Self-Actualization
A matte, jet-black version of Sunny was standing in the middle of the room. He did not move for a while, frozen like a statue, then raised his hands slightly and looked at them with a strange expression.
His fingers moved.
'Well, that's...'
The jet-black Sunny scratched the back of his head, then halted for a moment and tentatively touched his hair. The mere fact that he had hair was a surprise.
'...that's certainly something.'
He felt extremely strange.
Sunny was fundamentally a human. When using Shadow Step, he could assume the form of an incorporeal shadow, then turn himself back to his original form. That was not what he had done today, however.
Today, he had become a shadow, and then manifested himself into a corporeal form without turning back into a human. So, what he was right now was... was...
'I... uh... I'll be damned if I know what I am right now.'
A human inhabiting a human-shaped vessel made of shadows? A shadow brazenly wandering the human world in the form of a person? Or something else entirely?
Descriptions aside, his current state was a curious one.
Because of how faithful the recreation was to the original, Sunny felt more or less like himself. His range of motion, strength, and agility remained the same. His shadow form was Ascended, just like his human body, so it was just as powerful and resilient.
There were differences too, of course.
The most obvious one was the change in his perception. His shadow sense seemed to have become sharper, while his vision was now less pronounced. He couldn't see colors, either - just like in the Second Nightmare, when inhabiting the shadowspawn. This was familiar territory for him.
Less familiar was the actual composition of his new and strange shadow body.
It was a faithful copy, but not an exact one. It couldn't be - although the jet-black Sunny looked and acted like Sunny, he was still a manifested shadow. As such, he operated on a different set of principles.
The recreation did follow some underlying principles of how a corporeal creature was supposed to be, but the similarity was shallow. He did not have a beating heart, or any internal organs, for that matter. And although there was a rough structure to his form, with something similar to bones being connected to something similar muscles, there was no blood running through his veins.
There were no veins, either. At best, there were essence pathways.
How did it all work?
Hell if Sunny knew.
...It did work, though.
Perplexed, he glanced at the two shadows that were hiding in the corners of the room.
"...What do you guys think?"
The haughty shadow seemed completely befuddled. It stared at him for a while, then raised a hand, as if wanting to say something. Eventually, though, the arrogant guy simply shook his head in confusion.
The creepy shadow, in an uncharacteristic display of emotions, scratched the back of its head, puzzled.
The jet-black Sunny smiled, revealing jet-black teeth.
"Yeah..."
After going through the training steps of Shadow Dance and examining his current state further, he discovered a few things. The first was that this corporeal shadow form was much more malleable than his human body. It could change its shape at will... of course, he needed to possess an excellent understanding of what he was turning it into for the end result to work.
For example, Sunny could become a smaller version of himself - that, however, required some practice to master, since such a fundamental change affected a lot of things. He could become larger, too, although there was a limit to how much, dictated by his Rank and soul essence capacity.
Less comprehensive changes were much easier. Sunny already knew how to possess four arms, so he could add two more to his existing ones with ease. The same went for claws, horns, a tail... in the future, as his knowledge of various forms and shapes grew, he would be able to make more changes like that on the fly.
The second discovery was that while the corporeal shadow form was almost as resilient as his actual body, in the end, it still fell short.
The reason for that was simple - the Weaves. Neither Blood Weave nor Bone Weave persisted in this state, which left Sunny vulnerable. Interestingly enough, the Marble Shell still had an effect... in fact, it had even become more potent.
That was because the effects of the [Stalwart] trait were being applied to him twice.
Shadows were innately connected to souls, to the extent that when Sunny was damaged in the form of a shadow, or one of his shadows was damaged, his soul would be damaged too. Therefore, the corporeal shadow form received the benefits of both the extremely high degree of physical protection and the high degree of protection from soul attacks that the [Stalwart] trait provided.
Due to the fact that every attack against it was akin to a soul attack.
...Which was not ideal.
Sunny had a tendency to be wounded a lot, and if each wound was transferred directly to his soul, it would quickly collapse.
'No... that really won't do.'
Activating the [Mantle] would surround the physical shadow form with an onyx carapace and make it much less prone to being damaged.
But there was an even better solution...
After all, Sunny had started this whole experiment for a reason.
Even though the discovery promised to have much wider implications, the initial reason was to expand the limits of the Shadow Shell.
After getting somewhat used to this new way of existence, Sunny called upon the deep shadows shrouding his room, manifesting them into the shadowspawn shell.
Layers of shadows flowed up his jet-black body, wrapping tightly around it. Soon, a towering, four-armed fiend was standing in the middle of the room.
This time felt different, though.
Instead of being nestled within the Shell, Sunny felt as if he had become an integral part of it. His own shadow form was still the heart and driving force of the horned creature, but it was as if he had actually become the fiend. The outer layers of the shadowspawn were like armor, and protected safely deep within was his vulnerable soul.
'...Not bad.'
Combining these two abilities was a perfect way to both remove the limitations of the Shadow Shell and protect his soul from harm.
If there was one negative side to this solution, though, it was that Sunny's essence was being consumed at twice the speed.
He would not be able to sustain this double transformation for long.
For now. In the future, though...
As his soul grew more powerful, Sunny would most likely be able to use these abilities much better.
And one day, perhaps, his soul would grow so vast and powerful that he would not need the protection of a shell at all.
