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.

two outside the apartment, two within - and stood there for a few minutes, mentally going over what he was about to

to be

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, copying the very essence of their combat technique. After doing so, he could predict their movements, the flow of their battle

him to shadow simpler battle styles. He had achieved

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

collecting a vast library of techniques in the Dreamscape, which culminated during his first duel with Morgan.

of the Red Colosseum, he had submerged himself

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 breakthrough after being trapped in an endless procession of harrowing dreams by Nightmare and having his

Name. It served as an anchor for what made Sunny an individual, and

with which he could comprehend the battle intent and combat intelligence of those beings he shadowed even further, allowed him to actually perceive the flow

The fourth step...

also something he had to invent all on his own, with no one guiding him... as such, he wasn't even sure what the correct path was, let alone

felt that the next steps of Shadow Dance went far beyond battle techniques... and would be

stagnated in mastering Shadow Dance, he

was the Shadow Shell - a powerful tool he had

played a role in him being able to create shells of other creatures. In fact, its role was perhaps the most important - without deep comprehension of the desired form, Sunny would never be able to construct it from the shadows, and that was what his Aspect Legacy allowed him

a limitation to Shadow

all, shadows were truly shapeless and formless, while Sunny was not. Even if he had 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 and adaptable as possible, it was still

added another ingredient to the

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

- Shadow Dance

for the limitations Sunny had

let's just

Sunny felt that he might just discover a direction