The caravan had arrived at the town they were headed towards. The three hellhounds had already gotten there five silver coins for the job and were saying farewell to their acquaintances.

"It was good to see you again Bjorn. Good luck with whatever you are going to do next." Adimir said to the orc while shaking his hand.

"It was good to see you Adimir. I must say you are stronger than I had ever imagined. I'm sure you will do fine out there as an adventurer." He replied with a toothy smile before going to say goodbye to his teammates.

"If you guys ever want an extra job or something, I know a few researchers I could introduce you to for retrieving stuff. I also might have some future jobs in the near future if my newest project gets me the money I need. You can find me at the university of Rorkstead. I'll see you guys some other time." Claratte told them before leaving. Adimir made a mental note to talk to the others about going towards Rorkstead sometime for those potential jobs. Adimir turned to look at the 6'9" tall reptaurian shaman.

"I never did get your name, did I?" Adimir asked the shaman.

"No, you did not. My name is Dant miniog. You are an impressive mage young one. I look forward to seeing what you become as you grow older. May our paths cross again under more pleasant circumstances." Dant miniog said to him.

"Thank you Dant miniog. It's been great working with you." He said before turning to face his comrades who just finished up saying goodbye to Bjorn.

"So, Mira. Any idea what we should be doing next?" He asked her.

"Good question. We should probably find an inn to stay at then purchase some supplies. We can go check in with the local guild for any good recommendations for places to stay." Mira answered.

"We also need to go eat a meal later. One with lots of meat!" Tauna commented.

"Sounds like a good idea. So, where's the guild?" Adimir inquired. Following his question, an oppressive silence suffocated the conversation.

"You guys do know where the guild is right...?" He finally asked in a worried voice.

"Not exactly. I've never been to this town before." Mira said with a crestfallen expression.

"Umm, how about we ask the others if they know where it is?" Tauna suggested while turning to call out to their fellow adventurers. But upon turning around they ran into another complication. They all had already left.

"Let's just go ask around. The locals will most likely know where to go." Adimir sighed. After a few minutes of asking around one of the locals pointed them in the right direction.

Of course, to prevent getting lost they had Mira lead the way as Adimir had no sense of direction. After arriving at the local guild and getting a recommendation for one of the popular local inns named the Giants den they decided to have Mira go and book a couple rooms for them while Tauna and Adimir stayed behind at the guild to check out what simple quests they had available for them to take and do tomorrow.

"There isn't that much available regarding subjugation quests," Adimir noted. Tauna nodded in agreement as she gazed at the quests.

There were only a few goblin subjugations quests, but no other quests for killing monsters. There was however several caravan guarding quests and a couple of quests for fetching ingredients for people.

"Nothing but fetch quests or small fry quests. I want a quest where I can kill something!" She whined with a disappointed look on her face.

"Maybe we should all get individual quests and use a couple days to train?" Adimir suggested. He could almost see the gears crank in her mind as she mulled over the idea.

"Yeah, I like that idea of yours. Let's suggest it to Mira when she arrives!" Tauna agreed excitedly.

As if Tauna's agreement was a signal Mira entered the guild and started looking for them. Tauna waved over to her and caught her attention.

"Hey, Mira! Adimir just had a good idea of all of us taking individual quests and training for a while before meeting up!" She shouted as Mira entered earshot.

"Well, I suppose that isn't a bad idea. How about 1 week from now we meet up at the Giants den?" She replied.

"Sounds like a plan to me. Speaking of the inn did you book us some rooms?" Adimir questioned.

"Yup. I booked two rooms for three days. You can extend the time later. I'm going to go to the forest later and do some training after this. What plan do you guys have in mind?" Mira answered.

"I'm going to do all the goblin killing quests I can. It'll be good training and I'll get to kill stuff." Tauna replied happily.

"I'll be doing some training myself at the inn." He said. After saying their farewells, they all left to their destinations.

When Adimir arrived at the inn and went into his room he took out his current engineering project. The pigeon. By now some strange changes started to take place in its overall look. Before the hobgoblin mana took over inside of it the bird's color scheme was the normal mix of blue and drab grey. Now however its grey feathers were starting to become white, and its eyes now had changed colors to an icy blue.

"What an interesting change… So, it seems mana has an effect on a creature's overall design. I'll need to remember this for my future projects." Adimir mumbled to himself as he began the next round of testing and editing.

*************************************************************************************************************

(Time skip!)

It's been four days since Adimir isolated himself inside his room doing experiments on the pigeon. He'd occasionally would stop to eat some provisions he had in his bag, and to lure in rats, mice, and birds that were clueless to the doom that would befall them. By now some shocking changes had taken place. The pigeon no longer resembled a pigeon and was now the size of a chicken and was around the weight of one too. Its wings had also been made larger to accommodate for its increased size. He also used the mana from other animals to provide the mana it needed to stay alive. It now resembled a hawk with its new physiology instead of the pigeon it once was.

It was now capable of casting Tier- 2 ice spells. This was massive progress for him in his pet project. With this, he now had his own familiar that he'd use for scouting purposes mainly. This was because despite it being capable of casting Tier- 2 spells as Adimir learned from his short fight with the hobgoblin lord and his mage trio those spells were only suitable for killing small fry. Nowhere near what he'd require if he wanted to become powerful enough to push around things like that hobgoblin lord and ogres like bugs. He'd have continued upgrading his pigeon but on the third day, he ran into a problem.

