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.'

of their problems would be solved. Sunny cleared

you see

frowned, trying to remember.

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

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

however, he was stuck on a certain detail of Cassie's vision. It was that, when talking about reaching

little and secretly glanced at Nephis, trying to discern if she

enigmatic as ever. Without showing much

we

***

spent some time planning for the journey and preparing to abandon the temporary camp. In

sudden realization, which almost made his head explode from

met in front of the Academy's gates, Sunny had formed a certain impression of the confident, distant girl. Later,

speech patterns made people interacting with her feel unnerved

turned out to

to do with being cool and aloof. After talking to her a bit more

she would either use the wrong words or stumble in the middle of the sentence and fall silent.

of openly showing her emotions. It's not that she didn't have feelings: it's just that

the time, she simply chose to talk as little as possible or not to talk at

up together, then multiplied by her general weirdness, was

shy and completely inept in communicating

his might but still failed to stop himself from staring at Nephis with wide eyes. He just barely managed to not let

hell? That's not in line

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

of thought was also wrong. The fact that Changing Star had problems with expressing herself and lacked social skills did not mean that she was not strong. In fact, it might have meant the opposite. She still achieved everything that

She was still dangerous.