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!

hand was shattered. A few plates on the floor were broken. If this continued,

meant that she had no experience of controlling soul essence whatsoever. Let

essence was, because Shadow Dance now allowed him to sense the movement of the mystical

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 road as

the time Awakened reached Ascension, controlling essence was

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

out of her

hands with a deep frown, Sunny waved a hand in

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

thought for a bit, and

but without using any essence at all. It will be a pure test

more core than him. But with all things considered, if both of them neglected using essence or augmenting

each other and concentrated. Each discarded their broken weapons and took

moment later, they

went better. However… not by

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 the past two years,

to its flow and cadence enough to be able to predict some of Neph's moves with a good

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

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 what was happening! There had to be a solution for this predicament, of course,

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 predict. Because he was holding himself back, handling this