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.

the apartment, two within - and stood there for

be

The principle was simple.

of Shadow 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 so, he could

to shadow simpler battle styles. He

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 special

after collecting a vast library of techniques in the Dreamscape, which culminated during his first duel with Morgan. The inspiration Sunny had received after being decimated by the Princess of War pushed him to a

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 allowed him to intuitively feel what the abominations he fought would do, but also put his own sense of self, if

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 in an endless procession of harrowing

together by using his True Name. It served as an anchor for

shadowed even further, allowed him to actually perceive the flow of essence through their

The fourth step...

Dance was his Aspect Legacy, but it was also something he had to invent all on his own, with no one guiding him... as

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

he had achieved progress in

had created by bringing together various facets of his skills, Attributes, and

able to create shells of other 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 was what

a limitation

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 flexible and adaptable as possible, it was still

added another

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

Ability - Shadow Dance - was

the reason for

let's just

Sunny felt that he might just discover a direction that would eventually