Corrin carefully placed the Fire Spellstone near his campsite and plopped a few berries into his mouth. It was a few hours past midday and Corrin was itching to test out his new dagger, as well as the physical aspects of his new body.
Corrin had decided his target would be an animal that he had seen roaming a few hundred feet away from his campsite. It looked like a squirrel that was the size of a dog.
He set out with his wood spear in his right hand and his dagger in the other. His plan was to impale it with his spear and finish it off with his dagger. It took him a few minutes of sneaking around, but he eventually found his target in a clearing. It was eating berries straight off of a bush and seemed fairly busy.
"Perfect." Corrin thought to himself as he got into a hiding position outside of the clearing.
Corrin cocked back his spear and got ready to fire away. As soon as he was about to throw, the animals head popped up and it began looking around, berries still in its mouth. Corrin didn't think much of it, and he let loose.
The spear flew incredibly fast, but the animal was faster. It literally rolled to its side to avoid the spear, turned towards Corrin, hissed at him, then made a rapid clicking sound with its teeth.
Corrin jumped out from behind the bush that he was hiding in and ran towards the animal with his dagger in his main hand. He dove at it with a swipe from his dagger and just as he was about to connect…
He was tackled.
"What the hell?" Corrin thought right before his head slammed onto the ground. Above him was another one of the squirrel-dogs, and it hissed in his face.
"Oh, for fuck's sake."
Corrin slashed at the squirrel-dog's neck with his dagger with all his might, and it sliced through it like butter. The animal made a gurgling sound before tumbling over onto the ground, grabbing its neck with it's paws while struggling to breathe.
Corrin went to look for the other squirrel-dog, but was instead greeted with about a dozen other ones.
"You have got to be kidding me." Corrin said out loud.
The rapid clicking sound that Corrin had heard earlier had been a distress signal that the squirrel-dogs used to signal to their pack if they ever found themselves in danger. The rest would come and try and help, hoping that their numbers would win.
Corrin had to think quickly. The pack was snarling and hissing wildly as they slowly approached his position. Corrin was faster and stronger than the average person, but he still wasn't sure if he could handle all of them.
The pack soon got close enough that they were within jumping distance of Corrin, and one of them decided to dive at him. Corrin's enhanced eyesight picked it up as it prepared to launch itself. As it did, Corrin thrust out his dagger in the direction where the animal would come at him from. The animal's head was impaled before it even knew what was happening. It flopped down to the ground, Corrin's dagger sliding out of its head. That made two of them dead, as the other had long since died.
During the whole encounter, Corrin had been contemplating what to do when he thought of a long shot idea.
"Ophion, what happens if I change all of my personal mana into a certain type?"
"Really, that's what you're worried about right now?" Ophion asked condescendingly.
"Answer the question, damnit!"
"I have no idea."
"You should have led with that." Corrin said as he quickly backed up, putting space between him and the pack. His plan was definitely a long shot but he hoped it'd work.
"Please do something."
Corrin visualized the green-colored Wind mana that he had absorbed when forming his mana heart. Then, he focused on his mana heart. He willed all of the outgoing mana in his mana veins to turn into Wind mana. After that, his aura turned green.
That wasn't the only thing that changed. Corrin felt faster. Much faster.
"YES! IT DID SOMETHING!" Corrin shouted to the dismay of the squirrel-dogs. This just aggravated them more.
Corrin arrived in between two of the animals in an instant and sliced through both of their necks in one stroke. As they tumbled to the ground, he launched a lightning-fast kick at the nearest one's head. A swift crack resounded in the area as the kick had shattered the animal's skull.
Five down.
The rest of the pack pounced on him. Corrin's eyes rapidly shifted to each of the incoming targets, tracing the order in which to kill them in. Corrin's movements were a blur as he cleanly dispatched each one in the order that they arrived within an arm's length of him. Corrin had used his enhanced eyes and enhanced mental power to calculate which ones would reach the range of his dagger first, and he had calculated correctly.
