There’s Something Special About Her - Chapter 87

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

Chapter 87.
This was a problem on an entirely different scale from suspecting the trainees all this time.
The Training Facility was a vital institution where Nox trained its new recruits.
In other words, it was no exaggeration to say that Nox’s future hinged on how the instructors educated them.
Moreover, all trainees who successfully completed the program were assigned to critical departments.
Naturally, they would form extensive networks throughout Nox as a whole.
“And Padilla Bondaiz is one of the seven executives, for that matter.”
I swallowed hard, wrestled with my thoughts, then rose from my desk.
Given the gravity of the situation, I couldn’t afford to stumble into this blindly.
I needed more detailed and reliable information about the instructors.
***
I reached the Nest through the secret passage beneath the Restaurant Storage that I’d used with Gisella Rot.
The last time I’d come, I’d been too busy savoring that brief taste of freedom.
Tonight, my footsteps felt unusually heavy.
“Is anyone here?”
The Nest was quiet—past midnight already.
I’d expected at least someone would still be around.
My spirits flagging, I collapsed onto Konrad’s sofa.
“Now what do I do?”
My Raven senior—the one person I could ask about the instructors—wasn’t here.
I’d rushed here thinking I’d found an exit, only to hit a dead end.
“I can’t exactly ask the other trainees about the instructors.”
The information they had would obviously be similar to what I knew.
Or perhaps I already knew more than they did.
Their names, the locations of their offices, which departments they’d belonged to before becoming instructors, their teaching styles—that sort of thing.
Either way, the information was too narrow and fragmented to paint a meaningful picture of one executive and multiple instructors as mole candidates.
Then my eye caught a door across from the sofa.
The room where I’d drawn up banking contracts with Vanessa Carsten, the true power behind the Nest.
“Wasn’t that the records room?”
There was nothing more to consider.
I rose and walked purposefully toward the records room door.
“Please, please be unlocked.”
I turned the handle with quiet desperation.
Click.
It was open!
My relief was short-lived.
Though I wasn’t doing anything inherently wrong, I felt self-conscious nonetheless, so I glanced around the empty Nest before slipping cautiously into the records room.
The musty smell of old paper filled my senses, and the interior was meticulously organized.
Even the table where I’d sat across from Vanessa Carsten was pristine—not a single sheet of paper on it.
“I need to figure out where to start.”
The drawers lining all four walls bore no labels whatsoever.
From the outside, I could only see the cabinet faces, making it impossible to judge their depth.
It was all intentional, clearly.
“All right, let’s give this a shot.”
I stretched my arms and rolled my shoulders to limber up.
No matter how long this took, it couldn’t be worse than a month of digging through training assignments.
With that thought, I opened the bottom drawer of the column nearest the door.
Slide—slide—slide—
“How is this even possible?”
The drawer was extraordinarily deep.
Extremely, extraordinarily deep.
A long, narrow compartment kept sliding outward until I wondered just how thick the walls were.
And it was packed tight with meticulously organized documents, not a gap to be seen.
“This is maddening.”
I blew my bangs out of my face and rolled up the sleeves of my training uniform.
Let’s burn through this night and find what I need.
***
“Finally—found it! Damn—”
It took three full nights in the records room before I got my hands on the instructors’ personnel records.
Under normal circumstances, it shouldn’t have taken nearly that long.
Once documents were properly organized, I could pull them out one by one, quickly scan the contents, and put them back if they weren’t what I was looking for.
But there was an unexpected obstacle.
Every single document in the records room was written in the Raven Cipher.
“This is why I asked you to teach me the cipher ages ago……”
I muttered toward my absent supervisor.
They’d said I didn’t need to learn it yet since I hadn’t written any reports—I could pick it up slowly.
Suddenly illiterate, I couldn’t make proper use of my first night and had to head back to the Training Facility.
I left only a note on Gisella’s desk asking her to teach me the cipher.
On the second night, when I arrived at the Nest, an envelope was waiting on my desk.
It was from Gisella Rot—a lengthy letter mixing complaints, threats, and curses.
The gist was that she was swamped with a new assignment and would be leaving the estate entirely for a while, so I should manage on my own.
There was a postscript telling me to send an Onyx to Konrad if I needed help, and at the back of the letter, a Raven Cipher Symbol Key was enclosed.
Clutching that single key like a holy weapon in one hand and laboriously decoding documents with the other, I spent two full days just finding the personnel records.
“Wait, couldn’t I have just left a note for Vanessa instead?”
I tensed for a moment, wondering if I’d made an unnecessary blunder, but I hadn’t.
If I, who’d infiltrated the Training Facility to find a mole, suddenly requested information about Director Padilla Bondaiz and the instructors?
Anyone would see that as suspicious—as if I doubted them.
It wasn’t that I distrusted Vanessa Carsten.
I was aware enough that once I started focusing on specific instructors and digging into them, I’d have to report my findings up the chain.
With Gisella Rot, my supervisor, away, my report would go to either Konrad or Vanessa Carsten, the true power behind the Nest.
But before making such a report, I wanted to be certain.
‘Well, at least I’ve gotten comfortable with the Raven Cipher in the process.’
I thought that whatever came of this, it was a gain, and carefully closed the drawer before settling at the table.
Then I cautiously opened the file folder.
“This is… more extensive than I expected?”
I’d anticipated simple personnel records with basic biographical information.
Instead, densely written in the Raven Cipher was far more than that.
From Deputy Director Gerhardt Stahlen to Herta Winter, who taught combat techniques and physical conditioning.
The four instructors’ family relationships, their records in Nox, detailed information about their close associations, and the circumstances of how they came to be instructors at the Training Facility—all of it was organized clearly and comprehensively.
“This doesn’t look like Vanessa’s handwriting.”
Most of the documents I’d reviewed so far had been written by the same person.
The archive records appeared to have been neatly consolidated once more by Vanessa Carsten, the administrative officer.
But these files on the Training Facility instructors were written in an unfamiliar hand.
Finding that detail peculiar, I began reading through Gerhardt Stahlen’s file methodically.
And after spending an hour completely motionless, pinned in place—
I clutched my pounding head again.
“This is serious business.”
The four instructors shared a common thread.
All of them had served Nox loyally—some for as little as fifteen years, others for as long as thirty-five.
That was the common thread that bound them all.
And there was one thing more.
Every single one of the instructors maintained a long-standing, powerful bond with Director Padilla Bondaiz.
It couldn’t have been otherwise.
“They’ve all been saved by Padilla Bondaiz.”
I almost wondered if the people they truly obeyed and followed was not Killian Nox but Padilla Bondaiz himself—such was their connection.
It was a dangerous line of thought, but what it meant was that these instructors were fundamentally rooted in Nox.
Yet I was supposed to believe that one of them was a puppet master secretly manipulating foolish trainees?

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————