The Academy’s Weapon Replicator Chapter 566

Episode 566

150 Mistiltein (9)

Astaroth froze for a moment.

One soon shows a somewhat forced smile.

“You’re just bluffing! Even if you’re like me, how could you not have feelings for your colleagues?”

“Your smile seems fake.”

Even as the conversation continues, Belphegor’s corpses move forward little by little.

Because Belphegor had broken them, they were clearly corpses that could not have been structurally rebuilt. However, with his power, even the damaged parts were reassembled. Of course, the assembly was crude, as long as they could stand up and walk.

“My subordinate died. Of course, I feel a lot of emotions.”

Belphegor patted the shoulder of the corpse that had risen again.

He spoke softly with a smile.

-good.

—Even after death, be of help to me.

“Geuuuuuuu—!!”

The corpses walked or ran at their own pace.

It was the fastest speed he could go.

The movements are crude compared to those of the puppets, and there are fewer of them.

In fact, most of them were trampled and pierced by Astaroth’s dolls, and their little lives were cut off again.

In terms of numbers, five corpses would barely be enough to knock down one doll.

Belphegor raises one of the dolls back from the dead.

“…hmm.”

And he nods his head with a short sound.

“You’re still pretending to be relaxed!”

The dolls rushed at Belphegor again.

Belphegor, who had a small number of corpses to begin with, would soon be destroyed again by the dolls even if he were to raise a few more.

As the makeshift wall of corpses disappears, the dolls attack Belphegor again.

Shhhhh!

The dolls deliver sharp attacks.

Excellent combined attack, theoretically it works perfectly with a sword. At least there is no room to dodge.

These dolls are completely filled with attack and defense without any gaps.

Kwaang!

Belphegor eventually counters the joint attack by forcibly breaking through. The dolls fall to Belphegor’s regime. They are soon resurrected as corpses again.

Astaroth snickered at the sight.

“Your mana isn’t infinite. You won’t be able to defeat me if you fight like that!”

Belphegor did not answer him.

He just opened his mouth as if he was thinking about something.

Astaroth said.

“When everything works perfectly without a problem, that is when you find peace. That is when you find true indolence. An eternal indolence that will never waver or break!”

This is the source of Astaroth’s laziness.

He dreams of a world that runs perfectly without his intervention, a world in which he can rest forever.

So he sat down in the seat of sloth.

He became the devil of sloth, more sincere than anyone else.

“Yeah. I hope you come.”

Belphegor said.

He understood Astaroth.

Because he had that dream once too.

“Belphegor, you fight with such weak methods for one of the Seven Deadly Sins. All you have is a staff and magic.”

“Then what else should I do?”

Belphegor shrugged.

A staff. Yes, there was something like that. But now Belphegor is empty-handed. His beloved staff is probably rolling around somewhere in Cape Man. It was released from its possession when it was defeated by Frondia and returned to the Demon World.

I need to get a new, decent one.

“You lack the means of attack. All your moves have already been read, Belphegor!”

“That’s amazing.”

Belphegor laughed.

“How did you read all my numbers?”

He raised one finger.

This time, the corpse raises its body again.

But this time, there’s only one.

Astaroth snorted.

“Ha! Are you already out of mana? Even you, who used to be called the Demon of Sloth, are you only this bad?”

Astaroth waved his hand. The dolls rushed in accordingly.

One of the corpses raised by Belphegor stood upright, trembling.

Shhh!

And then avoid the stab of the sword held by the first doll.

Crunch!

After smashing the doll’s head with that fist.

Crunch—!

He snatched the sword and swung it horizontally, splitting the top and bottom of the dolls that followed behind him.

“no…?”

Astaroth was momentarily dumbfounded.

Belphegor said to him.

“You let your guard down, Astaroth. No matter what, you forgot to attack together.”

Belphegor spoke with a sly smile. However, Astaroth did not understand what he was saying.

The pincer attack is only used when dealing with Belphegor’s main body.

It wasn’t something I was going to deal with just a single corpse.

But what just happened?

‘That one corpse is different from the others. I see! Did Belphegor pour all his mana into one corpse?’

