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.

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

be dangerous, just...

The principle was simple.

had mastered three steps 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 predict their movements, the flow of their battle intent, and

first step allowed him to shadow simpler battle styles. He had achieved

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

during his first duel with Morgan. The inspiration Sunny had received

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, rabid minds... which allowed him to intuitively feel what the abominations he fought would do, but also put his

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 in an endless procession of

served as an anchor for what made Sunny an individual, and through it, he was able to advance his mastery of Shadow Dance without losing

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

The fourth step...

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

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

Dance, he had achieved

a powerful tool he had created by bringing together various facets of his skills, Attributes,

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 Legacy allowed him to

was a limitation to Shadow

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 a relatively

if... he added another ingredient to

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

Shadow Dance - was

perhaps, was the reason for the limitations Sunny had to

let's just

felt that he might just discover a direction that would eventually