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 would be

see anything

trying to remember. Then, her

Sunny leading me through the gates of the castle! That means we will

doll-like face, beaming with so much joy that Sunny couldn't

he was stuck on a certain 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

Star, however, was as enigmatic as ever. Without showing much emotion, she

we will

***

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

was then that he came to a sudden realization, which almost made his head explode from bafflement. That

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 different

mysterious, aloof and rather cool. Her taciturn character and strange speech patterns made people interacting with her feel unnerved and rattled, often

turned out to

and aloof. After talking to her a bit more and observing

in the middle of the

many introverted people, 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 face always

chose to talk as little as possible

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

in fact, she was just shy and completely inept in

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

That's not in line with how a

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

Star had problems with expressing herself and lacked social skills did not mean that she was not

She was still dangerous.