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.

shadows to stand watch - two outside the apartment, two within - and stood there for a few minutes, mentally going over what

didn't seem to be dangerous, just... really

The principle was simple.

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 of their battle intent,

He had achieved that breakthrough while fighting Nephis

it much faster. It also gave him a glimpse of an intuitive understanding of the more esoteric components of the truly

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

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 not his

and let go of their actual self - which, of course, posed the risk

back together by using his True Name. It served as an anchor for what made Sunny an individual, and through it, he was

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 to sometimes predict their

The fourth step...

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

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

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

tool he had

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 form, Sunny would never be able to construct it from the shadows, and that was what his Aspect

a limitation to

all, shadows were truly shapeless 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 flexible

he added another ingredient to

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

- Shadow Dance - was missing from

the reason for the limitations Sunny had to deal

uh... let's just try

he succeeded... Sunny felt that he might just discover a direction that would eventually lead him to the next step