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.'

all of their problems

you see

frowned, trying to remember. Then,

me through the gates of the castle! That means we will make

face, beaming with so much joy that

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

glanced at Nephis, trying to discern if she had picked up on

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

Then we will go

***

the sea was still retreating, they had their breakfast and then spent some time planning for the journey and preparing to abandon the temporary camp.

almost made his head explode from

certain impression of the confident, distant girl. Later, her behavior and

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 been planning to. The less she talked, the more she seemed to know. That silent, indifferent confidence

out to be

to do with being cool and aloof. After talking to her a bit more and observing their interactions with Cassie, Sunny almost fainted when he realized that

she had no idea how to talk to people. Every 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 correct intonations

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 feelings: it's just that she was really bad at

why, most of the time, she simply chose to talk as

general weirdness, was ultimately responsible for creating the false image of a

was just shy and

Sunny tried with all his might but still failed to stop himself from staring

the hell? That's not in line

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

The fact that Changing Star had problems with expressing herself and lacked social skills did not mean that she was not strong. In fact,

She was still dangerous.