thomasdarkrose
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Fabricator v2 - Chapter 4
🕑 Added 2023-06-24 17:33:39 +0000 UTCJunichiro paused in the middle of walking, his hand holding his breakfast just in front of his mouth. He stared wide eyed at a building directly across the street from him. For a moment he wondered if he was an idiot. It felt like he was an idiot. Though further thought showed that he was, thankfully, not actually and idiot just somewhat forgetful and a tad ignorant.
Directly across from him sat an internet cafe. One of dozens within the city. One where anyone, any acceptable age, could go and rent a computer for a few hours. A computer with internet access. Internet access that would let him buy anything legal online. Things he could easily have delivered to the junkyard's address since no one payed any attention to it. Things like a proper coal forge, anvil, tools, coal itself, even raw materials.
His eyes widened further as he realized he could sell things online as well! Not magical things, obviously. But, once he had proper materials and tools he would easily be one of the top ten best blacksmiths on the planet. Mostly because he could cheat rather than raw talent. Even then, his ability to work metal as an apprentice Artificer would easily be somewhere around a top tier Journeyman or low tier Master. Cheating with magic would make his mundane creations equal to a Grand Master, easily.
Junichiro grinned to himself and kept walking and looking for other things. The internet wasn't the place it would be in another ten to fifteen years. Places like eBay were still relatively new so he shouldn't have much of an issue buying stuff from them using a prepaid credit card. Those could be bought in any convenience store on the street. It was receiving money he would have trouble with, but he'd think of something.
This idea was infinitely better than what he'd been thinking before. He'd originally been thinking of heading out to contact the yokai faction. Of the four factions in Japan that he was aware of, the yokai seemed the least scummy. He might have considered the exorcist families and their faction, being human himself, except they were supremacists that looked down on any humans not born in their clans. Hell, they even killed their own clansmen if there was anything 'wrong' with them. Sick bastards.
No way in hell was he going to look to the church and the angels. The angels might not be too bad, but the church was a horrid cesspit of hypocrisy and evil. If you weren't with them then you were against them, regardless of anything else. No way in hell was he going anywhere near them. Maybe some of their exorcists... In a few years when it's less creepy and he's not a shota.
Up next on the 'nuh uh' list, Devils. He wasn't certain who, if anyone, was the current local devil in Japan. If he recalled correctly someone named Claria... Belial? Whatever. The person before Rias was killed for... reasons. Whatever they were, he can't remember everything. Anyway. After her he was pretty certain Kuoh was abandoned by the devils until Rias took over years later. He could be wrong, of course. Regardless, he wanted nothing to do with any devils that weren't either Rias or Sona. They were the only ones he felt he could potentially trust. The rest were far too likely to abuse his skills.
So, unless he was forgetting a faction, that just left the yokai headed by Yasaka. He knew they weren't all sunshine and rainbows, no faction was. Yet, he couldn't recall anything supremely bad being done by them. Yasaka seemed pretty nice and Kunou was a treasure to be protected! He was certain there were plenty of bad yokai, some traitors if he remembered right. But finding a friendly yokai shop to sell his stuff in? Probably would have been his best bet. Hell, he still might do that, once he's strong enough to protect himself with bullshit magical items.
Thoughts for the future.
-----Line Break-----
Junichiro looked over his improved workshop area with a bright smile. Thanks to his new notice-me-not bracelet, he'd spent most of the day making trips back and forth between the city and his junkyard. In those trips he'd... well he'd stolen a lot of stuff. He didn't really feel good about that but he didn't have a whole lot of choice. There was no one faction he could trust to go to for help and no living family he could go to. He was completely on his own and if he allowed himself to go into the foster system, he'd never be able to work on his abilities. So, theft was his only viable option at this point.
He was pretty happy with the results though. He'd gotten his hands on a camp grill and several cases of the small propane tanks it needed for fuel. A large tool kit with all the basic tools like socket wrenches, allen wrenches, and more. Piping and fittings for gas lines to modify the grill. A nice collection of hammers, chisels, files, and even a small anvil. That last one had been a surprise to spot. It was only thirty kilograms, but it would work for now. There were also other various odds and ends to help with his work. It was all a massive improvement over his scrap forge.
