"Wait a second so this title helps you get lost then makes sure nobody can find you? Hehehehe, what was the voice thinking when he gave you this title?" She started laughing even more.
"No, no that's incorrect. It only helps me get lost when something good will happen at the end of the path whereas the core passive helps me avoid danger. And the active ability makes it even worse, [Accidental Shortcut] tears open an unstable path through space towards my destination." Chronos said.
"Oh, that's not so bad, a quick shortcut could help everyone." Lyla said as she calmed down that is until Chronos spoke again.
"It only opens a path towards my destination. It doesn't say anything about arriving at the destination. It might drop me off at my destination or near my destination or it might leave me in an area that is helpful or educational to me. Or it might open long forgotten paths that were forgotten for good reasons.
There might be other effects that aren't listed here too and there's even a saying attached to this ability too, 'Good news. We're only three planes away this time'." Chronos quoted while giving the title a strange look.
That was too much for Lyla as she burst out laughing, "hehehe, hahahaha."
A title that helped you get lost, made sure nobody could find you once you were lost, and even gave you abilities just for getting lost was absolutely wonderful and horrifying at the same time.
"Hehe, we-we have to go on a shortcut journey someday. It sounds like way too much fun not to." She said once she had regained control of herself.
"Maybe for a vacation, that way nobody can find us or complain when it takes us awhile to get back." Chronos chuckled.
"And they'll either be too excited or too busy dealing with what we brought back to care about scolding us." Lyla thoughtfully added.
That sounded nice. Avoiding being scolded was always nice but maybe they could get whatever creature followed them back to attack their enemies.
No that was too dangerous, if something like a king rank beast chased them back, they would definitely be held accountable and probably exiled.
He wasn't ready to be exiled yet. There were still things he wanted to do on the continent after all.
"This has been fun to talk about, but I need to get back to work. I need to make skill books for the three utility skills at the very least and that's going to take most of the day." Chronos sighed as he glanced at the papers.
"Do you have everything you need to make them?" Lyla asked.
"Mostly, I can mix my blood with the ink to make up for the lacking space element but I'm going to need some better covers if I want it to last. Without a good cover the paper will degrade from the power too fast to be useful but that can be done later." Chronos said.
Taking a knife, he cut the back of his hand and dropped a few drops of blood into the ink then used the quill to mix it in properly. He only stopped when the ink started becoming see through indicating that it now had a spatial quality to it.
Dipping his quill in the ink Chronos began writing the [Spatial Compass] skill. He had to rewrite it twice before he was satisfied but the small size of the book let him finish within two hours.
Writing this skill was a bit tricky as it was a passive skill, which made it harder to figure out how to explain it simply. Its passive nature also made it tough to learn, so anyone who didn't resonate with it would either have to practice regularly for a long time or buy it from the system to save the effort.
Once he learned the trick to writing passive skills it didn't take him long to finish the next two skills. Still, it was late in the evening when he finished everything he had to do today leaving no time for anything else and he was exhausted from using mental energy all day.
Walking into his room he collapsed on the bed and fell asleep.
That night he had a strange dream of chasing something with black and red mist floating around it, but he didn't recognize it or the area around him. It looked like he was jumping between floating gray balls and occasionally even running through the air.
No that was wrong, not the air, through space. He was making tunnels through space to hunt that thing.
Unfortunately, the dream ended before he could tell where he was or try to find any landmarks. Although in this gray environment he wasn't sure if landmarks even existed.
Waking up he found that the rain from the past few days had calmed down but now there was lightning thundering through the clouds.
Heading to the cafeteria he met Gregory on the way.
"Good morning, you woke up late. Are you feeling okay?" Gregory looked at him with worry.
It was already halfway through the morning well past the time Chronos usually woke up.
"Morning, yeah I'm fine. I just did a bunch of stuff I wasn't used to yesterday." Chronos replied.
Using mental energy had been more tiring than he had expected but he treated it as a good experience about how much he could do in a day.
"Good, we don't know when the black robes will attack us again, so I don't want anybody out of commission for too long." Gregory stated.
"Right, I won't do that again. Also, what are we... What is that?"
Following Chronos's gaze Gregory couldn't understand what he saw, there was nothing but clouds in the east.
"I don't see..."
Boom! Crash!
A bolt of lightning struck a cloud and was deflected towards the ground.
"That wasn't natural." Gregory stared at the cloud.
As he watched it the cloud moved in their direction from the eastern side of the swamp, against the wind.
"Prepare for an attack! Children to the chapel!" Gregory yelled as he rushed to prepare his gear.
"I can't tell what is in the clouds but there are three of them!" Chronos said as he kept pace with Gregory.
"How did you see them?" Gregory was normally the one to find hidden enemies before anyone else so Chronos finding it before him intrigued and worried him.
"I learned three sensory skills yesterday. They make me very perceptive to differences in space and large power sources cause such disturbances." Chronos said.
Lyla and Sariah joined them as Gorvak went in front of the chapel's door to protect the kids along with the matron.
Standing on the eastern bridge they watched as the clouds came closer until they could make out the shapes of the three clouds.
They were shaped like ovals until they melded with the natural clouds, and they were flying one after the other to hide their numbers. Once they were close enough, they separated and slowed down until they were right next to the grove.
Descending from the clouds the bottom of three ships became visible. On the ship's side was an image of a roc flying around a large mountain, next to it was an image of a knight with a castle in the background that had a massive magic circle above it.
Two different emblems one marking where they came from and one for the group they were aligned with.
All of them recognized the Leighla Kingdoms emblem as the roc with the mountain but the other one was unknown to them.
"Ah, the Crucible Knights have arrived." Chronos guessed.
"Don't drop your guard yet. Without an official notice we don't know if they are the crucible knights." Gregory reminded him.
Nodding Chronos observed the ships more carefully. Men were moving about the deck preparing for a landing making Chronos believe that they weren't an enemy.
If they were an enemy, they would've stayed higher up while launching attacks at the grove. Chronos wasn't sure if they could fight against such a threat from the ground.
Seeing the ships he firmly decided to learn a flying skill before another threat like this could catch him off guard.
As the ships landed a man jumped down from the deck causing much distress to the soldiers on board.
"Hello holy grove. We heard about you from Commander Stan and are here to help." His loud voice echoed more strongly than the thunder above them.
He was built larger than life being taller than most and his armor looked like it would break from the muscles that Chronos could clearly see in the gaps of his armor.
"Ugh, why did he have to come here?" Chronos groaned.
"You recognize him? Who is he?" Sariah curiously asked.
Sighing Chronos explained, "He is one of the loudest and most annoying men I have ever met. He is also the Leighla kingdom's third prince."