He was no longer able to use small animals to improve the bird's physical and mana further. The body kept on rejecting any of it no matter how he tried to introduce them into its body. His guess was that it needed mana and flesh from a stronger creature because its body and mana have increased in quality. So he spent the next day improving his carnomancy and has finally reached the point in which he could say that it could provide some support in battle.

All he could do was use it to slow down an enemy for a short time or paralyze them for a fraction of a second. But if he learned anything from all his previous battles was that even a second could make all the difference between life and death. Adimir still couldn't help but fantasize about the day he'd be able to melt people's flesh off their bones with just a wave of his hand though. One day he swore to himself he'd reach that point. For now, though his project and his own original magic have improved significantly. And with there being three more days left until his team all met back up to continue their adventure, he decided that he should head to the market.

Before he left for the market he glanced at the hawk-like bird perched on his bed.

"I'll come up with a name for you later." He said to the bird despite it having no mind of its own. He then left it there to guard his room while he left to the market. Upon his arrival at the market, he skipped right past browsing and searched for a magic shop. He was after a specific type of enchanted item that he'd need if he were to continue his research while on the move.

His searching turned up results within a couple of minutes as he located a shop called “The hag’s bag of magic”. Upon entering the shop, he found that the one taking care of it was just a bored-looking teenage human boy. Humans really were the most numerous species. No matter where he went the human species seemed to outnumber all others by 10 to 1 at the very least.

"This your shop?" Adimir asked the human boy.

"Nope. I just work here as a cashier for the owner." The teen said in a bored voice. Seems even in another world some teenagers are bored out of their mind when working as a cashier.

Upon hearing this Adimir decided to pay no mind to him and started looking for what he needed. Upon finding it he had to restrain himself from cheering. The item in question was a burlap sack that was large enough to fit a small child with some string attached to serve as a strap that was enchanted with item storage magic. The level of the space magic was very low and only had double the capacity that it originally had. And that alone already made its price skyrocket to 45 silver. He didn't mind that though as he needed it if he wanted to be able to transport research samples better. He grabbed the bag and paid for it before heading out to buy some more things.

When he finished his shopping spree, he had bought the magic bag for 45 silver and a set of 20 sturdy glass jars for 50 bronze. He splurged quite a bit today, but he now had what he needed to properly store away samples for upgrading his bird. If he had this back when he took the chunk of hobgoblin brain during the caravan trip, he could have taken more of it and potentially have upgraded the bird further along than what it currently was at. It was no use crying over spilled milk however and he needed to focus on going out and killing some suitable creatures to use to fuel the growth for his project. With this in mind, Adimir decided he'd just head to the forest to do some hunting.

After a 30-minute walk, he finally arrived at the forest and casted his detection spell with a range of 1500 feet. After several mana pulses, he located a suitable mana signature. To the southeast 674 feet, there was a mana signature stronger than the average wildlife. Adimir began to close in on it while deciding what spell would be best to kill the animal with as little damage as possible. He came up with an idea just as he arrived at where the creature was. The creature that he targeted was a lone direwolf. It seemed to be alone as he hadn't detected any other lifeforms near it that were similar to it.

So, if he had to guess it was an exiled wolf. But that didn't matter to him. He was just here to get a good source of higher quality biomass and mana. It didn't take long for the direwolf to notice him as it turned towards him and started snarling.

"Hmph. Stop that snarling mutt!" Adimir said with contempt coloring his voice as he waved his staff towards it.

"Sytris!" He shouted causing the ground below the wolf to begin to liquify and the animal started to sink into it. It started to whimper and struggle as it tried to pull itself free. This only caused it to sink quicker into the mud instead of freeing it as the beast had hoped.

Soon enough it was sunk into the mud up to its knees before the ground finally solidified. Adimir looked at the magicrystal on his staff. It had drained ⅕ of its mana to pull the stunt he had just done. But he had expected that. It was good enough considering it bagged him a living direwolf to start taking apart for fresh and undamaged organs.

"Lapis artis ligat catenis." Adimir spoke as he walked closer to the wolf. Following his words, two chains made from stone burst from the ground and wrapped themselves around the giant wolf's snout muzzling it.

It whimpered and tried to break free, but its struggle was pointless as it didn't have enough strength to break free from its restraints. Adimir's targets were the brain, spinal cord, and heart. Those three had the largest amount of mana congregated within them and would be best for his purposes. So, with that in mind, he summoned up a needle-thin white fire. He then went to work on cutting apart the direwolf while it was alive. Stopping for a moment to stun it with a lightning spell so that it would be unconscious and wouldn't whimper and howl while he worked.

He took out the mighty animal's heart and placed it inside one of his jars then continued to cut out the spine. Adimir needed to work quickly as the body no longer had the heart pumping blood through it and now bacteria would begin to infest the research samples. Cutting up the spinal cord into chunks and placing them all into their own individual jars. Once that was finished, he took out the brain and divided them into four pieces and placed them into jars.

Adimir now was done with the corpse and used his mana to extend the organ's lifetime a few hours longer. With that done, he set the direwolf's corpse on fire and placed his jars inside of his new storage sack and went back to the inn to begin another round of testing and was thinking upon what he should make with the extra pieces of the direwolf's spinal cord.