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.’

all of their problems would be solved. Sunny cleared his

see

to remember. Then, her face

the gates of the castle! That means we will

face, beaming 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

glanced at Nephis, trying to discern if she had

ever. Without showing much emotion, she thought for a while,

Then we

***

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

he came to a sudden realization, which almost made his head explode from bafflement. That mind-blowing realization had to do with

formed a certain impression of the confident, distant girl.

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

that impression turned out to

being cool and aloof. After talking to her a bit more and observing their interactions with Cassie, Sunny almost fainted when he realized that Nephis was simply an

middle of the sentence and fall silent. Her tone

in a habit of openly showing her emotions. It’s not that she

talk as little as possible

up together, then multiplied by her general weirdness, was ultimately responsible for creating the false image of

shy

his might but still failed to stop himself from staring at Nephis with wide eyes. He just barely managed to not let

the hell? That’s not in line with

center stage, there were always confident, strong people like her and Caster. People like himself and Cassie, on the other hand, were relegated to exist far away

wrong. The fact that Changing Star had problems with expressing herself and lacked social skills did not mean that she was not strong. In fact, it might have meant the opposite. She