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 a few minutes, mentally going over what he

didn't seem to be dangerous,

The principle was simple.

battle art was shapelessness and formlessness - it allowed him to shadow an enemy, copying the very

He had achieved that breakthrough while fighting Nephis in the

shadow much more sophisticated styles, and do it much faster. It also gave him a glimpse of an intuitive understanding

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

third 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, he had submerged himself into their perverted, demented,

of Shadow Dance 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 losing it

his 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

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 ability

The fourth step...

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

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

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

a powerful tool he had created by bringing together various

being able to create shells of other creatures. In fact, its role was perhaps the most important - without deep comprehension of

was a limitation to Shadow

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

he added

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

Dance - was

that, perhaps, was the reason for

let's just try

might just discover a direction that would eventually lead him