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.

- two outside the apartment, two within - and stood there for a few minutes, mentally

seem 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

to shadow simpler battle styles. He

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 truly advanced battle arts - those created and used by the Awakened, thus incorporating

Dreamscape, which culminated during his first duel with Morgan. The inspiration

Nightmare Creatures. In the bloody arena of the Red Colosseum,

go of their actual self - which, of course, posed

pieces of his true self back together by using his True Name. It served as an anchor for what made Sunny an individual,

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 fourth step...

something he had to invent all on his own, with

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

Shadow Dance, he had achieved progress in other aspects

tool he had created

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

was a limitation to

and formless, while Sunny was not. 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

what if... he added another ingredient to

as a combination of his Dormant Ability, Shadow Control, his Ascended Ability, Shadow Manifestation, and his

Ability - Shadow Dance

the reason for the

let's

might just discover a direction