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

you see

frowned, trying to remember. Then, her face

gates of the castle! That means we will make

with so

certain detail of Cassie's vision. It was that, when talking about reaching the castle,

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

much emotion, she thought for a while, and then slowly

we

***

had their breakfast and then spent some time planning for the journey and preparing to abandon the temporary camp. In

came to a sudden realization, which almost made his head explode from

Sunny had formed a certain impression of the confident, distant girl. Later, her behavior

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

more and observing their interactions with Cassie, Sunny almost fainted when he

the wrong words or stumble in the middle of the sentence and fall silent. Her tone never matched what she was

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 a result, her face always looked cold

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

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

she was just shy and completely inept

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

line with how a protagonist

the center stage, there were always confident, strong people like

that 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 the added

She was still dangerous.