Adimir was now using the direwolf spinal cords to improve upon his latest pet project. Unlike the bird which he intended to use as an aerial support familiar in future quests, this one was going to serve as a backup source of mana. He had stunned a fox on the way to the inn and was the animal he laid down on the floor at the moment. He had connected three chunks of the spinal cord to the fox and was pumping its mana into the fox while simultaneously increasing the quality of the fox's body to be able to handle the extra mana.

His overall goal with this creation was to test if one could use living beings as a backup source of mana. This was something he needed in the future as a mage's mana is directly tied to their own strength. Take for instance the hobgoblin lord. Had it not been for his own arrogance he wouldn't have been able to use such a cheap trick to defeat him and would have died a cold cold death. He was only able to do so much with the mana of an apprentice mage after all, but if this new project of his works he'd be able to start getting to the point of being able to match those with larger mana pools in the near future.

After a few hours of work and nearly exhausting his remaining mana, he finally completed the fox. It hadn't changed much from its original look with its red and white fur and the tip of white on the end of its tail. If one didn't use a mana detection spell to take a better look at it, they wouldn't be able to tell that it had four times the normal amount of mana that a fox should have. This amount wasn't much being only enough to cast a dozen Tier- 2 spells and not even power a fraction of a Tier- 3 spell, but it was a start on his goal.

There was only one problem left, however. Transferring mana from its body to his own body. He could use the mental connection to transfer mana, but it would lose a portion of the energy transferred in the process which would be wasteful. If he used that method instead of having enough mana for a dozen spells, he'd only have enough for six. He already ran out of mana and didn't have any ideas on how to remedy this situation, so he decided he'd move on to testing out his new bird familiar.

He decided upon a name shortly after his arrival at the inn, and that name would be blizzard. He thought it would be a fitting name considering its affinity towards ice magic. Thankfully he didn't need a constant supply of mana to control his puppets, all he needed to do was have a small string of mana connecting the two of them while he controlled it. Taking control of blizzard Adimir laid down on his bed and shifted perspectives from his own body to his familiar's body. This allowed him to be able to control the bird to a greater degree than just sending orders to it which increased its effectiveness when casting magic.

However, this came at the cost of leaving his body vulnerable as he wouldn't be aware of what was going on around him and would not be able to control his body. Adimir wasn't worried though. With him being in an inn he shouldn't be facing any actual danger while doing this. Adimir hopped out of the window of his room and spread the wings of his familiar and flew.

With but a few flaps of his wings he was able to ascend with ease above the buildings. Looking down at the crowd below him he couldn't help but marvel at the liberating freedom he felt from flying. Soon however he was shaken free from the daze he was in as he noticed the connection between his familiar and his main body was weakening. It seemed that it had a distance limitation, and he was now approaching that limit. Adimir decided to turn back and this time pay attention to the distance he traveled while flying to see just how large the range of the connection was. It took him a few minutes, but he discovered that the range wasn't that bad being around a mile.

That was more than enough for blizzard to be used for reconnaissance. Although with his sonar spell that purpose was already filled, it still had potential uses once he strengthened its combat capabilities further. On his way back to his room he spotted Mira walking in the market looking for something. It seemed he wasn't the only one who had decided to do some shopping during the week they did their own thing. Upon arriving at the inn and perching blizzard on the dresser he switched back to his own body and sat up from the bed. With this, he successfully did his first test drive of the bird and he had to say he was pretty satisfied with it. With his first tests now completed Adimir decided to focus on improving himself.

During the time he had flown around in blizzard he made sure he was wearing his mage cloak to regenerate a bit of mana while he was testing it out. Now he had a bit of mana for his next bit of training. Mana meditation. Closing his eyes Adimir focused on his breathing and started meditating. With every breath, he took in he could feel his body absorbing bits of energy and his mana get replenished by just a small amount.

By meditating he was able to slightly speed up the rate of his mana regeneration and practice his mana control at the same time. This would help him kill two birds with one stone. It was also the method he had used earlier in his years as a novice mage to train. He spent the next few hours meditating and spreading any mana in his body throughout his body. Soon enough he completely refilled his mana pool and could cast spells again.

Deciding that he had enough training Adimir went to the guild to take on a subjugation quest. Thankfully it seemed that there were more quests available this time around as there were a couple dozen monster hunting quests available. One of which was for eliminating a band of hobgoblins that had apparently been stirring up problems with the few travelers who dared to travel in smaller groups. Already there were an estimated 40 or so deaths from this band of hobgoblins.

The most interesting thing about this was that it seemed that they are thought to be one of the splinter groups of the goblin horde that he and the other adventurers fractured just a few days ago. This would be the perfect quest to use blizzard in combat. The hobgoblins from the army were all weak enough individually that a Tier- 2 spell was enough to deal with them. After accepting this mission Adimir headed out to the quest location.

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Adimir now was 1600 feet away from the hobgoblin camp which was based inside the forest. He needed to find a way to keep his body safe while he used blizzard to attack the hobgoblins. He decided upon using his magic to open up a 5-foot deep hole in the ground and hooped inside. Once he did that, he covered the top after making several small openings in the top so he could breathe. He made sure to have left his bird up above ground so he could take control of it.

