Huge APK size for test app when using separate Module for Instrumentation Test

I have a multi-module app and recently, I moved the instrumented tests to a single and separate module.

My setup seems fine since I can build, run unit tests and also instrumented tests.

I just noticed that the instrumentation APK is huge (~170MB) while the app APK itself is smaller (~20Mb).

Inspecting the APK, I noticed there are a lot of fonts (.ttf) being added to the test app.

Below is my setup:

plugins {
    alias (libs.plugins.android.test) // "com.android.test"
    alias (libs.plugins.kotlin.android)
    alias (libs.plugins.ksp)
    alias (libs.plugins.hilt.dagger)
}

android {

    targetProjectPath = ":example:app:application"

    namespace = "com.example.androidtest"

    defaultConfig.apply {
        testInstrumentationRunner = "com.example.tests.TestRunner"
    }
    ....
}

After running:

./gradlew :example:app:application:assembleFullDebug :example:androidtest:assembleFullDebug

or

./gradlew :example:androidtest:connectedFullDebugAndroidTest

I get two APKs:

// Instrumentation app.. This is the problematic one
./example/app/androidtest/build/outputs/apk/full/debug/androidtest-full-debug.apk

// Actual app. Its size is normal.
./example/app/application/build/outputs/apk/full/debug/full_debug_v2.0.0.apk

Does anyone know from where those fonts are coming? If I analyze the actual app APK, those fonts do not exist. They are being added only to this instrumentation auxiliary APK.

One possible solution I found was to remove /fonts folder from the APK using packing options:

    packaging {
        resources.excludes += "/fonts/*"
    }

With this change alone, the APK size was reduced to ~40Mb