Everyone but Me Is a Spy - Chapter 50

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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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Episode 50
The sound of film spooling echoed through the room, and as the white cloth descended along the wall, an image blazed to life across it.
Just as she’d expected, the figure on screen was Likita Bones.
‘Grandmother, alive and moving……!’
Nina’s pink eyes swept across the grandmother she’d never met, drinking in every detail.
Likita sat at a wooden table dressed in what looked like a uniform—a formal, severe gown.
Though her face was etched with wrinkles and her hair was white as snow, her eyes gleamed with startling clarity and sharpness.
Her gaze was so piercing, so penetrating, that it seemed to bore straight through the screen itself—and the false family beside Nina and Joel flinched at the intensity.
—Nina Bones.
“……!”
The moment Likita opened her mouth and spoke Nina’s name, the girl started, turning to glance at her family.
But they were all fixed on the image with such grave, serious expressions that they didn’t spare her a look.
‘Grandmother’s voice is so strong, so steady.’
She’d merely spoken a name—just that—yet somehow it had commanded the attention of everyone in the room. The sheer weight of her presence made Nina’s pulse quicken.
Likita, who had been sitting ramrod straight, now settled back slightly against the chair.
—If you’re watching this, then the Legacy Inheritance must have concluded, and by now you’ve realized I knew of your existence long before.
This time it was Joel who studied the reactions of Nina and the other operatives.
Of course—to strangers, this was far too intimate, far too private a conversation.
—I’ll spare us the cloying pleasantries one might exchange between grandmother and granddaughter. After all, ours was never that sort of tender bond.
“…….”
Nina had opened her mouth to call out “Grandmother,” but at those words, her brow fell with evident disappointment.
—I trust you won’t make the foolish mistake of searching for the one who bore you. She died not long after you were born, so she was your mother, yes—but to me……. She was something difficult to put into words.
There was something callous, almost pitiless, about the way she spoke of her own daughter.
The operatives, including Joel, began to exchange glances with one another.
They were all secretly recording Likita’s words.
— The reason I never brought you to me in the first place, left you in the Ilite Kingdom, and designed things so that even after the Legacy Inheritance you would understand nothing clearly—was because I had no way of knowing how you would grow, what circumstances would shape you.
“What do you mean……?”
Nina narrowed her eyes in confusion, tilting her head like someone hearing a riddle for the first time.
She wanted to ask: if you worried how a granddaughter who’d lost her mother would grow up, why not keep her nearby?
But the next words that came only bewildered her further.
— I still cannot convince myself that you deserve to inherit all my wealth under the name of my granddaughter. And yet the reason I’ve named you my heir is……
— Perhaps because your existence is also a debt of conscience that I must bear.
A debt of conscience.
The moment those words reached her ears, Nina’s mind flooded with the memory of that dusty room.
That room filled with servant’s supplies—she had called it a debt of conscience and shame incarnate.
The way her grandmother spoke of her own existence as a servant, as a debt—it was confirmation that Likita herself must have once been born to servitude.
‘Then why did she choose to leave me her inheritance, knowing I was a servant?’
As uncertainty and hurt mingled within Nina, Likita continued.
— By now, I imagine you have those who call themselves family and neighbors clinging to your side.
“……!”
The operatives’ hearts lurched, and several began to wonder if they should shut down the projector at once.
Though Likita’s tone remained even, there was a faint mockery in the way her eyes fixed on something beyond the screen.
Yet cutting the feed now would be a terrible waste of an opportunity.
She might speak of the safe, of other valuable information—so they decided to keep watching for now.
They had just steeled themselves to claim, if need be, that Likita’s mind had wandered in her old age, when—
Something far more shocking came next.
— If they please you, leave them be. If they displease you, kill them. The Juggers will help.
“……I beg your pardon?”
The room’s atmosphere turned cold as Nina’s bewildered response hung in the air.
Natalisha drew a sharp Fan from her pocket with a whisper and leveled it at the projector.
— A joke. Half of one, anyway.
At Likita’s addendum, Natalisha slid the Fan back into her garment just as smoothly.
