tried to weave from what the teacher had written on the board.

The words on the board were clear in my mind.

Even if I didn't understand the content, they were still stored in my mind, as if I had taken a picture.

'This one is worth using.'

By this time, I had stored the contents of the book in my workshop, I stopped taking notes because I didn't need to. Instead, I focused on the teacher's explanation.

The contents written on the blackboard are automatically stored, and I could always review them later.

When I stopped taking notes, the odd looks I got from people around me faded a bit.

It's almost as if they thought I stopped taking notes because I was bored.

Even the teacher seemed to have calmed down, with a look on her face that said, ‘Yeah, that’s right.’

What's wrong?

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Even if I could pass the written exam by taking careful notes, the practicals were a different story.

The barrier to practical skills was too high for Frondier, who had no skills or magic, let alone divine power.

The only thing he can rely on was his weaving, but what can he do with it?

‘It’s a replica that cannot be seen, that cannot interfere with reality.’

This skill is most likely the root of Frondier's laziness. He's probably already done something with it.

The fact that he hadn't found a use for it and had given up on it, however, indicates that the situation was hopeless.

"......?"

I was walking down the corridor, thinking about my weave, when I saw a woman approaching from the opposite direction.

The sound of leaves rustling outside the window.

Hair as radiant as the setting sun and large eyes the color of a lake.

With each step she took, the aura from her eyes drenched the entire landscape.

She approached this way slowly, her gaze never leaving me.

──I knew immediately who she was.

It was hard not to recognize her with that beautiful appearance.

Elodie.

Elodie de Inies Rishae.

The child favored by the Five Gods was before me now.

Elodie was a talented character in the game Etius.

A single sentence, ‘Loved by Five Gods’ was enough, to sum up, her fraudulent nature.

My only regret was that she didn’t become a companion to the main character.

No matter how many times I asked her to be my companion, she refused. It was never revealed why.

But she's a woman who's going to be an important part of the army in the future, so she's definitely a reliable ally.

One of the few named characters in Etius that gives players a sense of security.

......But that was when I was the protagonist.

I am Frondier now.

Elodie probably doesn't know me, and if she does, she won't hear anything good about me.

There are many students who dislike Frondier. His grades are abysmal and his behavior is careless.

A slacker who does nothing but use his prestigious aristocratic name as a shield. That's his reputation, and it's true.

Elodie, on the other hand, is a model of integrity and diligence. To her, my existence is anathema.

...... But I'm not the main character.

So let's just pass her by.

"......Frondier."

I tried to pass, but I was stopped.

I looked at Elodie.

She turned her angry eyes on me.

"Don't you have something to say to me?"

I have something to say. Do you know me?

I couldn’t bring myself to say it, so I watched her in silence, and I could hear the crunching and grinding of her teeth.

"...... how I feel about you."

Elodie was mumbling something,

Suddenly, something came flying out the window to her right.

A baseball, head-on.

I involuntarily moved my hand, almost simultaneously with her.

Changgang-!

The flying baseball shattered the glass window. Glass shards rained down along with the ball, and I flew in front of her,

Frondier Unique Skills

Weaving

Workshop Number 3

Grade - Common

Iron Shield

I wove the shield that the Fondier before me had saved and held it out in front of me.

Only then did I realize.

‘Ah, I’m a fool.’

It was an illusion, meaning, it was useless for blocking,

Hah!

No sooner had the thought passed, the baseball and the shards of glass were engulfed in flames.

They fluttered like flower petals as the flames consumed all their strength.

'Wow.......'

This is not what I did.

Elodie's right hand stretched out towards the glass, her eyes and hair turning red. She had burned them all in an instant.

The shards of glass and the baseball lost their strength in Elodie's flames and fell to the ground.

Only a few shards of glass clung to her clothes or grazed her skin,

Tadadang!

"Huh?"

"......?"

The woman and I raised our voices with similar questions.

The baseball and shards of glass bounced off the air.

My hand and her entire body, not a single shard of glass hit us.

'They didn't just bounce out of thin air, my shield.......'

The shield blocked the glass. My shield, which should have been an illusion.

"......Mmm, thanks. I don't know how you did it, Frondier, but......."

Elodie didn't understand.

My shield was invisible to her eyes.

Still, she was very sincere in her gratitude.

"But what! You see, even if you hadn't stopped me, with my flames-"

She rambled on, but my attention was elsewhere.

"......Hey, are you listening? That's a little embarrassing."

I thought back to the situation a moment ago.

Apparently, my shield had blocked the remains of the glass and the baseball.

"Hey, can't you just say something?"

In other words, weaving wasn’t entirely an Illusion. Something that can intervene in reality if the conditions are right.

I don't know what those conditions were yet, but knowing that I can intervene was more important than anything.

"Hey, there's nothing to ignore that much!"

I felt a tiny shiver run down my spine.

I balled my fists and took a step down the hallway.

I felt like I'd found a glimmer of hope in this seemingly unanswerable maze.

The sunlight brushed nicely on my face for a moment.

"Hey!!!"

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"Ouch."

I was hit with another baseball to the head. I picked up the baseball that had struck me in the head, rolled to the side, and patted my head.

"I thought I had it figured out."

I was currently experimenting with the weave.

It must have been my shield that blocked those shards.

Then I thought.

Is this skill some kind of enormous object that becomes real when the caster is in danger?

To put it to the test, I cloned the shield and threw a baseball at it, pointing the shield upward as the baseball landed overhead.

...... but there was no such thing.

The baseball passed right through the shield and hit me in the head.

I mean, if it was a game of convenience, I would have awakened a long ago.

"How can I use this in real life?"

Obviously, the fact that I blocked the shards of glass was real.

That whole situation was proof that my weave was real.

But I don't know how.

"Ugh, I'm tired."

I sat halfway down in my chair, feeling drained.

There were also emotional issues, but my body was really exhausted.

A rebound from using too much weave.

"No. Why am I feeling exhausted when it doesn’t even exist in reality?"

I muttered to myself.

......Really?

Why am I exhausted?

What is this strange feeling of fatigue?

One after another, these questions raced through my head.

I raised my lying upper body.

"Is it ......mana?"

The game Etius has mana, of course, just as it has skills and magic.

Of course, I have it, as Frondier.

But because I am not a human from this world, I am not familiar with the sensation of mana.

But let's say that my current feeling of weakness was due to mana.

Weave is a skill that uses mana. In other words, it is close to magic.

'Try to remember. What was mana in Etius? What was the concept of magic?

Magic, according to Etius, is not a concept of matter.

It's a concept of phenomena.

Whether it's fire, ice spears, or a wall of earth, none of them can continue to exist in reality. It's gone when the caster cancels the spell or when the mana runs out.

A naturally occurring forest fire will continue to burn until it is extinguished or there is nothing left to burn, whereas a flame created by a wizard can grow into a wildfire, but it will also die when the mana is exhausted.

So when I realized that Frondier's weave had no effect on reality, I was both disappointed and understanding.

Magic, while seemingly all-powerful, has clear limits.

It can burn, it can freeze, and it can destroy.

But it can't make something that wasn't there.

Even if it's a replica.

"I have to change my thinking. I was trying to make something out of nothing in the first place. It's impossible. I can't make a shield."

What I need is not matter. It's a phenomenon.

Like when a wizard creates fire, he creates the phenomenon of burning.

If it's a sword, it’s a ‘cutting phenomenon’.

If it's a shield, it’s a ‘blocking phenomenon’.

Thwack.

I threw the baseball up.