"Hrólmir?"
"Yes, it's me now tell me what you did. It affected my system." Hrólmir's voice was a mix of panic and curiosity.
Chronos explained the experiments that they had done and the final experiment along with its results, much to Hrólmir's horror.
"Hah, alright I can't say this was expected but it seems to have worked out."
"What happened exactly? I didn't break anything, did I?" Chronos asked.
"Not yet but trying to fuse an internal space into your body before the fourth rank is extremely dangerous since your senses aren't developed enough to succeed in most cases. In your case you relied on healing to keep experimenting well past your natural limit while somehow avoiding the most dangerous outcomes and my system seems to have classified the internal space as storage and registered it as a new section before it could do any serious damage.
It's a very strange situation; I wasn't planning on adding storage space for a few decades. If the system reacts badly to a new function, then I have to remove it before it can cause problems for an existing function." Hrólmir said.
Chronos thought about it for a few seconds before deciding that having a new function before others was good. It meant he knew what to expect when it did arrive and that gave him some leverage over other users, whether he chose to use that leverage or not was a separate issue.
"Does that mean I'm not at risk of dying?"
"Not right now, of course if you try to alter it without the proper knowledge you might die but I don't think you're stupid enough to do that after suffering so much. Surely you weren't thinking about trying to separate it from your body again, right." Hrólmir mocked him.
Chronos could practically see Hrólmir giving him an exasperated look.
"I'm sorry."
"Good, you need to be more careful when training spatial skills from now on. Without enough knowledge to draw from they can cause extreme damage not just to you but to everything or everyone in your surroundings. My advice is to learn a few utility spatial skills from the skill section to gather knowledge before trying to create your own skills."
"Alright, no more experimenting until I have new skills. But first I want to try and master the skills I already have, there's quite a lot to learn just from those." Chronos said.
Aunt Freydis stared at Chronos as he muttered to himself, wondering if having an internal space had somehow damaged his mind.
"Hey Chronos, are you alright?" She tapped his shoulder to get his attention.
Refocusing on the training grounds his head snapped around to see several werewolves had surrounded him and Lyla was casting another healing spell on him.
"I'm fine, just speaking with the creator of the system. He said it's dangerous to create an internal space before your senses are strong enough, I just got lucky that it didn't kill me. Also, once it's fused with the body you can't remove it or you might kill the user." Chronos explained.
"Oh, we did something really dangerous huh?"
"Yeah, from now on we should learn skills from the system until we understand how to alter space with minimal risk." Chronos said as he rubbed the back of his head.
All of the werewolves nodded in agreement, but Lyla had a calculative look in her eye.
"Lyla, no you aren't allowed to try and forcibly learn a new spell. It's too dangerous." Seeing the glint in her eye Chronos admonished her.
"Fine, but I'm still going to alter the ones I know." She huffed.
"That's fine, just don't try anything too extreme."
"You should take your own advice. At any rate I'm leaving, I need to examine the system again and make sure you didn't cause any issues." Hrólmir said.
"Alright see you later." Chronos looked at the sun as it rose above the trees as he spoke out loud, "For now let's leave, we've already done everything we came here to do. Now we just need to wait for orders from the commander."
"Right, what are we going to do next?" Lyla asked.
"The scouts haven't found any groups larger than a hundred recently so we're going to make for the wasteland once Sathrya and her troops arrive either today or tomorrow. Make sure you finish everything you need too before then." Aunt Freydis called out as they dispersed.
Lyla walked with Chronos until she pointed out what he had forgotten.
"Don't you need to get going for your oath-plate service? You're already going to be late as it is."
"Oh no, I forgot! Bye Lyla." He shouted as he ran towards the dining hall.
Waving, she kept walking as she thought about her spells and how she could change them.
In the kitchen Chronos could hear the head chef yelling at someone for dropping a breakfast platter. Maybe he could slip inside while he was busy, but as he entered the kitchen the head chef's head snapped around to face him.
"Chronos you're late! You're on dishwashing duty this morning." He yelled as he pointed at a sink full of bowls that needed cleaning.
"Got it." Chronos replied as he made his way through the busy kitchen to the sink.
Focusing he cast multiple [Isolate]'s around his fingers and hands to keep the dirty water off his fur. Over the past few days, he had been practicing like this as much as he could and he wasn't about to stop now that he knew how to layer the barriers to block out water.
Daily training had taught him a large number of small tricks for casting spells. Well, even though he had learned a lot he only had two real spells right now, the [Isolate] he was using and the item box spell he had just learned. All of his other skills were techniques.
As the day passed Chronos wasn't able to finish the dishes before dinner, with every meal they just kept piling up. However, he did hear about Sathrya's arrival that evening and that they were going to be moving the next day.
Over the past few days several groups of captured people had been freed and brought to the fortress. In total there were almost 2000 people building a small village around the fortress now and he was sure the nagas would make use of them as a stopover point for trade between the east, west, and south.
Or at least Vaelith would. She still hadn't given up on turning the southern swamps of Dracon Fen into a trading hub for her people even though the elder matriarchs weren't too eager about it.
Commander Stan stopped by in the evening to tell him that he was to leave the tomorrow with his team as a forward scouting unit to feel out the wastelands border before the main army arrived.
Chronos practically jumped for joy. It had only been a week since he was put on oath-plate service, but he was beginning to understand why the paladins hated doing it.
The constant teasing and nagging from the rest of your battalion ground away at your nerves. And you couldn't even fight back because they were right.
Getting out of the service early didn't mean he would have an easy time, if anything he was going to one of the most dangerous areas in the kingdom right now but if it meant he didn't have to do anymore dishes he was willing to take the chance.
He would have to prepare for everything before they left tomorrow.
He needed some new potions both water-breathing, and water-walking. And he needed some healing potions and rations to last two weeks at the minimum.
Come to think of it, with his new storage space he could keep a fair amount of food with him until it was needed or spare weapons for when he broke his own. Other than his heartwood war sword and Echoforge all of the others had a chance to break, especially with his rapid increase in strength lately.
If he didn't learn to control his strength soon, he might end up hurting somebody he didn't mean to.
Thinking about what other items he might need and could now carry he realized he would be in a much better position compared to other teams. But he decided to create three item bags for his friends tonight just in case.
After dinner he picked up the materials from the supplies tent then got to work. It took him a few hours to finish but once he was done all three bags had 2-meters of internal space.
Sariah and Lyla were already asleep, but Gregory, seeing something interesting, had waited for him to finish.
"Are these the item bags I heard about?"
Chronos sleepily nodded as he handed him a bag, two days without rest was a bit much.
"Fill it up with anything you think might be needed. We don't know how long we'll be out this time, and we won't have any backup in the wasteland." Chronos said.
Entering the tent he rapidly fell asleep while Gregory went around camp gathering ropes, tents, food and anything else he thought might come in handy.