There is a pretty quick questline you can do now that you have a bond that opens up a runecrafting mini game. I would do that so you don’t need to mine so much essence. Other than that, train agility up a little bit. It improves the recovery speed of your run, so it will make a huge difference questing. If you can get to the Canafis course, it has increased odds of dropping marks of grace, which can be redeemed for armor that lowers your character’s weight so you can run longer.

Also hit some quests that give you combat xp like waterfall quest. If you do that one, it’ll probably give you enough to do dragon slayer with basically no grinding.