The Academy’s Weapon Replicator

an't get there even if five miracles happen.

I've played as Aster more times than I can count.

I don't know anything about Aster.

Aster Evans, the unplayable Aster, and I have no idea where he's headed.

“I can't help it.”

My initial plan was to simply improve myself and become Aster's companion.

While Aster would grow up on his own, I would learn my own ways and become a supplement to his power.

Since Frondier wasn't originally part of Aster's alliance, the addition of a stronger me would be a win-win in simple math.

I thought so, but plans changed.

Aster here ‘doesn't grow on his own’ as well as I thought he would.

He doesn't take the route of the veterans.

Right now, it was just a trivial thing to miss out on the librarian's information, but in the future he'll miss out on all the experience, various weapons, and artifacts that will add to his abilities.

While no one has ever been successful in clearing this game, I can't imagine doing it without Aster.

So what I need to do now is subtly lure him in.
To get him to take the route of the veterans.

I can't get everything.

It's okay to skip some characters that only help you get information, like the librarian.
I know most of the information anyway.

But the essential events must go through.

It's going to be a lot more work since I'm not going to be the one doing the moving.

But I have to do it anyway, and make Aster stronger.
And make myself stronger at the same time.

……
Oh, and I'm supposed to be in the top 10 of my class this year.

I'll do that too.

……
Oh, and Aster just skipped over the librarian event.

“……Whoa.”

I sighed.

Mangem.

“……I will do that too.”

All the things Aster will miss in the future.

I have no choice but to pick them up.

━━━━━━ ⊙ ━━━━━━

I pushed open the door to the library.

There weren't many people inside, and the air was quiet and relaxed, befitting the place.

The few students who caught sight of my face widened their eyes in surprise and avoided me.

Frontier and library was an odd pairing.

In fact, there was no other place in Constell that matched Frondier.

It was an educational institution that exists to improve skills and build culture, not a place for Frondier who doesn't want to do anything.

I looked around quickly and found the librarian.

She was quietly working at her desk.

Brown hair, round glasses, and a plain face.
A glamorous body in contrast, and a tear under her left eye.

When you first see her face, you might think she's a librarian, but when you see her body and her sometimesbewitching expression, you'll be surprised.

Librarian, Teacher Ainen.

If you get acquainted with this teacher, you will be able to obtain the most recent news and other information coming into the school.

This may not seem like much, but as a beginner in this game, every bit of information is valuable because the game is already full of cruelty and absurdity.

……well, for a beginner, that is.

In fact, she's actually more important to Aster than me.
But since Aster missed this event, I can't just ignore it.

'Even if I come, the event won't start.'

Now that it’s like this, I'm going to pick up all the information Aster leaked.

If I get a chance, I'll be able to share it with Aster appropriately.

Now, what do I do?

My reputation was well known among the teachers.

Ainen probably knows about Frondier too, which means I'll have to get to know her with a negative likability rating from the start.

“You're Frondier, right?”

But Ainen spoke first.

She looked at my face and gestured me to come over.

……what.

I walk over, not knowing what to say.

“I didn't know you'd come to this place.
What are you doing here?”

“There's a book I want to find …….”

There was no such thing.
But I couldn't just say, ‘You're the one I'm looking for’ out loud.

“Hmmm.
That's great.
Would you like to see this?”

Ainen pulled something out from under her desk.
It was a newspaper.

I was tempted to ask her what she wanted me to look at, but as soon as I saw the newspaper, I knew.

The headline on the front page caught my eye.

[A party that discovered the divine object.
The location is a dungeon near the Solgitov estate?]

Accompanying the headline was a photograph and it showed a single twig in a transparent coffin.

A twig, the shape of which I recognized.

“Everyone called it a 'mistiltein'.”

Yes.

When I first entered the world of Etius.

The branch that one of the teacher had shown me in the WeezerView.

It looked exactly like that.

“You, I heard you told Jane that this wasn’t Mistiltein?”

So the teacher's name was Jane.

I nodded, holding still.

Ainen asked quietly, as if testing me.

“What do you think? It'll be in the papers, and soon on WeezerView.
Everyone who sees it will say it's a Mistiltein, and the empire will be buzzing with the news of a once-in-a-lifetime discovery.”

It would be.

Any object used by a God, no matter how trivial, was worth a great deal.

And Mistiltein was no small thing.

Baldur, the ‘perfect god’ of Norse mythology.

The mistletoe twig that killed him was Mistiltein.

Its value cannot be measured in money, and it was one of the few things that could compete with other Gods.

Someone found a mistiltein that looked like the image everyone knew,

and I had said, ‘Mistiltein does not look like that’ before in the class.

In other words, Ainen was asking me now – now that the situation has come to this, will I still stick to my opinion? Can I say again that what I said wasn't just bravado or bullshit?

Between Ainen's smiling face, I saw a faint hint of mischief.

She was probably expecting me to back down, or to evade, deny, or stutter.
Either way, she was expecting me to be flustered.

But.

“My opinion hasn't changed.”

“…….”

Ainen's smile faded at my terse words.

“Mistiltein does not look like that.”

I know.
Of course I know what istiltein looks like, and the identity of the ‘fake istiltein’ in the transparent coffin in that newspaper.

'……But I can use that.'

I've been thinking about how to approach Aster naturally.
Hopefully I can work it out with that one.

If there's a news story about that, that's what he's going to be most interested in.

Aster's divine power.
Because the target is right there.