Since Corrin could store everything he needed to travel with in the Workshop, he could travel lightly. All that he carried with him when he set off along the river was his pair of daggers.
He hunted the animals that he found along the way, but he didn't go out of his way to hunt anything. He was planning on leveling up his Grimoire after he had reached whatever was at the end of the path.
He was hoping that he would find a town where he could trade some of his Spellstones for money or clothes. His clothes had somehow ended up in worse shape than they had started in, and Corrin no longer wore his vest or undershirt, just his pants.
It took Corrin about a week to make it out of the forest. When he emerged from the tree line, he found himself looking out over a grassy plain. He could see animals in the distance but couldn't tell exactly what they were.
As he was walking through the plain, he stumbled on a road. He wasn't exactly sure which way to go since he couldn't see where each direction lead, so Corrin just chose to go left on a whim.
He twirled his daggers in each hand as he walked along the path, hoping that he'd find the sign of a town soon.
Ophion popped in and said, "Hey Corrin, I think you might want to at least put your undershirt on, so that you cover your Daeman rune."
Corrin nodded his head and responded, "Yeah, good idea."
After he put on his shirt, he thought about the road that he was on. It clearly wasn't very busy since he had been walking for a few hours and he hadn't seen anyone.
He could think of a few reasons. Either wherever he was heading was not very populated, whoever was in charge had stopped travel, or there was some monster on the loose that was scaring away travelers.
Turns out, it was option number three.
While he had been thinking, Corrin noticed something out of the corner of his eye. He turned his head and his eyes widened.
Barreling towards him was a massive humanoid gray wolf. It was four times Corrin's size.
He barely managed to dodge to the left and out of the way of the wolf before he could be tackled. The wolf dragged to a halt a few feet away from Corrin as he got up. The wolf faced him and let out a loud growl.
"Corrin, be careful. I'm sensing magic coming from that…thing. It seems to be a magical creature that has gone berserk." Ophion stated.
"Got it."
Corrin was focused on the wolf's completely red eyes with no pupils. It was similar to how Ophion's eyes looked, but instead of golden, they were scarlet.
The wolf bared its teeth and charged towards him. By now, Corrin had activated Dark Infusion since he planned to test out some magic before using his daggers. Corrin bent down and launched himself above the wolf with all his strength as he replaced his twin daggers with a Fireball Spellstone and a Dark Orb Spellstone.
He landed behind the wolf and twirled to face it. Before the wolf even knew where he was, Corrin's fireball landed squarely on its back. The wolf had been standing on its legs since it tried to tackle Corrin, but the sudden pain from the fire made it fall forward. Corrin followed up his Fireball by launching his Dark Orb spell and watched it wreak havoc on the wolf. Instead of trying to tamp out the fire like it had been before, the wolf just simply writhed in pain for a few seconds.
This was enough time for Corrin to change to Fire Infusion and pull his twin daggers back out from the Workshop. He dashed towards wolf, sending out a slash to its neck. The wolf, however, was able to gain composure of itself, and grabbed Corrin's hand as he was attacking.
The wolf literally flung Corrin away from it with a huge amount of strength. Corrin rolled on the ground a few times before his whole body hit a rock with a loud THUD.
He coughed up blood as he looked up to see the wolf dusting itself off and seem to stretch out. Corrin quickly activated Light Infusion and instantly began to feel better.
When he was flung, he had lost his two daggers, so he armed himself with two Fireball Spellstones. He was just about finished healing when the wolf flexed its arms and long sharp claws extended out of its fingers.
Corrin quickly switched back to Dark Infusion and realized that he was getting pretty tired.
"I need to finish this quickly."
The wolf was walking up to Corrin relaxedly, clearly thinking that Corrin wasn't a threat. However, the wolf's massive frame and slow speed made it a perfect target for the torrent of fireballs that Corrin was about to release.
Corrin ran towards the wolf while gripping his two Spellstones. He activated them as soon as he jumped in the air like he had done before. However, instead of firing them at the wolf's back like the wolf had been expecting, he fired them in midair. One right above it, one at a bit of an angle. Both hit their target.
The wolf let out a pained roar as he tried to tamp out the fire that had caught on its fur with its paws. But Corrin wasn't going to let up that easily, he had learned his lesson.
He replaced the now crumbled Spellstones with two more Fireball ones and released both at the same time. Then, he repeated the process. Then, he repeated the process again, but with two Dark Orb Spellstones.
After the two Dark Orbs hit, the wolf was a smoldering and spasming mess. Corrin lazily walked to pick up his two daggers, then sauntered up to the wolf.
"Time to put you out of your misery. You were a worthy foe," Corrin said before cutting off the wolf's head with his daggers like he was using a pair of scissors.
"So this is a magical creature huh. I'm sure there are a lot stronger ones, but defeating this one wasn't really a piece of cake either. I think I should kill everything I see until we get to whatever is at the end of the road. It'll be way less boring than just walking, plus I might even be able to level up the Grimoire."
