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!

plates on the floor were broken.

just returned to the waking world yesterday. Before that, she had been a Sleeper, which meant that she had no experience of controlling soul

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

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

Ascension, controlling essence was

but it also deprived her

out of her

the broken sword in her hands with a deep frown, Sunny waved a hand in the air and forced out a

spend even more time

for a bit, and then

try this again, but without using any essence at all. It will be a pure test of

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

and concentrated.

moment later,

thing went better. However… not

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

the style yet, he attuned himself to its flow and cadence enough to be able to predict some of Neph's moves with a

and control patterns of combat was not based in affinity

Sunny was able to somewhat predict what Nephis was thinking of doing, while she could predict what he had predicted her actions, and change her approach on

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

was just half

herself from instinctively using it. As the result, Sunny had to endure