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

be

The principle was simple.

mastered 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

battle styles. He had achieved that breakthrough

also gave him a glimpse of an intuitive understanding of the more esoteric components of the truly advanced battle arts - those created

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

humans, but also Nightmare Creatures. In the bloody arena of the Red Colosseum,

one to truly accept the formless nature of the shadows and let go of their actual self - which, of course, posed the risk

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 mastery of Shadow

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

The fourth step...

his Aspect Legacy, but it was also something he had to invent all on his own, with no one guiding him... as such, he

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

stagnated in mastering Shadow Dance, he had achieved progress in other aspects of his personal

a powerful tool he had created by bringing

Dance also 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

Sunny was not. Even if he had managed to make his mind supremely malleable, he still possessed a human body. No matter

added

Shell existed as a combination of his Dormant Ability, Shadow Control, his Ascended

Dance - was missing from the

for the

let's

just discover a direction that would