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.

watch - two outside the apartment, two within - and stood there for

be dangerous, just...

The principle was simple.

an enemy, copying the very essence of their combat technique. After doing so, he

allowed him to shadow simpler battle styles. He had achieved that breakthrough

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

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

by expanding 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 what the

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

end, he 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 an individual, and through it, he was able to advance his

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

The fourth step...

was where Sunny had hit the wall. Shadow Dance was his Aspect Legacy, but it was 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

battle techniques... and would be much, much harder to conceive and

he had achieved

had created by bringing together

important - without deep comprehension of the desired form, Sunny would never be able to construct it from the shadows, and that

was a

a human body. No matter how much training he had put into making it as flexible and adaptable as possible, it was

added another ingredient to the

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

Awakened Ability - Shadow Dance - was missing from

that, perhaps, was the reason for

uh... let's just try

just discover a direction that would