Shadow Slave

Sunny and Nephis stood opposite each other, holding training swords. Both felt more than a little disturbed by how much this scene resembled their bitter confrontation at the very top of the Crimson Spire.

Of course, today, the situation was completely different. They were just going for a friendly spar, not a battle to the death. There were no stakes in this training fight, no emotional investment… no complicated mixture of regret, fury, and resentment.

…So why did Sunny feel as though he had to prove something?

Forcing himself to relax, he glanced at Nephis and attacked. Their swords met with a deafening clangor.

A few seconds later, Sunny jumped away and shouted:

"Stop! Stop! Stop!"

Changing Star froze while he looked around, breathing heavily.

Sunny gritted his teeth and spat a muffled curse.

"Damnation…"

His idea to have a spar might not have been the wisest one he ever had. Yes, the underground dojo was designed specifically to allow Awakened to train their powers. It was isolated, reinforced, and heavily armored, able to transform into an impregnable bunker in case a Gate opened nearby and a tide of Nightmare Creatures flooded the district.

The interior was furnished with heavy plates of armor-grade ceramic alloy and supplied with training equipment meant to withstand the rigors of Awakened power.

…However, Sunny and Nephis weren't Awakened anymore! They were full-fledged Masters, and abnormal ones at that!

broken. If this continued, the repair bill for the dojo was going to really sting

meant that she had no experience of controlling soul essence whatsoever. Let alone doing it with intricate precision and efficiency of a Master, she had never even done it crudely

chaotic and unrestrained the flow of her essence was, because Shadow Dance now allowed him to sense the movement of the

of how to augment their physicality with essence, but it still took some time to get used to it, and even more to master it. However,

Ascension, controlling essence was as natural to them as

her of a lot of things that

out of

sword in her hands with a deep frown, Sunny waved a hand in the air

have to spend some time learning how to guide your soul essence. After that, you will have to spend even more time relearning how to fight with its help. I had years of practice already, so

thought for a bit, and then

using any essence at all. It

using essence or augmenting themselves with their Abilities, the gap in physical

and concentrated. Each discarded their broken

moment later, they

thing went better. However… not by

the problems was their battle techniques. Due to Shadow Dance and his familiarity with Nephis, it didn't take Sunny long to sense the core of her style. It had changed a lot and matured over

and cadence enough to be able

more or less the same. Her ability to discern, predict, and control patterns of combat was not based in affinity to

what he had predicted

was very confusing. Sunny had never found himself in a battle that demanded so much mental gymnastics before. He was not even entirely sure what was happening! There had to be a

just half of

bad that she couldn't even prevent herself from instinctively using it. As the result, Sunny had to endure sudden outburst of speed, strength, and agility