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.'

then all of their problems would be solved. Sunny cleared

see

remember. Then,

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

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

vision. It was that, when talking about reaching the castle, the blind girl only mentioned the two of them.

his head a little and secretly glanced at Nephis, trying to

Star, however, was as enigmatic as ever. Without showing much emotion, she thought for a while, and then slowly

we will

***

planning for the journey and preparing to

a sudden realization, which almost made his head explode from bafflement. That mind-blowing realization had

when they first met in front of the Academy's gates, Sunny had formed a certain impression of the confident, distant

with her feel unnerved and rattled, often revealing more than they had been planning to. The less she talked, the

that impression turned out to be completely

behind the matter had nothing 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 Nephis was simply an incredibly, ridiculously...

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 vice

many introverted people, Nephis was not in a habit of openly showing her emotions. It's not that she didn't have

of the time, she simply chose to talk as little as possible or

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

fact, she was just shy and completely inept in communicating

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

not in line

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 the

with expressing herself and lacked social skills did not mean that she was not strong. In fact, it might have meant

She was still dangerous.