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

be dangerous, just...

The principle was simple.

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

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

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

Dreamscape, which culminated during his first duel with Morgan. The inspiration Sunny had received after being

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 allowed him to intuitively feel what

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 losing it forever. Sunny had made that dangerous breakthrough after being trapped

by using his True Name. It served as an anchor for what made Sunny an

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,

The fourth step...

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 path was, let alone how to reach the next stop

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

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

powerful tool he had created by bringing together various facets of

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

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

he added another ingredient to the

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

Dance -

the reason for the limitations Sunny had

let's just try

he might just discover a direction that would eventually lead