There’s Something Special About Her - Chapter 2

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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 2.
My lungs burned as if they might burst at any moment, my breath coming in short, sharp gasps.
“Hah—hah!”
Each ragged exhale crystallized in the frigid northern air, my labored breathing hanging like white ghosts in the darkness of the forest.
“Ha—ugh. Damn it.”
The world spun before my eyes, and my legs finally gave out.
I slumped against a massive tree, and the sweat drenching my body began to cool against my skin in uncomfortable rivulets.
Luck had not been on my side.
I’d run into several elite units on my way out of the manor.
They were the same ones who’d gone out on external patrol with Edward.
Shaking them off had cost me precious time, and as a result, the wound on my shoulder had split open wider, bleeding profusely.
“Sigh.”
As I exhaled slowly and let my head hang, a lock of black hair—severed clean through—fell into my line of sight.
“It’s… finally over.”
Exactly one month had passed since the day my family died.
I had renounced my status as a member of the Nobility and thrown myself into the depths of Wickes, willing to sacrifice everything for revenge.
It had taken thirteen long years—starting from a street pickpocket and climbing the ladder of power step by step.
And at last, I had seen my revenge through to completion.
Boom! Crash!
A tremendous explosion thundered in the distance.
The Wickes manor, now reduced to a tiny point in my vision, was engulfed once more in a massive wall of flame.
The fire ignited by the Mana Bullets had successfully spread to the Gunpowder Traps I’d planted beforehand.
“Ha.”
Where could I go now?
I, who had once been Wickes’s assassin and commander of the Information Unit, had become a fugitive hunted by those very people.
“For now, I should be safe enough…”
Edward would be occupied inheriting the boss’s position and consolidating control of the Wickes family, which I’d spent years carefully fragmenting from within.
Hunting down the traitor would come later, if at all.
In that moment, Edward’s words from just before the Mana Bullets detonated came flooding back.
“I’ll find you, Helena. You’ll come back to Wickes eventually. And when you do…”
The rest had been swallowed by the roar of the explosion, but his lips had been easy enough to read.
‘I’ll break both your legs.’
Edward was more than capable of following through on that threat.
Death would be a mercy by comparison.
“I need to run far. Very far.”
Just as I had done thirteen years ago, I would change my appearance again.
Ensure no one could find me.
Yet safe havens from Wickes’s influence, which stretched across the entire continent, were few and far between.
A place where I could hide from Wickes, a place I knew intimately.
“That place…”
One name flashed through my mind. More precisely, the name of an organization.
Gulp.
I swallowed hard without meaning to.
Even the thought of it sent ice down my spine—such was the dread that name inspired.
“Mm.”
A soft groan escaped between my clenched teeth.
And suddenly, the wound on my shoulder throbbed all the more sharply.
To flee to ‘that organization’…
Had someone asked me a few days ago—or even a few hours ago—I would have laughed bitterly at the notion.
‘If you want to die that badly, at least find another, cleaner way to do it,’ I would have said.
To win Benedict Wickes’s trust, I had built the Information Unit and served as one of its executives, earning that organization’s deep enmity in the process.
In short, exposure would be catastrophic.
“But there’s nowhere better to hide than that place, nowhere safer.”
Even I would never suspect that I’d hidden myself with Wickes’s enemies.
With that infamously ruthless organization, no less.
The more I thought it through, the better the choice seemed.
“As long as I don’t get discovered by that man, it should work out fine, shouldn’t it?”
I didn’t deliberate long.
Nox was stronger than Wickes.
Even Edward couldn’t simply march into Nox on a whim.
As a fugitive fleeing Wickes, there was nowhere safer than Nox.
I took one final look at the Wickes manor.
“It burns beautifully.”
The Mana Bullets from that obscure foundry I’d so painstakingly located were doing their job splendidly.
The special flames—the kind that water alone could not extinguish—devoured the centuries-old manor like dry kindling, and I regretted not being close enough to witness it all.
Without hesitation, I turned my back and began walking the forest path once more.
