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 was about to

didn't seem to be

The principle was simple.

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

shadow simpler battle styles. He had achieved that breakthrough while

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

techniques in the Dreamscape, which culminated during his first duel with Morgan. The inspiration Sunny

arena of the Red

formless nature of the shadows and let go of their actual self - which, of

as an anchor for what made Sunny an individual, and

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

The fourth step...

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,

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

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

of it was the Shadow Shell - a powerful tool he had

perhaps the most important - without deep comprehension of the desired

was a limitation to Shadow

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

if... he added

Ability, Shadow Control, his Ascended Ability, Shadow Manifestation, and his Aspect Legacy,

Dance - was missing

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

uh... let's just try

just discover a direction that would eventually lead him to the next step