He was covered in blood, but he was still standing. His body ached from the initial tumble that he had taken, but that was about it. He was happy that he made it out of this scuffle practically unscathed, and his dagger had performed outstandingly.
Plus, it looked like he would be eating good for the foreseeable future.
******
Corrin was about to drag the last carcass of the squirrel-dog pack back to his camp, Ophion asked him a question.
"Corrin, why did you drag each carcass back to camp instead of putting them in the Workshop first?"
"…"
"…"
"…what do you mean put them in the workshop first?" Corrin asked with a bit of a snarl.
"Um, didn't I tell you that you could transport objects to the workshop just like you can transport yourself? I did tell you that, right?
"…"
"…"
"No. No, you left that little tidbit out of our frequent conversations, Ophion. You're telling me that you've watched me spend almost two hours dragging these corpses to camp and you thought to ask me about it on the last one?" Corrin spat.
"Uhhhh…to be honest, I thought you were doing it for a specific reason."
"…"
"Please don't talk to me for the time-being." Corrin said calmly.
Corrin didn't want to ask for Ophion's help on this, so he decided to just try what he figured would work. Instead of focusing on sending himself to the Workshop, he grabbed the carcass and focused on it instead. It promptly vanished.
"Wow. How easy. Incredibly easy. Thankfully, I haven't had to do any heavy lifting recently! Oh wait…I have." Corrin spat again while shaking his head.
Corrin made his way back to his camp and put all of the carcasses into the Workshop except for the one he chose to cook that evening. He then proceeded to build a fire but didn't light it just yet.
He grabbed his knife and got to work on the squirrel-dog. He had no idea how to butcher an animal, so he just started cutting into it. He removed all the organs that he could find and was just left with the meat that was connected to the hide. Corrin had neither the knowledge nor the patience and energy to skin the animal at this point, so he decided he would just cut the meat off the best he could and throw the rest away.
He decided to cook the meat on skewers which he had made out of particularly long branches, and season it by juicing one of the fruits he had collected onto it. This particular fruit was both sweet and spicy.
Corrin leaned the skewers against a tree once they were finished being prepared so he didn't get them dirty. Once he felt he had a good amount of meat prepared to cook, he grabbed the skewers and moved back closer to where he had prepared the fire away fr0m where he had butchered the meat. He placed them against a different tree and then moved to the fire.
He had built the fire around the Fire Spellstone, so all he had to do now was activate the enchantment. He reached out with two fingers and began to channel Fire mana the same way he had done with Earth mana for his Dagger Spellstone.
Above the Spellstone, a decent size fire came ablaze. The fire stayed in the air, floating above the Spellstone, as long as Corrin continued to channel Fire mana into it. Pretty soon, Corrin's prebuilt fire caught fire too. By this point, the Spellstone had begun to crack, and Corrin could tell that it was going to crumble to dust at any second.
When it did, the magic fire disappeared, but the rest of the fire remained lit. Corrin was very pleased that his enchantment had worked. He then proceeded to stab the skewers into the ground enough that they remained above the fire and cooked without him having to hold onto them.
Corrin used his dagger to cut one of the spicy/sweet fruits in half and squeezed each half over the skewers, hoping that the makeshift marinade would give the meat a little flavor.
Corrin savored every bite of the skewers since they were the best thing he had eaten in a long time. Once he was finished eating, he was in a good mood. He disposed of the remains of the squirrel-dog somewhere in the forest on the opposite side of the pool and came back to camp. He stamped out the fire until only embers were left and laid down to go to bed. Before he shut his eyes, however, he looked up at the stars and said:
"I'm sorry for getting so upset with you earlier Ophion, it's just that I was pretty tired and pretty upset that there was a much more efficient way to doing things than the way I was doing them. In the future, don't hesitate to give me advice like that, alright?"
"Yeah, no problem Corrin. I really am sorry about earlier."
"It's alright, partner. We're in this together after all."