After making a rough estimate, Astaroth reorganized his formation.

The dolls began to surround the corpse.

But the body doesn’t wait for that.

fault!

He kicked the doll on the far right. The doll staggered, and the corpse hit its head with his knee. It was no longer the movement of an undead.

The corpse fought back against the attacks of the surrounding dolls. One of them, too, seemed to be outnumbered, and after that, it fell down after cutting off the heads of about three dolls and having its limbs cut off.

Astaroth smiled faintly, though he was covered in cold sweat.

Belphegor must have used an extraordinary amount of mana on that one sphere. Now, what is left for Belphegor?

Dduk dduk!

“how!”

Another corpse rises again, betraying Astaroth’s expectations.

Astaroth bit his lip. Now, without saying a word, he gave orders to the dolls to destroy the corpses. He also ordered some of them to attack Belphegor. This was to prevent his mana from recovering.

Phew!

However, Belphegor was not able to do anything with a small number of dolls. Several dolls were instantly engulfed in flames by a simple fireball and fell down. Unlike the fire from before, it was not easy to get back up again due to the power of the explosion.

“Haha, it really is a doll.”

Belphegor laughed.

“As the number of attack targets increases, the precision of the joint attack decreases.”

“Ugh…!”

Astaroth frowned at Belphegor’s smile, then suddenly realized something and looked towards the corpse.

Yeah, the important thing is to break the corpse. There’s no way I can keep making high-performance undead like that.

“…her?”

But the corpse is still standing. What’s more, it was fighting well.

He was dealing with the combined attacks of the dolls and killing them one by one. In fact, he was showing more refined movements than Belphegor.

As the image of the corpse actually driving away the dolls began to emerge, Astaroth pushed the dolls back for the time being.

His head became complicated.

‘How could that be possible? It’s impossible for the undead to think properly, how!’

“Astaroth.”

Belphegor speaks, cutting off that thought.

“I enjoy being lazy. You, the lazy devil right now, do the same, right?”

“…What do you want to say?”

“To do that, you know. I have to make it so that I don’t have to do what I have to do.”

“Of course. To do that, I created puppets and a fully functioning algorithm,”

“Yeah. That’s it.”

Belphegor snapped his fingers, as if to say that Astaroth had guessed correctly.

“You put an algorithm into the doll. To create a system that can run perfectly without you. Man, I’m honestly surprised. I never thought there was another guy who thought like me.”

“…Another bluff. If you were thinking this, you already have someone by your side,”

“Yeah. There has to be a doll.”

Belphegor smiled faintly.

“If you didn’t realize the problem.”

“…What did you say?”

“The dolls you have are showing excellent joint attack. As proof, I can’t destroy them right now. I have to force a way through them using magic or aura. If this situation continues as you said, I’ll be the one who runs out of mana.”

As Belphegor spoke, the corpse stood guard in front of him. It was still alive.

“But you made two mistakes.”

Belphegor said, placing a hand on the corpse’s shoulder as if he was proud of it.

“First, an algorithm is just an algorithm. No matter how excellent it is, if it can’t respond at every moment, the algorithm is meaningless. Above all, an algorithm created by a single entity has its limits.”

“Nonsense! Are you saying that in this short time, you have figured out all the algorithms of the dolls I created? That is impossible!”

“Yes, it’s impossible. I told you, there’s no way for me to thwart your attack.”

There Belphegor looked up at Astaroth with his dark eyes.

“That’s the second mistake you’ve made.”

An energy that lightly passed through Belphegor’s body.

To live.

“You dared to use my subordinate.”

“…What did you say?”

“I told you, I enjoy being lazy. If I want to avoid doing things I need to do, I need someone else to do them for me.”

Only then did Astaroth remember.

It’s an anecdote.

This is a famous anecdote that everyone who knows Belphegor has heard.

—Belphegor, the demon in charge of sloth, kept a subordinate by his side who recorded all of his memories to relieve his annoyance.

“Someone did chores for me, someone managed the finances, someone fought for me. I had a bunch of capable devils by my side who did my work for me.”

