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

didn't seem to be dangerous,

The principle was simple.

to shadow an enemy, copying the very essence of their combat technique. After doing so, he could predict their movements, the flow of their battle

him to shadow simpler battle styles. He had achieved that breakthrough while fighting Nephis in the Crimson

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

during his first duel with Morgan. The inspiration Sunny had received after being decimated by the Princess of War pushed him

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, he had submerged himself into their perverted, demented, rabid minds... which

was much more demanding on the practitioner. It required one to truly accept the formless nature of the shadows and let go of their actual self - which, of course, posed the risk of

an anchor for what made Sunny an individual, and through it, he

enhanced the speed with which 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 it intuitively, and even gave him

The fourth step...

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

went far beyond battle techniques... and would be much,

Shadow Dance, he had achieved

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

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

a limitation to Shadow

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

what if... he added another ingredient to

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

Ability - Shadow Dance - was missing from

was the reason for the

uh... let's

might just discover a direction that would eventually