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.

his four shadows to stand watch - two outside the apartment, two within - and stood there for a few minutes, mentally going over what he

to be dangerous, just...

The principle was simple.

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

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

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

during his first duel with Morgan.

his horizons and starting to shadow not only humans, but also Nightmare Creatures. In the bloody arena of the Red Colosseum, he had submerged himself into their perverted, demented, rabid minds... which allowed him to intuitively feel

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

by using his True Name. It served as an anchor for what made Sunny an individual, and through it, he was able to advance his mastery of Shadow Dance without

of those beings he shadowed even further, allowed him to actually

The fourth step...

on his own,

that the next steps of Shadow Dance went far beyond battle techniques... and would be much, much harder to conceive and

while he had stagnated in mastering Shadow Dance, he had achieved progress in

tool he had created

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

was a limitation to Shadow

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

if... he added another ingredient to the

his Dormant Ability, Shadow

Shadow Dance - was

perhaps, was the reason for the limitations

uh... let's just

direction that would eventually lead him to the next step