“That’s something that any high-ranking demon would do, even if it weren’t you. And that’s the problem. Most demons are incompetent. It’s more useful for me to handle them myself.”

“Well, just listen to me.”

Belphegor moved his hand again. The corpse rose again.

That made Astaroth’s eyes flinch. It was unpleasant to lose the timing, but it ultimately meant that Belphegor’s mana was consumed.

“I think you’re mistaken. The corpses I took out first are no different from the corpses I have now.”

“…That’s funny. Anyone can tell that this is a more advanced form of undead.”

“Really? Is this what the advanced undead you know look like?”

Belphegor pointed to his own corpse.

A corpse without proper armor or weapons. The limbs are said to be intact, but that’s all. An ordinary undead with little damage to the corpse.

“If this guy is a high-level undead, shouldn’t he be able to destroy your dolls in one blow? If he has that much strength.”

Belphegor’s corpse’s strength is not great. You cannot break the doll with your bare hands or a single kick.

The response is just excellent.

Just fight better.

“…!”

At that moment, Astaroth opened his eyes wide.

Belphegor said.

“Do you understand now? The demons in my army, after they die, their life process comes to me. In simple terms, you could call it experience? I can transfer that experience to the corpse.”

Then Belphegor pointed to the other dead demons.

“And it’s the same when I summon the corpse again. The experience overlaps. So the more I fight my corpse, the more I stand up, the more I absorb that experience. But it’s not a real demon, it’s a doll, so I can learn the algorithm in no time.”

Belphegor himself only receives individual experience points, so he cannot add them up to produce a final result.

It is the corpse that produces the results.

Since it has no will or ego of its own, the accumulated experience points are directly applied to combat experience.

Belphegor may not know how to destroy the dolls’ joint attack, but the corpses he summons know how.

“…No, that’s nonsense!”

But Astaroth denies it.

“Even if that were true, you wouldn’t be able to selectively absorb only the useful things from all the experiences! All the negative things would come in with it. Sadness, pain, and even the terrible pain of the moment of death! How on earth would you filter all that out?”

Belphegor’s eyes narrowed at those words.

He asked.

“Why are you filtering it?”

“What, what did you say?”

“If my subordinate dies as you said, I will share in all the pain that comes with it. It’s the price I pay for absorbing that experience.”

Belphegor looked at his hands.

There is pain in those fingertips.

Just a moment ago, his body screamed every time his demon died.

“Have you ever heard that? When a subordinate is sick or injured, the leader feels the pain with him. He sympathizes with the pain and suffers with him, so the subordinate truly follows the leader.”

“…No, that’s not it!”

“You think that’s just empty talk? Yeah, I think so too.”

Haha, Belphegor laughed.

No matter how much you talk, you can never truly feel the feelings of those who are sick, injured, or dead. A moment of comfort can only bring a moment of loyalty.

So Belphegor decided not to say anything.

He decided to feel the pain of all the demons under him when they died.

That’s the contract of sloth.

“Oh, and.”

Belphegor pointed his finger at Astaroth.

No, it’s not.

He pointed to the ‘back’.

“You can’t just sit there blankly.”

Phew!

Immediately after Belphegor’s words.

“Take… Ugh….”

Astaroth felt a sharp pain in his back.

When I barely opened my eyes and turned my head to look back.

A demon was piercing his back with a sword.

With bloodshot eyes and tears streaming down his face.

‘The thread….’

In fact, it still hangs above his head – one of Astaroth’s dolls.

however.

This demon had more than just the manipulation of thread.

Belphegor says:

“You can feel pain even if you just sit still.”

The demons swore loyalty to Belphegor.

Sitting still, sometimes lying down, he devoted his life to following Belphegor’s instructions, snapping his fingers or hands.

Belphegor does not feel their deaths ‘appropriately’.

They endure the exact same pain as them, just with high-level ‘level’ and ‘will’.

Because I know it’s that kind of contract.

“Astaroth, the demon who sits on the seat of sloth.”

Belphegor looked coldly at Astaroth, who was slowly collapsing.

“What more could you ask for than laziness?”