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.’

castle really existed, then all of their problems would be solved. Sunny cleared his

see

to remember. Then, her

saw Sunny leading me through the gates

with so much joy that Sunny couldn’t help but curl his

detail of Cassie’s vision. It was that, when talking about reaching the castle, the

his head a little and secretly glanced at Nephis, trying to discern if she had picked up on

much emotion, she thought

Then we

***

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 chance to

realization, which almost made his head explode from bafflement. That mind-blowing

of the Academy’s gates, Sunny had formed a certain impression of the confident, distant girl. Later, her behavior and the different

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

that impression turned out

actual truth behind the matter had nothing to do with being cool and aloof. After talking to her a bit more and observing their interactions with

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

the fact that, like many introverted people, Nephis was not in a habit of openly showing her emotions. It’s not that she didn’t have

the time, she simply chose to talk as little as possible or

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

just shy and completely inept in communicating

Sunny tried 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 hang

the hell? That’s not in line with how

of person to be the main character of any event. At the 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

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