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!

in his hand was shattered. A few plates on the floor were broken. If this continued, the repair bill for the dojo 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

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

to it, and even more to

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

for Nephis. Her return as 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

was out of her

a deep frown, Sunny waved a hand in the

to spend even more time relearning how to fight with its help. I had years of practice already, so fighting at full force

a bit,

without using any essence at all. It will be

core than him. But with all things considered, if both of them neglected using essence or augmenting themselves with their Abilities, the gap in physical prowess should not have been

stood opposite each other and concentrated. Each discarded their

later,

better. However…

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

its flow and cadence enough to

Changing Star 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 result. It was the product of her talent, training, and incredible

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 the fly… which he would

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

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,