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.’

existed, then all of their problems

you see

remember. Then,

me through the gates

face, beaming with so much joy that

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

turned his head a little and secretly glanced at Nephis, trying to discern

Without showing much emotion, she

we will go

***

the journey and preparing to abandon the temporary camp. In the process, Sunny had a chance

sudden realization, which almost made his head explode from bafflement.

front of the Academy’s gates, Sunny had formed a certain impression of the confident, distant girl. Later,

a 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

turned out to

do with 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 incredibly,

she had 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

Nephis was not in a habit of openly showing her 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

simply chose to talk as little as possible or not to

added up together, then multiplied by her general weirdness, was ultimately responsible for creating the

in fact, she was just shy and completely inept in

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

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

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

of thought was also 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 still achieved everything that she had achieved, but with the added layer