While Kiel was unable to level up, Edel stayed by his side. Thankfully, Melissa's and Cassandra's house had a small backyard which was a somewhat private space he could train without fear of destroying anything inside the house. There was also a nice small garden at the side where the flowers were still growing. It wasn't much now, but in two or three months it would be a sight to see.
At the same time he told them that while he was training it was very dangerous to approach him, so he wouldn't have a repeat of the previous incident.
At first he tried to leave Edel inside the house while he worked, but after the fifth complaint and eventual escape, he gave up on that. Instead now she rested next to the garden as far away as he could put her for her safety.
As for Melissa and Cassandra, they had to leave in order to complete guild missions, especially now after they paid so much for his skill removal. For their help he felt grateful. More than that, however, he felt uncomfortable receiving so much without giving anything back.
He vowed once he was alright he would help them double, if not triple their income. This was even more so once he managed to get the damnable skill.
He growled loudly in frustration, making Edel look up in curiosity from where she was laying.
"I'm fine..." he said through their bond. Of course, she seemed less worried, and more bored as she sent him an image of them running through the forest trying to catch or outrun each other.
He was very tempted to agree, but he was so close...
After he got the skill, he would beat her in as many races as she wanted.
Her tail moved a little faster and she howled at the challenge. She jumped and landed on top of the growing garden, running around. He felt bad for leaving her alone to terrorize the backyard, but he was going to do this whether that meant the small garden was ruined or not.
On second thought, he stopped Edel from digging up the entire place. Melissa was already hesitant to leave the two of them alone, and he didn't need to give her a reason to never do it again.
Her house was his house, but he still had to have some common etiquette as a guest, or a party member.
He let out a cloud of ether in front of him, not bothering enhancing his perception beforehand. He figured out that while it made some of the process easier, it got harder to focus on it as well as making a three dimensional space.
Spatial Manipulation gave his ether dimensionality in a way that bent his understanding of how space worked. He basically created space in front of space. If he didn't control it with both his Ether Manipulation as well as his Spatial one, he would lose the space in the sea around it.
Without the extra perception making the space was a lot harder, but once he did, he found it easier to move on. The space he created felt light. He didn't know whether that was because he was doing something wrong, something right or because it was still empty inside.
Then again, even if he managed to put something inside that space, the item would be lost in the void, or thrown back outside the moment the space collapsed.
Taking a deep breath, he focused in forming an anchor between the created space and himself. In order to do this he had to take a logical leap of faith and assume his will alone would be enough.
Of course, the best way to do that would be brute forcing it with his Spatial Affinity.
Making a connection between himself and the created space turned out to be easier than he thought, which he assumed was in part because of his Traveler title and because it was his ether that created the space in the first place so there was something that the connection could be built upon.
But where making the connection was easy, maintaining it was impossible.
He figured out that the further away he was from the created space, the more difficult it was to maintain a stable connection to it. In the end he walked closer each time and tried again. When he was almost touching the space in front of him, he felt the connection form stronger than his previous attempts.
Feeling emboldened, he pushed his will into strengthening that connection. It was at the moment he accidentally touched the space that he realized what his mistake had been previously.
The space needed to anchor to something material, the connection couldn't be stable without anything to actually attach to. That something ended up being his body.
For a moment he was afraid the space would suck him up and he would end up in a void of his own creation, but as the seconds passed and nothing happened he let out a breath. He hadn't earned a skill yet, but he felt he was close.
The space around him was weird, like there was another layer superimposed and fixed on his position. A space almost double his height. Moving slowly didn't affect the layered space, so he tried fast. Edel was amused to see him chasing his tail, but he was seriously testing stuff, no matter what she was suggesting.
Next he tried to see if this affected Spatial Shift.
He gathered the ether around his body, feeling the usual resistance and breaking past it to teleport a meter to the right. The teleportation went well, but the previously fixed space crumbled the moment he reappeared.
That was annoying, but getting back to this point was fairly simple. The expenditure of ether was his biggest limitation in experimenting. He had another try in him before he needed to rest for a few hours in this low ether density area.
Anchoring the space on his body again, he started to brainstorm possible things he was missing to complete the skill. Basically all he had now was a fancy cape no one could see.
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He tried putting something inside that space, but when he tried the space wouldn't budge.
He had created space, he anchored it... frankly, he didn't know what he was missing. He asked Edel jokingly, but when she sent him the mental image of him chasing his tail, he froze. His tail rose in the air and Edel could feel his excitement through their bond.
He thanked her for her help and sat back down after calming himself a bit.
Taking the space locked in his position, he twisted it, folding it in on itself. It resisted more than anything he'd tried before, and taking that as a sign of progress, he redoubled his efforts.
Fifteen minutes later, his paws were sweaty and his legs trembled from the exertion, but he'd managed to fold the space once. The cloak was much smaller now, and it felt like it had volume.
He could see a system message waiting for him, but like always he ignored it while he rested. He wasn't done just yet.
After catching his breath and reminding Edel not to dig a trench in the backyard, he got back to it. Edel had too much energy to remain cooped up inside any house.
He managed to fold the space twice more in the end before the resistance got too much for him. It wasn't just a matter of will, but also ether as he found that this sort of work drained it fairly quickly. That said, to fold the space for a fourth time he didn't have nearly enough of both will and ether.
