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

didn't seem to be dangerous,

The principle was simple.

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.

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

that 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 more esoteric components of the

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

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

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 forever. Sunny had made that dangerous breakthrough after

Name. It served as an anchor

further, allowed him to actually perceive the flow

The fourth step...

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,

battle techniques...

stagnated in mastering Shadow Dance, he

Shadow Shell - a powerful tool he had created by

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

was a limitation to Shadow

he still possessed a human body. No matter how much training he had

added another ingredient to

his Dormant Ability, Shadow Control, his Ascended Ability, Shadow Manifestation, and his Aspect Legacy,

Awakened Ability - Shadow Dance - was missing

was the reason for

uh... let's just

just discover a direction that would eventually lead him