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.’

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

see

remember. Then, her face

the gates

on her doll-like face, beaming with so much joy that Sunny couldn’t help but curl his

about reaching the castle, the blind girl only mentioned the two of them. Was there some

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

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

Then we will go

***

and preparing to abandon the temporary

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

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 the

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 she talked, the more she seemed to know. That silent, indifferent confidence

that impression turned out to

cool and aloof. After talking to her a bit more and observing their interactions with Cassie, Sunny almost

stumble in the middle of the sentence and fall silent. Her tone never matched

that she didn’t have feelings: it’s just that she

most of the time, she simply chose to talk as

her general weirdness, was ultimately responsible for creating the false

she was just shy and completely inept

still failed to stop himself from staring at Nephis with wide eyes.

line with how a protagonist

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

social skills did not mean that she was not strong. In fact, it might have meant the