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!

was shattered. A few plates on the floor were broken. If this continued, the repair bill for the dojo was going to really sting Sunny's

that… Nephis was not exactly at her best. She had just returned to the waking world yesterday. Before that, she had been a Sleeper, which meant that she had no experience of controlling soul essence whatsoever. Let

flow of her essence was, because Shadow Dance now

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 arduous

fact, by the time Awakened reached Ascension, controlling essence was as natural to

deprived her of a lot of things that people who did not break the natural order of things

out of

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

to spend even more time

a

without using any essence at all.

using essence or augmenting themselves with their

other and concentrated. Each discarded

moment later, they

thing went better. However…

to sense the core of her style. It had changed a lot and matured over the past two years, but so did his mastery of

he attuned himself to its flow and cadence enough to be able

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 result. It was the product of her talent, training,

was able to somewhat predict what Nephis was thinking of doing, while she could predict what he had predicted her actions,

much mental gymnastics before. He was not even entirely sure what was

was just half of the

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 himself