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.'

castle really existed, then all of their problems would be solved. Sunny cleared his

you see

to remember. Then,

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

so much joy that Sunny couldn't help but curl his

talking about reaching the castle,

and secretly glanced at Nephis, trying to discern if she had picked

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

we

***

their breakfast and then spent some time planning for the journey and preparing to abandon the temporary camp. In the process, Sunny had a chance to get to know

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

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

from the world. She was mysterious, aloof and rather cool. Her taciturn character and strange speech patterns made people interacting with her feel unnerved and rattled, often revealing

turned out

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

in the middle of the sentence and fall silent. Her tone never matched what she was trying to say. Often, she

to that was the 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 emoting them! As

simply chose to talk as little as possible or not

weirdness, was

she was just shy and

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

That's not in line

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

line 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 had achieved, but with

She was still dangerous.