“You did love a peculiar sense of humor, Aunt.”
“Ah. So she did.”
Only after hearing Natalisha’s words did Nina release the tension from her brow.
She’d been startled by such cruelty in her grandmother’s words, but it seemed this dark humor was simply one of Likita’s habits.
— I doubt you’re watching this alone, Nina Bones. That’s right. It’s hardly difficult for me to predict how you’ll move. By now you’re probably wondering why I’ve been cooperating to this extent.
— The answer to that is the same: because I cannot be certain what you will have become by the time you’re watching this.
Was this too merely some strange joke?
As Nina turned Likita’s words over in her mind, pressing her lips forward, the operatives too found their thoughts growing heavier.
What could Nina Bones be? What is she capable of becoming that even her own grandmother watches her so warily?
She’d left those words knowing spies from other nations would inevitably creep close—a final warning wrapped in mystery.
Even Joel, who lately found himself thinking about what brought Nina joy whenever he had a spare moment, couldn’t pin down what she actually was.
Only that she was a perfectly engineered Incarnation of Spring.
—One last thing, Nina Bones. Did you know who I was before coming here? If so, pull the lever attached beside the third shelf.
“A lever?”
Nina spotted the lever Likita had mentioned and stepped closer, but didn’t pull it. She knew nothing of Likita Bones—not before, not now.
“Let me examine it.”
Cheyson approached quietly from the side and flinched as he took in the lever’s shape.
“This is—! Get back, Nina.”
He wrapped a cord around the lever, stepped back from the shelf, and yanked it taut.
Boom! Bang-bang-bang!
Bombs erupted from both ceiling and floor at once, detonating in a violent cascade.
“Ahhh!”
“Nina!”
At her startled scream, Joel rushed forward and pulled her into his arms.
Blue circuits spreading like iron bars contained the roaring flames, sparing everyone injury—but the explosion was colossal enough to shake the ground beneath their feet and leave their ears ringing.
“As I thought. A detonation trigger, just as I suspected.”
Cheyson was right. More than that, the Mage Device that contained the blast itself had been meticulously prepared for one person alone.
Nina wasn’t the only one shocked.
“What in the—how is this even—!”
Everyone in the room recoiled as the sudden explosion tore through the silence.
Likita Bones’s granddaughter—the only one she’d kept so carefully hidden before entrusting her entire legacy to.
They’d assumed such protectiveness meant she was precious beyond measure, yet the words in the recording and this explosion just now—what did it all mean?
“I can’t make sense of it. My head is splitting.”
Exia clutched his temples, groaning.
Natalisha stared at Nina with trembling eyes, equally lost.
There was so much to report to headquarters, yet somehow they’d circled back to the beginning, and the weight of it pressed down on her chest.
Nina hadn’t yet recovered from the shock. She remained limp in Joel’s embrace, staring at nothing.
“How could Grandmother… do this to me…”
“Nina. Are you all right? Look at me. Collect yourself, please.”
“Move aside.”
Natalisha pushed Joel away and gripped Nina’s shoulders.
“You’re certain you’ve never met your grandmother before, yes? Think carefully.”
“A-Aunt, no. I didn’t even know what she looked like. And just now… that explosion…”
Her grandmother had set a trap capable of killing her own granddaughter.
The impossible reality left her barely able to speak.
As confusion thickened in the room, Likita’s voice on the recording resumed.
—If Nina is dead, then so be it. But if she lives, and should I later judge her a threat… No. That’s pointless. Floben will handle it. Leave it be.
Nina barely caught the words meant for no one she could identify.
Floben—the elderly gentleman who’d been the notary for the will and Likita’s butler. What could he possibly “handle”?
—I’ve entrusted the management of the films I’ve collected to Jugger Number Two. From this point on, follow Jugger Number Two’s orders regarding their safekeeping and maintenance.
—So then, Nina. Since you’ve chosen to bear my name and live as Nina Bones… get along with people. I lived in isolation because my circumstances were peculiar, but yours needn’t be.
The recording ended there. Likita’s inscrutable expression frozen on the screen.

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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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