Shadow Slave

Sunny remained motionless for a while, then chuckled.

"No... that's crazy! It would never work."

Then, he stared at the wall some more.

...Would it?

'No way.'

The thought that had crept into his mind while he was thinking about the limitations of the Shadow Shell was so out there that it seemed utterly ridiculous. But the more he thought about it... the fewer reasons to discard it he saw.

'No, that's... that's a bit too strange, even for me.'

And yet, he could not find a logical reason for why it wouldn't be true.

Sunny hesitated for a while longer, then furtively looked around.

Then, he cleared his throat, stood up, and left the office.

If he wanted to test this bizarre theory, he needed to do it somewhere more private.

He left the Valor compound and made his way to the nearby dormitory, where most of the government staff still remaining within the siege capital lived. There, he entered his living quarters - which were a bit more spacious and had better amenities than that of both mundane and Awakened government workers - and locked the door behind him.

Being an Ascended had its perks.

four shadows to stand watch - two outside the apartment, two within -

seem to be dangerous, just...

The principle was simple.

three steps of Shadow Dance to date. The essence of his battle art was shapelessness and formlessness - it allowed him to shadow an enemy,

battle styles. He had achieved that breakthrough while fighting Nephis in the Crimson

second step vastly elevated his comprehension of the fundamental principles that governed all battle techniques, allowing him to shadow much more sophisticated styles, and do it much faster. It also gave him a glimpse of an intuitive understanding of the more esoteric components of the truly advanced battle arts - those created and used by the Awakened, thus incorporating special ways of guiding soul essence

collecting a vast library of techniques in the Dreamscape, which culminated during his first duel with Morgan. The inspiration Sunny had received after being decimated by the

arena of the Red Colosseum, he had submerged himself into their perverted, demented, rabid minds... which allowed him to intuitively feel what the abominations he fought would do, but also put his own sense of self, if not his very soul,

was much more demanding on the practitioner. It required one to truly accept the formless nature of the shadows and let go of their actual self - which, of course, posed the risk of losing it forever. Sunny had made that dangerous

had pulled the dissipating pieces of his true self back together by using his True Name. It served as an anchor for what made Sunny

could comprehend the battle intent and combat intelligence of those beings he shadowed even further, allowed him to actually perceive the flow of essence through their bodies as opposed to just feeling it intuitively, and even gave him the ability to sometimes predict their

The fourth step...

his own,

the next steps of Shadow Dance went far beyond battle techniques...

had stagnated in mastering Shadow Dance, he

powerful tool he had created

fact, its role was perhaps the most important - without deep comprehension of the

was a limitation to Shadow

managed to make his mind supremely malleable, he still possessed a human body. No matter how much training he had put into making it as flexible

what if... he added another ingredient to the

a combination of his Dormant Ability, Shadow Control, his Ascended Ability, Shadow

Dance - was missing

perhaps, was the reason for the limitations Sunny had to deal

let's just try

he succeeded... Sunny felt that he might just discover a direction that