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 would be

you see

to remember. Then, her

saw Sunny leading me through the gates of the

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

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

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

we will

***

was still retreating, they had 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

which almost made his head explode from bafflement. That mind-blowing realization

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

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

turned out to be completely

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

in the middle of the sentence and fall silent. Her tone never matched

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 cold and

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

general weirdness, was ultimately responsible for creating

just shy

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

the hell? That's not in line with how a protagonist should

his 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,

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

She was still dangerous.