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.

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

didn't seem to be dangerous,

The principle was simple.

shadow an enemy, copying the very essence of their

styles. He had achieved

glimpse of an intuitive understanding

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

step... was the hardest one yet. Sunny had started his journey toward mastery of it by expanding his horizons and starting to shadow not only 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 of losing it forever. Sunny had made that dangerous breakthrough after being trapped

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

he could comprehend the battle intent and 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

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 how

Shadow Dance went far beyond battle techniques... and would be much, much harder to conceive and master for

Shadow Dance, he had

the Shadow Shell - a powerful tool he had created by bringing

without deep comprehension of the desired form, Sunny would never be able to construct it

a limitation to Shadow

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

a combination of his Dormant Ability, Shadow Control,

- Shadow Dance - was

the reason for

uh... let's just try

succeeded... Sunny felt that he might just discover a direction that would