"Corrin, remember how I explained that you needed more materials to make better enchantments? Well, most of them come from Magical Creatures. I was waiting until you encountered one to tell you this, and most parts of a magical creature can be used for something. In this case, I would say we should skin the wolf and take its pelt, then try and extract its bones. They'll both be useful to enchant. Also, the most important thing that defeating a magical creature gives you is their mana heart. In magical creatures, their mana heart looks like a diamond shaped crystal. It should be somewhere around their actual heart."
"Gotcha. The pelt is sort of scorched though, should I still take it?"
"Yeah, and I have an idea about that. Try using a Light Spellstone on the pelt and see if it heals the injury."
"What?"
"Just trust me on this. I can tell you that you definitely won't revive it, and the worst outcome would just be losing a Light Spellstone and not getting anything out of it."
"Alright."
Corrin removed one of the Light Spellstones he kept in the Workshop and walked over to the wolf's corpse. He activated it and watched as Light mana poured over the pelt and healed the scorch marks. Then, the stone crumbled to dust.
"Huh. It worked. Interesting. That's useful to know. Thanks for the idea."
"No problem." Ophion said.
Corrin spent the next hour or so skinning the pelt off of the wolf to the best of his ability and with Ophion coaching him on what he thought the right moves were. He also took care to remove the long claws the wolf had extended during the fight. He would think of some uses later.
That made it easier to remove the meat from the bones and find the mana heart. When Corrin found the mana heart, he paused.
"Ophion, something seems…off about this."
"Yeah…you're right," Ophion said after taking a closer look at the mana heart, "It's been corrupted."
"Corrupted? How? Is that even possible?"
"Yes, I seem to recall a few instances of it happening within my limited memories. It happens through the use of a distorted and disordered form of magic, but I'm not exactly sure what the cause is. Hopefully more of my memories will open with the evolution of the Grimoire, so this is just another reason to keep working hard."
"I agree. Is there any way to uncorrupt it?"
"I'd try blasting it with a lot of Light mana."
"Got it."
Corrin pulled out a Light Spellstone and activated Light Infusion while gripping the corrupted mana heart that was giving off a strange sort of energy. He pushed a lot of Light mana out from his mana veins where he was holding it and then activated the Light Spellstone right next to corrupted mana heart. It took a few minutes of constant pressure with Light mana, but it eventually was purified.
"Yeah, I need a quicker method than that."
Once Corrin had put everything he had collected off of the wolf into the Workshop, he set off down the road again in the direction he had been heading before. However, this time, he used his advanced eyesight to look for anything he could kill along the way.
Corrin spent the rest of the day going on a murderous rampage for fun, collecting as much Life Energy as he could, and storing the carcasses in the Workshop. He hoped to sell them if his plan of selling Spellstones fell through.
He made camp under one of the few trees that he had found and heated up some cooked meat that he had stored in the Workshop. Nothing really bothered him that night, since he had eliminated practically everything in the vicinity.
The next day, Corrin continued to slaughter everything he saw until it was about mid-afternoon and he saw the outline of a town in the distance. At this point, he could see that there wasn't really anything else for him to kill, so was planning on making his way back to the road and start towards the town directly.
However, he decided to check the progress of the Grimoire at this point. When he did, he could see that he was only a little bit away from completing the circle. He was pretty pleased with this since that meant he didn't have to do much more work until he unlocked the next part of the Grimoire.
Corrin left the Workshop then headed in the direction of the town.
As he got closer, he began to notice that the lands around him began to change into farmland. He also noticed that the town was pretty large overall, and there seemed to be a fairly large central residence that he could see even from this distance. The town also had a wall surrounding it which separated the main part of it from the farmland and the rest of the plain.
When he approached the gates to the town, the guards at the door pointed their spears at him and shouted "HALT!"
The one on the right exclaimed "State your business here!"
"I am just a weary traveler seeking refuge," Corrin replied.
"Why are you covered in blood?" The one on the left asked, spears still pointed at him.
"I got into a few nasty scuffles with some of the animals within the plain. I was able to come out of all them alive, but not unscathed."
"Did you encounter the Silverpelt?" the one on the right said this time.
"Silverpelt?" Corrin asked confused.
"A large humanoid grey wolf. It has been terrorizing the road to this town for weeks now. It is impossible to get merchants in and out of the town because of it. None of the guard squads we have sent have been able to take it down and no one from the Adventurer's Guild has taken on the request yet."
"Ah, yes, I did run into something that fits that description. Um, I did not fight it though. I hid until I was under the cover of night and made my way away from it. I was able to escape the area without being seen."
There was a short pause after he said that.
"Alright, do you have any identification papers?"
"No," Corrin replied, "they were lost when I was separated from the rest of my caravan a while back. I'm sorry."
The two guards shared a look with each other and shrugged before looking back at him.
"Alright, you'll have to follow us while we get you set up with new identification papers… and probably a bath too."
"Thank you very much, both of you." Corrin said as he bowed.
"Just doing our job. Anyways, welcome to Elen Town."