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 anything

frowned, trying to remember. Then,

the gates of the castle!

beaming with so much joy that Sunny couldn't help but curl

was stuck on a certain detail of Cassie's vision. It was that, when talking about reaching the castle, the blind girl

Nephis, trying to discern if she had picked up on that little

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

Then we will go

***

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

was then that he came to a sudden realization, which almost made his head explode

Sunny had formed a certain impression of the confident,

bit apart 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 more than they had

out to be

aloof. After talking to her a bit more and observing their interactions with Cassie,

use the 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

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

most 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

in fact, she was just shy and completely inept in

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

in line with how a protagonist should

main character of any event. At the center stage, there were always confident, strong people like her and Caster. People like himself and Cassie,

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

She was still dangerous.