Shadow Slave

In the ensuing silence, the smile slowly disappeared from Cassie’s face, replaced by confusion. Feeling the sudden tension, she asked:

“Uh… what’s wrong?”

Sunny sighed.

“No, nothing is wrong. It’s just that that direction is the one we wanted to avoid.”

After some thought, he added:

“That’s where I came from yesterday. There’s a lot of scavengers down there.”

The blind girl’s face fell.

“Oh.”

Nephis, who was quietly listening to them, gave him an indecipherable look and finally spoke:

“Tell us more about the castle.”

A shadow of the previous excitement returned to Cassie’s eyes. With a serious nod, she began describing her vision.

“I dreamt of a vast, ruined city built of weathered stone. It was surrounded by tall, impregnable walls. Various monsters were wandering its narrow streets. In the center of the city, the was a hill, and on that hill stood a magnificent castle.”

She smiled.

“But there were no monsters in the castle! Instead, it was full of people. I think… no, I’m sure that they were Awakened. Some were guarding the walls, some were going about their lives without a care in the world. There was food, safety, and laughter!”

‘Well, that sounds great.’

then all of their problems would be solved.

see

frowned, trying to remember. Then, her

gates of the castle! That means we

with so

he was stuck on a certain detail of Cassie’s vision. It was that, when talking about reaching the castle, the blind girl only mentioned the two of them. Was there some meaning

a little and secretly glanced at Nephis, trying to discern if

however, was as enigmatic as ever. Without showing much emotion, she thought for

we will go

***

they had their breakfast and then spent some time planning for the journey and preparing to abandon the temporary camp. In the process, Sunny had a

that he came to a sudden realization, which almost made his head explode from bafflement.

when they first met in front of the Academy’s gates, Sunny had formed a certain impression of the confident, distant girl. Later, her behavior and

bit apart from the world. She was mysterious, aloof and rather cool. Her taciturn character and strange speech patterns made people interacting with her feel unnerved and rattled, often revealing more than they had been planning to. The less

out to be completely

more and observing their interactions with Cassie, Sunny almost fainted when he realized that Nephis was simply an incredibly, ridiculously… painfully

no idea how to talk to people. Every time she tried to convey something, she would either use the wrong words or stumble in the middle of the sentence and fall silent. Her tone never matched what she was trying to say. Often, she would forget to put

emotions. It’s not that she didn’t have feelings: it’s just that she was really bad at emoting them! As a result, her face always looked cold

she simply chose to talk as

up together, then multiplied by her general weirdness, was ultimately

just shy and completely inept in

with all his might but still failed to stop himself from staring at Nephis with wide eyes.

hell? That’s not in line with how a protagonist

type of person to be the main character of any event. At the center stage, there were always confident, strong

social skills did not mean that she was not strong. In fact, it might have meant the opposite. She still achieved everything that she had