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

Sleeper, which 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

essence was, because Shadow Dance now allowed him to sense the movement of the mystical energy through the bodies of his

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

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

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

was out of her

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

you'll 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 fighting at full force won't

for a bit,

any essence at all. It will be a pure

using essence or augmenting themselves with

opposite each other and concentrated. Each discarded their

moment later,

went better. However… not

didn't take Sunny long to sense the core of

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

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

of doing, while she could predict what he had predicted her actions, and change her approach on the fly… which he would also discern,

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 time to come up with

that was just half

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