It was all thanks to his bracelet. Loading a shopping cart with items and just walking out with them would have been impossible without it. None of his actions had been suspicious or attention attracting on their own. It was only once he did everything that it became theft and no one payed enough attention to him to see the big picture. As long as he didn't try to get into locked cases or run into someone, he was as good as invisible. Though there were definitely security recordings of his actions. He'd need to keep that in mind so he didn't just walk into a store he'd just ripped off.
Everything he needed to make a rigged gas forge, that he could find, was quickly pulled into a pile of items. He used his brand new tool set to disassemble the gas grill to get the burners out. It was a nice triple burner grill, though one burner was a third the size of the two main ones. It didn't matter though, he could use all three. Once they were taken out of the main body of the grill, he set the remains aside and got to work rigging up the fuel lines.
For a gas forge to work properly it needed and excellent fuel to air ratio to reach high temperatures. Having an insulated box to pour those flames into would help immensely, but he hadn't been able to find anything of the sort. He'd buy a full sized forge off the internet later. For now, he was rigging it so that his metal could fit between the two larger burners, one at the bottom of his chair based forge, and one hanging down so the metal was sandwiched between them. The third would come in from the side so he had three points of coverage to rapidly heat the metal he was working with.
With the grill burners set up, he began his rune work on them using a conjured inscriber. The runes were designed to further enhance the heat and airflow of the burners so make them as efficient at possible. He was already going to be constantly changing out the small green tanks, no need to have to do it more often that absolutely necessary.
While he was at it, he started inscribing runes onto the anvil as well. It was a small anvil being only thirty kilos and he was honestly shocked he'd even found it. If he had to guess, it was just meant to be set on a table and used for small simple tasks, like straightening out tools. With some runes on it he helped to stabilize the anvil by making it act like it was heavier as well as reinforcing it so the face of the anvil would be harder to damage. Putting dents on the face of the anvil was a great way to mar all his future work.
His hammers were next for rune treatments. He only had three, a short handled two point five kilo sledge, a claw hammer, and a ball peen hammer. Since they were all mass produced they wouldn't be all that great for mana forging, but that could be fixed. With the right application of runes on the handle and hammer head, they could channel small amounts of mana without being destroyed. Since all he had was a small amount of mana it was perfect!
As he was engraving the wooden handle of his ball peen hammer, he couldn't help thinking about wands. Wands for an artificer were different from wands most other magic users had. For other magic users, mages, wizards, witches, whatever, a wand was just a focus for their spells. It helped them with casting and that was pretty much it. That made it an excellent and flexible tool for them to do their thing. Not so much for Artificers since they weren't normal spell casters. Sure, he could channel mana, and probably even learn some spells, but that would require finding a teacher and dedicated effort to something else.
No, what an Artificer did was cheat! Even if he couldn't cast individual spells, he could make wands that stored magical energy that could be spent to cast one specific spell per wand. So, while he was forced to make a different wand for every spell he wanted to cast, once he made the wand he wouldn't have to spend any of his own energy again to cast that spell multiple times. It was a rather nice trade off. A mage would only have one wand that could cast spells using the mage's own mana. He could have hundreds of prepared wands and cast spells without using his own mana. Frankly, he preferred his method.
Of course, he needed good wood and proper wood carving tools as well as some magical ingredients. God, the things he could do if he could make wands. He could just imagine the things he could do with a Wand of Repair. Just looking around him he could see a ton of old car parts that he could magically repair and take down to one of the open air markets, or flea markets, to sell...
Junichiro slammed his palm into his face. He, once again, felt like an idiot. Why couldn't he just sell his blades and other things at the weekend markets? No one gave a fuck who was selling what at those things. As long as it wasn't blatantly illegal. A simple glamour item and no one would look at him twice. He groaned and slowly shook his head, “I clearly have no idea what the fuck I'm doing.”
He flopped onto his back and stared up into the sky, “I need to slow my ass down and really think things through. I've been too 'GO GO GO!' since I got my memories and Artificer ability.”
