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.

see

trying to remember.

through the gates of the castle! That

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

was that, when talking about reaching the castle, the blind girl

and secretly glanced at Nephis, trying to discern if she had picked up on that little discrepancy,

Without showing much emotion,

we will

***

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

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

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

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

out to

talking to her a bit more and observing their

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

It’s not that she didn’t have feelings: it’s just that she was really

simply chose to talk as little as possible or not

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

fact, she was just shy and completely

coming to that realization, Sunny tried with all his might but still failed to stop himself from staring at Nephis with wide eyes. He just barely

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

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

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