Looking at him, Aunt Freydis could tell that he wouldn't be able to focus on the fight again and probably wouldn't be a good opponent until he was finished testing his ideas.
She blamed the full moon; it always caused distractions for any werewolf affected by it and Chronos was certainly being affected right now. She could see his eyes faintly glowing silver as the moon slowly rose over the horizon.
"Alright, what are we testing first?" Aunt Freydis smiled, she was just as eager to test new ideas as he was.
"Can you tell me how you're able to move the space?"
"Sure. As I was meditating inside of the barrier, I started sensing that the space inside the barrier was different from the space outside of the barrier. Once I could sense the difference in space, I was able to grasp and twist it.
By grabbing the layer that is [Isolate] and slightly separating it from external space I can move everything inside of [Isolate]. I haven't learned how to move individual parts of it yet." She explained.
If you could move space after sensing it then there were a lot of possible alterations to the skills he knew or could learn. Every person's senses were slightly different so a large number of skills could be created from a handful of individuals.
Learning how to move [Isolate] was a good example. Chronos understood how Aunt Freydis was doing this in his mind, but his senses didn't detect any difference between the space inside or outside of the barrier. He wasn't sure if he could sense the difference even if it was pointed out to him.
As he grew stronger that might change but trying to copy Aunt Freydis right now was impossible.
But just outside the barrier Bjarke seemed to have realized something and was already poking the barrier trying to test if he could move it too. From the small shift around his finger, he might be able to copy his mother soon enough.
"Then can I lock down your space with multiple barriers?" Chronos started casting immediately.
Several barriers appeared mid-air then Aunt Freydis pulled again, the [Isolate] spun without any issue. Next Chronos set the barriers on the ground and they repeated the experiment; the barrier didn't shift. Aunt Freydis increased her strength until it eventually began to slowly spin.
"It seems that the barriers only lock space when there is an object giving them weight inside of their influence. The more barriers there are the more difficult it is to move my barrier. What do you think, Chronos?" When she looked over, he was already lost in thought.
The shifting of space and the way multiple barriers interacted with each other allowed him to sense a slight opening between the barriers.
He felt that he could recreate that by using [Sever] on the inside of an [Isolate]. He had never thought to do that before, after all a barrier was meant to protect you from external attacks, not be attacked from the inside.
Casting [Isolate] around himself he coated his claws with [Sever] and struck the barrier.
"!?"
It bent under his strike then opened a small gap that didn't lead anywhere. The barrier wasn't stretched nor was there a bubble on the outside, like he had expected, and there was no gap on the outside either but inside was a small gap filled with nothing but darkness.
It wasn't very large, just big enough to fit both his fists inside of. And he could feel it just like he could feel his own barriers.
From the outside Freydis watched in shock as Chronos' fist disappeared into the barrier but didn't come out the other side.
"How are you doing that!?" She exclaimed.
She wasn't able to sense the space inside of his barrier right now. When he had struck the barrier, it had caused spatial fluctuations that were currently blinding her senses.
"I think I created an item box by striking the inside of the barrier. I read about it in the purchasable skills section before, an item box is a space where I can store items of various sizes in a smaller space. Time doesn't flow at the same rate inside, so the items don't change much within a short period of time." Chronos reported.
As he took his hand out of the gap it slowly closed. If he was going to turn it into a proper item box, he would need to find a way to make it permanent.
Touching the barrier again he carefully opened a gap then continued to expand it as he reached further inside. The larger it became the more difficult it was to expand, increasing its size to the point where it could contain more than a few items would be hard but not impossible.
At this time he remembered the armory amulets he was wearing and couldn't help but compare them.
The amulets were made out of special materials and had the dwarven rune for armory on them. The rune would hold a weapon or armor to it and advanced runes, like the ones on Chronos's amulets, could turn a weapon or armor into energy with an embedded code. The special materials would contain both the energy and the code and when it was removed it would read the code turning it back into a weapon.
Dwarves never kept this knowledge secret but every time they tried to explain the particulars about how it worked it just gave others headaches. The best that others could do was imitate the rune which would only allow them to attach a weapon to the amulet.
But if the rune actually stored the energy and code inside of another space it would explain why others never understood it, at least partially.
Spatial energy itself wasn't something you could explain, you either felt it or you didn't. If you had the right mindset or knowledge, you might still be able to use spatial skills however in this world people barely understood space.
Most of the time they relied on spatial materials to recreate what space users naturally did or on a greater power like the gods divine power.
Learning how to use space was a ridiculous thought, perhaps only an archivist would even attempt to perform such a ridiculous act.
Aunt Freydis watched as he expanded the item box until he could extend both his arms and upper body all the way into it, then it began to shrink again when he took his arms out.
"Can you make it permanent?"
"Yes, but I need to test a couple different methods before deciding which one to use. The first method I came up with is to open an [Isolate] within the space and attach it to a source of power while the second method is to attach the already opened space to an item.
With the first method I could use magic stones, or if I knew enchanting then I could use spirit gathering runes to stabilize it. I could also attach it to an individual, but it would constantly draw a set amount of power from them to continue existing. Doing this would allow the space to grow larger depending on how much energy was provided after it was set.
On the other hand, the second method places the sub-space within an already existing space meaning that it doesn't need any extra energy to continue to exist, but you also can't expand it once it's set." Chronos explained.
He couldn't be certain that he was right until he tested it, but he could sense that this sub-space acted in the same way as an [Isolate] so it should follow the same rules.
"Sub-space? Oh right, that was mentioned in the section on layers, it's an alternate space that isn't complete enough or stable enough to become a layer. So, this is what a sub-space feels like. Here, try placing it inside of this bag." Aunt Freydis offered a satchel big enough to carry books to him.
Taking it Chronos held the edge of the gap and moved it onto the opening of the satchel. As it moved into place the satchel fluttered around like something was being put inside of it then fell flat again.
"Interesting, now let's try this." He muttered as he reached into the gap.
However, he couldn't get the inside of the sub-space to adhere to the satchel. Frowning he turned his attention to the opening of the sub-space. It was only half the size of the satchels opening, maybe that was why it wasn't settling properly?
Griping the edges he pulled and scraped at them bringing them to the edge of the satchel.
Snap!
With a sharp snap it suddenly fell into place, the satchel billowed outwards until it looked like a balloon then flattened some but didn't return to being completely flat.
"Oh, it worked!"
Looking inside he noticed that the space had shrunk from its original 1 and a half-meter size to just 1-meter. From what his senses were telling him time was also slowed down, if cooked food was placed inside it would last 2 weeks without going bad and once it did you could still eat it for a time after that.