"Gotcha." Yelled a large man as he jumped at Chronos while he was on the ground.
Chronos straightened up like a rod then unsteadily stepped over the large man's fallen body before he could get up.
As he continued wobbling around the dining hall he somehow managed to avoid all of the benches and tables despite his movement becoming stranger and worse. As more people became interested in what was going on they started to throw dishes at him.
He dodged plates full of food while he watched the dining hall slowly devolve into a food fight with him being the only enemy.
Almost an hour later.
"What is going on here?!"
A fat man with a chef's hat stormed out of the kitchen to see the dining hall covered in food and dishes. He was so angry that his face looked like a ripe tomato.
Many of the people that had been eating now had food on themselves or black eyes from brawls they had gotten into when Chronos had somehow dodged another dish thrown at him. Throughout the entire food fight nothing had hit him.
Everyone that had been in the hall was glaring at Chronos who didn't have a single piece of food on him.
""He started it!""
"I've been framed!"
"All of you outside NOW! Kneel down until I say otherwise!"
"Ahahahahaha!"
Everyone marched out of the hall and kneeled down as Lyla's laughter resounded through the fort.
She still couldn't understand how Chronos had avoided everything, there had even been times that every single angle was covered, and he had still avoided it! But the messy result greatly satisfied her.
While they were kneeling down Commander Stan showed up for his meal.
"What's going on? All of you stand up, dragon paladins don't kneel." He said with a scowl.
They glanced at each other before one of them worked up the courage to speak.
"Um, Commander the head chef is really angry at us and ordered us to kneel and if I'm being honest, he scares us more than you do. So, with your permission we'll remain here until he says otherwise." All of them nodded in unison.
Commander Stan looked perplexed at that.
"What do you mean he's angry? He's never been angry at you men before. Let me see what's going on." He slightly opened the door then froze.
"Those ungrateful b****** have no idea how hard I work to feed them. And then they act like b****es and throw it away. I outta string them up by their guts and..."
Seeing the mess on the floor and hearing the head chef's muttering, he quietly shut the door, turned around and started walking away.
When he passed one of the guards nearby, he said, "Inform me when the head chef is no longer angry and make sure none of these men stand up until then. They are to be punished in whatever way the head chef deems necessary."
"Understood, sir."
Not a single person complained about that order.
While they were waiting Chronos checked his status looking for the reason that he was so off balance today but there was nothing new in his status.
Ding-a-ling.
Oh, a new message and it's from Hrólmir.
{Dear Chronos,
You have gained access to an innate ability as such I have decided to give you access to a new section of the status that isn't yet available to others. Please test this new section and send back reports regarding its usability.
The new section will be labeled Innate Ability, but I may change that later. It records and explains the natural abilities of various races that utilize magic such as a troll's rapid regeneration. Innate abilities can also be gained through training one's own skills until they become a natural part of you.
In your case your powerful bloodline, unique understanding, and the recent study of space you've done have combined together to create an innate ability.
In regards to the report I want you to tell me if it perfectly describes your new ability or if something is lacking. Keep in mind that unlike skills that grow in a uniform and expected direction innate abilities can sometimes undergo mutation. As such testing this section is mainly to see if it can identify and properly explain a person's abilities.
Thank you for your cooperation in this endeavor.
Sincerely, Hrólmir}
System update...complete. Innate abilities now available to be viewed.
This was interesting. There had been an update for everyone before, but this one was just for him. It was always nice to have access to something before others although it sounded like everyone would gain access to this section soon enough.
Now for his innate ability. He excitedly touched the section to see it.
[Spatial Awareness]
You are aware of everything inside of the space within a certain distance of you. Anything entering or exiting the space will be felt by your body.
Current distance 3 meters per rank. This may change with major breakthroughs.
-Note: Your center of balance will change with this awareness.
There wasn't much information in the description but that may be due to it being new right now. And it didn't look like there were mastery levels for innate abilities or it hadn't been added yet if there were.
So, it was like a personal territory centered on him? He would have to experiment to know for sure.
Well, at least it explained why he felt like everything was off. Feeling everything inside of your space was like touching all of it at once which could make stone feel like grass if both of them were within the area you could feel and you didn't have the experience to tell them apart.
Not to mention with that much information passing through his mind all at once it felt like he was constantly buzzed causing his already bad center of balance to become even worse.
He would have to mention that to Hrólmir so he could add a function to check the mind with new innate abilities.
"Great, I just finished my blind sense training and now I have to train my body not to topple over in combat. Aunt Freydis might actually kill me if she finds out." He grumbled in his mind.
Tapping the messages a board covered in letters appeared in front of him. So, this was how messaging worked, maybe he could do it with his mind like how he explored his status?
{Dear Hrólmir,
The description of my innate ability does not tell me very much nor is there any indicator for how much I know about it or how well I've mastered it. Though I'm not sure if you can apply mastery levels to innate abilities.
Perhaps a better description would be "You can sense everything within a certain distance around you, feeling anything that enters or leaves that space through your body."
Also, the drawbacks of gaining this are only partially explained. Right now, I feel like I'm somewhat drunk due to an information overload from everything my spatial awareness is detecting and I'm not sure if everything I'm feeling even exists in reality.
Sincerely, Chronos.}
After sending the message he groaned from trying to focus on what he was doing.
At least the food fight had helped him regain some sense of balance. Now he wasn't in immediate risk of falling over when he stood up.
The head chef came out of the dining hall, behind him were several kitchen staff carrying brooms, buckets, and rags.
He glared at all of the kneeling men for a while making sure each of them knew just how angry he was before starting.
"Since all of you seem so eager to make a mess you all get to clean it up. For the next two days you will be scrubbing the floor and walls BY HAND until I can eat off of them! In addition to that you will assist me in preparing every meal and washing the dishes afterwards, cleaning the kitchen's cooking enchantments including the grease trap enchantments and all of you will be put on oath-plate service for the next month!"
"Yes, sir!" They all shouted.
As long as he wasn't cleaning the grease trap enchantments the rest of that didn't sound too bad, those grease traps often stank and would definitely cause problems for Chronos' nose. But what was oath-plate service?
"Hey, can you tell me what the oath-plate service is?" Chronos asked the knight next to him.
"We wear provided sack cloths that have 'on corrective duty' stamped on them and serve the food to everyone that eats here. We don't get to eat until everyone else has been fed. It's humiliating but I can understand why the head chef insists on it. We really messed up this time."
He had an ugly look on his face, but he wasn't going to try and fight against this punishment. Even if he did think an entire month was a bit much.