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!

A few plates on the floor were broken. If this continued, the repair

been a Sleeper, which meant that she had no experience of controlling soul essence whatsoever. Let alone doing it with intricate precision

could tell exactly how chaotic and unrestrained the flow of her essence was, because Shadow Dance now allowed him to sense the movement of

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

controlling essence was as natural to them as

might have been miraculous, but it also deprived her of a lot of things that people

was out of

deep frown, Sunny waved a hand

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

thought for a bit, and then

essence at all. It will be a

them neglected using essence or augmenting themselves with their Abilities, the gap in physical prowess should not have been

and concentrated.

moment later, they

time, thing went better. However…

Due to Shadow Dance and his familiarity with Nephis, it didn't take Sunny long to sense the

could not master the style yet, he attuned himself to its flow and cadence enough to be able to predict some

that 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

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

confusing. Sunny had never found himself in a battle that demanded so much mental gymnastics before. He was not even entirely sure

just half of the

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