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!

his hand was shattered. A few plates on the floor were broken. If

that she had no experience of controlling soul essence whatsoever. Let alone doing it with intricate precision and efficiency of a

of her essence was, because Shadow Dance now allowed him to sense the

an instinctual understanding 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, every Ascended before Changing Star enjoyed having the experience of making the first steps on that long and

fact, by the time Awakened reached Ascension, controlling essence

a Master might have been miraculous, but it also deprived her of a lot of things that people who did not break the natural order of things usually

out of

Changing Star stared at the broken sword in her hands with a deep frown, Sunny waved a hand in the

learning how to guide your soul essence. After that, you will have to spend even more time relearning how to

thought for a bit, and

without using any essence at all. It will be a pure test

both of them neglected using essence or augmenting themselves with their Abilities, the gap in

they stood opposite each other and concentrated. Each discarded their broken

moment later, they

time, thing went better. However… not by

Nephis, it didn't take Sunny long to sense the core of her style. It had changed

style yet, he attuned himself to its flow and cadence enough to be

herself could do more or less the same. Her ability to discern, predict, and control patterns of combat was not based in affinity to shadows, and was sufficiently different from it… but achieved a similar

could predict what he

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 solution for this predicament, of course, but he had no

was just half of the

control was so rudimentary and 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 that were too chaotic to predict. Because he was holding