He switched his perspective over to his bird and took off into the air. It only took a couple of minutes before he arrived at the camp and took the time to survey the hobgoblins and if he could kill them all with blizzard. They numbered surprisingly few with only ten hobgoblins, which explains why they only dared to attack those who were unlucky enough to not travel with a caravan. The hobgoblins were busy roasting meat over the fire and based on the fact that they were all lugging around swords and spears none of them were capable of using magic or any ranged attacks for that matter. This would be a piece of cake.

Adimir wasn't capable of chanting in the current body but he could still cast spells at a weaker level than he usually cast them at. He led off with a blast of several ice shards towards a group of three hobgoblins who were huddled up near the fire. The ice shards collided with the soft flesh killing one of the hobgoblins with a blow to the neck and severely injuring the other two with limb injuries crippling them. This caused the other hobgoblins to scramble to pull out their weapons and look around for the mage who cast the spell.

But they never bothered to look up where the spell had actually come from meaning he still had the element of surprise on his side. He followed up with two ice shard blasts killing another two goblins. By now however they began to notice where the attack was coming from, but those with spears were uselessly trying to lob their spears at blizzard. But it was all for naught as the spears simply weren't suited for such a task. Something the hobgoblins would have realized if it weren't for the fact that hobgoblins were shortsighted and weren't known for their intelligence. During this time Adimir took this time to shoot down three more hobgoblins with a mix of ice shards and spikes.

Out of the remaining four hobgoblins were now in full retreat at seeing nearly all of them were killed off by a single bird. He had the bird start gliding after the fleeing hobgoblins and started to pick them off one by one with ice shard spells, and soon enough killed the remaining hobgoblins. The entire attack didn't even last five minutes. This marked the first success in the combat tests of his pet. The amount of mana he had consumed wasn't that bad either as he had more than half still available to use. After flying blizzard back to his body and switching back to his own he went back to the inn to get some food and call it a day.

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It was now the day the hellhounds reunite to start taking quests together again. They only were separated for a single week so Adimir couldn't expect any leaps and bounds in their combat strength. But he still was rather eager to see his friends again after their time of separation. He was currently sitting at a table for three in the adventurer guilds dining area while he waited for the other hellhounds. He had decided to arrive earlier than the others to eat something because he was feeling slightly hungry.

"Hey, there short stuff! What's that fancy bird you got there?" Tauna asked as she took a seat next to him. It seemed she had updated her armor a bit and was now wearing steel gauntlets on her hands and had steel shoulder guards as well.

As for the bird, she was referring to Adimir had blizzard perched on the table as he decided it was about time to introduce him to the other since he was just a bit too large to hide anymore.

"Must you keep teasing me about my height? As for the bird, his name is blizzard, and you can think of him as my familiar. He's able to cast ice-based spells, so he'll be handy to have for future quests." Adimir replied. Tauna seemed to have taken an interest in blizzard as she leaned in to look at it better.

"I've never seen a breed of its type before. Mind telling me what it is?" She inquired. "That I'll keep to myself for now." Answered Adimir. He wasn't sure how the inhabitants of this world would react to magic like his.

Had it been in his world it would have likely been outlawed and would only be practiced behind closed doors. In a world as superstitious as this one however one would likely face a much worse fate.

"Suit yourself. Have you seen Mira?" She asked redirecting the topic of the conversation. "Not yet. She should be here shortly. It is Mira we're talking about after all." Adimir said in an unconcerned tone. Right on cue the very person they were speaking of arrived and placed a paper on the table.

"Sorry I arrived so late. I went and grabbed a quest I wanted to talk to you guys about." Mira said as she sat down, she only spared a glance of interest towards Adimir's familiar before moving straight on to business.

"No problem Mira! So, what do we get to kill this time? Please don't say goblins. I killed enough of them to fill up a town!" Tauna replied with a smile on her face at the thought of more killing.

At this point, he was unsure if she was actually a battle junkie or just someone who liked to kill stuff in general. He was more leaning towards the latter.

"Actually, it's not exactly a subjugation quest. It’s the location and date for the next rank up test. They're first setting up the rank up test for iron ranks to rank up to steel. I'm thinking we should use this chance to get Adimir ranked up so that we have a team of steel ranks. It'll help with our reputation." Mira explained.

"I can understand that. So, when and where is it taking place?" Adimir asked her sitting up a bit straighter now that his interest was piqued.

"Next week on Throta. It's in a city a few days away. I've already arranged a guard job with a local small caravan that's heading that way. So tomorrow we can head out to the city. How does that sound?" Mira asked them.

"Sounds like a good plan to me. What do you think Adimir?" Tauna commented.

"I'd like to go. I have been rather eager to rank up." He answered as he started to get excited at the prospect of being able to get to the next rank soon.

"Great let's meet here tomorrow morning to go then," Mira said with a smile. And with that, the hellhounds have decided the next part of their journey.