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 his

see

trying to remember. Then, her

gates of the castle! That means

appeared on her doll-like face, beaming with so much joy that

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

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

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

we will

***

for the journey and preparing to abandon the temporary camp. In the process, Sunny had

a sudden realization, which almost made his

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

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 was arresting,

that impression turned out to be

matter had nothing to do with being cool and aloof. After talking to her a bit more and

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 in her speech, making questions sound like statements or

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 looked

to talk as little as possible or not to talk at

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

shy and completely inept in communicating

with all his might but still failed to stop himself from staring at Nephis with wide eyes. He just barely managed

not in line with how a protagonist should

mind, Nephis had definitely been the type of 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 the other hand, were relegated to exist far away in

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 with the added

She was still dangerous.