Shadow Slave

The next two weeks passed in a blur.

Sunny had so much to do that there was no time to concentrate on any one thing for too long. The First Evacuation Army camp around him was in a similar state, becoming increasingly more hectic and busy as the date of the naval convoy's departure approached.

Luckily, he was more than familiar with having to act fast while enduring immense pressure.

The first thing Sunny did after introducing himself to the members of his cohort was briefly reiterate the key objectives of the upcoming campaign, as well as share several pieces of information about the hardships they would most likely have to endure and the intended role of the First Irregular Company that his soldiers had not been privy to before.

After Sunny finished his briefing, the mood in the empty gymnasium turned somewhat grim. Not wishing to let the six Awakened stew in their apprehension, he immediately transitioned to the next stage of getting to know his subordinates.

Summoning the Cruel Sight, Sunny smiled pleasantly and asked them to attack him, one at a time.

He wanted to kill two birds with one stone by dueling each of the cohort members right off the bat.

First of all, Sunny knew that he had to win their respect. No matter what Master Jet had said, these experienced soldiers were not going to put their trust in him easily. He was young, small, and a complete stranger. Although forging a real bond would take more time and effort, a simple demonstration of strength was a good start.

Secondly, he needed to understand their powers and techniques better. A simple duel was the best way to do that. Sunny had an additional advantage in that regard, since his mastery of Shadow Dance allowed him to learn much faster, and peer much deeper, than almost anyone else.

In the next thirty minutes or so, he ruthlessly demolished each of his subordinates without even breaking a sweat. Although all of them were very good at what they did, his power and skill were simply too domineering.

Dorn and Samara. The former's Aspect was very insidious when used with sufficient foresight. While Sunny was strong enough to shake off the force of the big man's Aspect, even he had to improvise when subjected to

essence into projectiles without a tangible medium. Even if these soul darts weren't

that the gymnasium was built with Awakened in

Of course, he took care to exert just enough strength to defeat the members of the

six duels were finished, he had a much better understanding of what his subordinates were capable of. Not only had Sunny been able to grasp the core tenets of their battle techniques, he was also very satisfied with adding six nuanced, polished styles to his mental

not only allowed him to form a tentative vision of how the cohort would perform in battle and how to command it to achieve the best result, but also helped him come up with an optimized training plan that would turn them into a semblance of

time to turn seven relative strangers into a truly coordinated battle unit. The insight he had received due to Shadow Dance helped substantially accelerate the process, but the progress was still insufficient.

with the plan, Sunny did not linger before putting

from the one he had back home, however. Instead of being connected to the public selection of arenas,

also centered around battles with simulated Nightmare Creatures, as opposed to personal duels. Sunny was even

slightly disappointed with it. Dreamscape was simply incapable of simulating the true madness and dread of the Nightmare Creatures. The illusory monsters they fought were strong and threatening, but lacked the spark of life and the perverse intelligence that made the

of pressuring

else

Himself.

time to battles where all six had to contain a single target — their captain. While Sunny looked much less frightening than a Nightmare Creature, his subordinates quickly learned that he was infinitely

especially intense clash, the six Awakened crawled out of the Dreamscape pods and wandered

to the gymnasium. Luster was rubbing the shoulder he

is

in his luxurious Memory chair on the other side of the building, studying a topographical map of Antarctica, looked up from the screen of his communicator and

closer to the