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 solved.

you see

trying to remember. Then,

the gates of the castle! That means

smile appeared on her doll-like face, beaming with so much joy that Sunny couldn't help

of Cassie's vision. It was that, when talking about reaching the castle, the blind girl

and secretly glanced at Nephis, trying to discern if she

Without showing much emotion, she thought for a while,

Then we will

***

still retreating, they had their breakfast and then spent some time planning for the journey and preparing to abandon the

he came to a sudden realization, which almost made his head explode

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

made people interacting with her feel unnerved and rattled, often revealing more than they had been

impression turned out to be completely

talking to her a bit more and observing

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

not that she didn't have feelings:

she simply chose to talk as little as possible

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

in fact, she was just shy

stop himself from staring at

the hell? That's not in line with how a

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

and lacked social skills did not mean that she was not strong. In fact, it might have meant the opposite. She still achieved

She was still dangerous.