Still, the space now felt... heavy. It was slightly smaller than his own body, and best of all, it was stable without having to pay any attention to it. After it passed the teleportation test as well, he checked to see his status screen.
Spatial Storage (Lvl 2)
He let out a jubilant meow, catching the attention of Edel who was fighting herself not to get closer. He couldn't help but laugh at her antics and let her know it was safe to come near him.
Instantly she jumped over to his position, and he teleported to the side with what little ether he had in himself in order to avoid her lunge. Seriously, she sometimes forgot how strong she was.
Unfortunately he had underestimated her, and he wasn't able to teleport in time to avoid her a second time. She tumbled with him to the ground, growling excitedly and jumping back on her feet.
Of course, he couldn't take that laying down, so he enhanced his strength and perception and started chasing her for a change of pace. When they stopped playing he almost forgot what he was doing previously.
Shaking his head, he got back into testing his new skill. Cutting a few blades of grass, he managed to figure out that in order to store something he needed to pull it with his will. That was an intuitive leap that if he wasn't relying on his connection with his spatial affinity for pretty much everything, he would have never made.
He could now feel three connections tied to himself. One with Edel who was sitting right next to him. The other was the connection he formed with Melissa and it was more faint which indicated she was probably outside the city right now.
Then there was his connection with the spatial storage he just created. Inside of it he could vaguely feel the blade of grass frozen in space. He willed it to leave the space and the blade of grass reappeared in front of him.
He was excited and quick to test the space with other stuff.
Teleporting inside the house, he found a few jugs of water. Trying to teleport the water from the jugs was... impossible. The story changed, however, when said liquids were inside a container, which made it a thousand times easier for some reason. Otherwise it was like the water kept slipping from his hands.
Larger objects like the wooden table in the living room felt heavier to pick up even though they didn't necessarily weigh a lot, and he could feel the presence of the object was much greater in comparison to the presence of the blade of grass.
Heavy objects felt heavy, which wasn't a surprise, but it was somewhat of a surprise that the rock he put in his storage filled up more space than it should have taken.
From his tests he estimated that his storage skill could probably store the same amount as a large closet. He was probably able to fit two, maybe three Edels in it before there was no more space for anything else.
Of course, the amount he could fit inside it was also dependent on the weight of the items. But the skill was only level 2, and he was excited to see how it grew.
Already he had enough space for most things he would need for a trip for both himself and Edel. Melissa and Cassandra had more options to carry their stuff but they also needed to carry more, so he wasn't counting them.
At least now that he had some ability to carry things, he could attempt some of his more interesting plans. He really wanted to revisit the idea of getting wood from the trees that survived inside a quiet zone, but there was more than that inside there. Like plants that managed to adapt and survive with the help of the rich ether inside the tumultuous environment.
Not many plants did, but with a large enough number there would always be outliers.
He was excited enough that he considered leaving with Edel to share the good news with the other two. He wouldn't say he was a genius because without the help from the crafting book he couldn't imagine creating his Spatial Storage on his own in any future, but managing to do so in just two days? That had to be a record.
Unfortunately, he wasn't sure if leaving with or without Edel was the right call. No, scratch that, the right call was definitely staying here and waiting till the others came back. That said, Edel was bored out of her mind, and he did owe her a lot.
Now was this worth getting potentially in trouble with the city?
Kiel looked back at the smiling and panting wolf and nodded. The risk was definitely worth it.
Besides, they'd already left the city once without Melissa or Cassandra, and they knew the general location of the western exit.
What could possibly go wrong?
He was determined to answer that question by leaving the house with Edel. He could swear that when he asked her if she wanted to go out she found an extra pair of lungs to howl his ears out.
If that hadn't grabbed enough attention, going out on the streets alone definitely did.
This time he wasn't with the two adventurers, nor was his mind preoccupied with making things right, so he was paying a lot more attention at how people reacted to them.
He walked ahead with Edel following right behind him. He could see a few people turn and change direction, as well as some more daring ones that seemed intrigued by their presence.
In general, however, most gave them space, or seemed apprehensive about their presence in the city. He remembered the man with the collared hawk. Was it because they weren't wearing collars? That seemed like a dumb distinction to make.
Then again even back on Earth people would have been surprised to see a wolf calmly walking in the streets of their city too.
A few minutes away from where they started, a guard noticed them and started walking towards the two of them. They weren't hard to notice, the clothing gave them away fairly easily. Looking at Edel though, she either didn't understand what that specific light armor meant, or she didn't care. Probably a bit of both as she continued walking at the same pace.
Two more guards started approaching them from the other side of the street, though one of them didn't seem so certain about it. He didn't blame the poor guy, if he was in their shoes, he would have been hesitant to approach Edel too.
At this point he had a choice to make. Run or hide? Looking back at Edel, he doubted they could hide. Running in the middle of the crowd, however, was dangerous.
Looking at the wide street and the small buildings on the side, he formed an escape plan. He could easily teleport that distance, and Edel could jump it. He doubted the guards would be able to follow them as easily going from roof to roof.
He ran the idea by her.
Instead, she sent him a reminder about his challenge in that he could beat her in a race, and so the decision was out of his hands as she immediately started running towards the buildings on the side of the street.
She picked up an impressive amount of speed and reached the rooftops in less than two seconds while avoiding passers-by.
The guards reacted faster than him, running after her, though they were still too slow. For some reason I don't think I'm winning this one.