First, I had to cross the border.
Chapter 1.
One year later.
Lautern—the capital of the Bernheim Empire, which dominates half the vast eastern continent.
The Nox family is the sole Duke house within the Bernheim Empire.
The private estate of the Duke’s family, located on the outskirts of Lautern, was as magnificent as the family’s standing demanded.
It resembled less a noble’s manor and more an independent settlement—or perhaps a fortress.
An enormous castle that took considerable time to reach by carriage along the main road.
Surrounding it were dozens of residences for the Nox household retainers, along with various other buildings large and small, each serving its own purpose.
Visitors to the Nox estate for the first time never failed to express their amazement at the sight.
Which was precisely why someone had to guard the one grand entrance to this magnificent Nox family seat.
“We’ll need to conduct a brief inspection.”
A young man spoke—his tone mechanical and tinged with boredom, yet somehow still carrying the freshness of youth.
An employee of the Kelita Merchant Company, one of dozens of trading firms that supplied necessities to the Nox estate, glanced sideways at the approaching guard.
He was a beautiful youth with straw-colored blonde hair and pale blue eyes.
Scarcely an adult, he wore the insignia of the Nox action squad—a lower tier of the organization’s hierarchy.
“Listen here, rookie. Be thorough with the inspection.”
“Yes, sir.”
The boy replied without much enthusiasm to his senior’s reminder, his slighter frame a stark contrast to the stockier builds of the other squad members around him.
Yet the slightly upturned corners of his eyes and his indifferent expression suggested a temperament anything but meek.
“May I see your identification, please?”
“Oh, yes. Here it is.”
The Kelita employee, whose taste ran toward small animals and cute dolls, blinked blankly at the boy for a moment before belatedly producing her papers.
The boy checked her identification against a roster, then nodded as he spoke.
“Ilise of the Kelita Merchant Company. Confirmed. Thank you for your cooperation.”
“Um… excuse me.”
“Yes?”
“What is your name, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“My name?”
Apparently caught off guard by her unexpected question, the boy’s already large eyes widened further.
“Runelk Ains. May I ask why you’re asking?”
“Oh, it’s nothing. I just… I was curious. Th-thank you for your time!”
Suddenly flustered, the Kelita employee’s face flushed crimson as she quickly clambered back onto the supply wagon.
Her pale blue eyes followed the Kelita wagon as it moved away—slowly at first, then with increasing haste—his gaze lingering thoughtfully.
“What is it? Did you spot something suspicious?”
Jake, Runelk’s direct senior in the action squad, tapped him on the shoulder and asked.
“…No, nothing like that.”
“Come on. If something seems off, tell me right away. I can pull her back. Your eye for detail is sharp—I trust it.”
Though the rookie had only been with them for less than a year, his remarkable perceptiveness had already earned him a reputation within the action squad.
“It’s nothing at all.”
Runelk shook his head, then fixed Jake with a pointed stare as he added tersely:
“And don’t call me Runelk. I have a perfectly good name, so address me properly, senior.”
“Ha! Why not? It suits you perfectly. Rookie—short for ‘Recruit.'”
“Fine. Do as you wish.”
“But that merchant company really is clean, right? We’ll be in trouble if something comes up later.”
“The cargo is fine, but the employee was a bit…”
“A bit what?”
“She suddenly asked for my name. I thought maybe she knew me from somewhere…”
“Ah, that! Well, that’s because—!”
“Because?”
“I’m not telling you! If you don’t know, just keep on not knowing!”
Jake shook with laughter, hollering something about “single man’s paradise, couple’s hell” as he retreated to the shadowed guardhouse.
Leaving his junior out here in the blazing sun while he sat in the cool shade—how typical.
A small guardhouse stood against the tall stone wall surrounding the Nox estate.
Inside sat several veteran action squad members, lounging about like bees in a hive.
Runelk fixed them with a narrow, withering stare, then let out a long, heavy sigh as he muttered to himself.
“Man, this hiding out business is such a pain.”

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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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