He lay there looking at the sky as he calmly thought of a plan he could use to make money, get supplies, and work on his Artificer abilities to 'level up.' He may have the skill of an apprentice Artificer, but he had the basic knowledge needed to become a master. He just lacked the practical experience and skill. The other problem was, the knowledge he had was just for standard magical worlds, something like a D&D world. He'd still need to do plenty of research on the setting specific materials in his world.
For example, he had no solid idea on how to possibly make a Sacred Gear from scratch. Sure, he had a few educated guesses based on information from the anime. Like, truly powerful Sacred Gears needed the soul of a strong creature to be the 'engine' of the Sacred Gear. Such as Ddraig and Albion. Weaker gears seem like they can be based on lesser things. At a guess? A Sacred Gear like sword birth might just be based on a magical sword core. Or possibly no core at all. He had no idea.
So, back to making money to improve his skills. He couldn't sell anything online, getting the money from his sales would be impossible. He didn't have a bank account and couldn't get one for another five years. Shopping online was infinitely easier with prepaid credit cards and the junkyards shipping address. So, he would do his selling at the open air markets that anyone could join on the weekends. That gave him five days to make things to sell.
The question then was, what should he make? No one would buy steel jewelry, so that was out. No way was he making magical trinkets, even if they had barely noticeable effects. Weapons of any kind were out. If it was an antique sword or something, then maybe it could be sold, but a brand new one? Everyone would assume it was mass produced trash. Kitchen knives maybe?
He thought about that for a while and slowly began to smile. No one would consider a kitchen knife to be a weapon. Add to that how much people would be willing to pay for a knife they could use for decades and you had an attractive option. He could even mana forge it to make it sharper and more durable. As long as he didn't put an actual enchantment or runes on it, a supernatural creature would have to actually touch the knife to notice anything. Mana forged items didn't radiate magic, the mana was more... inactive? That wasn't the right word but it was close enough.
Okay so his plan was this. Spend the next five days forging kitchen knives. Make them all mana forged to work on increasing his mana pool so he can make better stuff sooner. Sell said knives at the open air market on the weekends. Use the proceeds to buy a refillable prepaid credit card. Use said credit card to buy better materials off the internet. Use said materials to make better items to sell, maybe make a few Wands of Repair and diversify by selling repaired antiques. Rinse and repeat.
He could do that until he had the necessary items to protect himself. After which, he could head for... Tokyo? … No no, Kyoto. Yasaka's yokai faction was in Kyoto. As long as he had enough offensive, defensive, and escape magic items, it should be relatively safe to enter Kyoto and find a place to set up shop to sell magical trinkets. He highly doubted they would care about his age there.
That was the plan then. Prep here, head to Kyoto, work there, then maybe head to Kuoh when he was sixteen or seventeen. He was interested in joining Rias's peerage. It might seem contrived or a stupid thing to do, however he simply wanted to. He needed no other reason or excuse to do so.
Of course, it helped that doing so would put him into contact with many of the most powerful beings in the supernatural world. Beings he could likely find some way to scan and mimic. Not to mention all of the Sacred Gears that her peerage would encounter over time. Sacred Gears he could likely study, maybe even steal for himself. Speaking of, he was definitely going to steal Ddraig from Issei in a few years. He'd need to find someone else with a Sacred Gear to study first though. There was also the financial benefits and connections being attached to a pillar devil house would have. He had to wipe a bit of drool off of his lips just imagining the materials he could probably get through Rias.
So, yeah, he was pretty certain he would join Rias's peerage, become the next Red Dragon Emperor, and then open his own shop to sell awesome stuff. It seemed like a good plan to him.
-----Line Break-----
Junichiro looked down at a collection of knives he'd spent the last five days working on. He'd made several different styles of kitchen knives such as gyuto, santoku, yanagiba, usuba, nakiri, and others. It wasn't too hard for him to make a top quality knife after he'd used runes on all the tools necessary. Mana forging was faster and easier than regular forging, files with rune work cut through hardened steel like butter and made shaping easy, and so many other little benefits of magical tools. Thanks to the ease of his work he now had three complete eight piece knife sets and a few extra gyuto, santoku, yanagiba, and nakiri knives on the side.
He had an example of each knife set out for viewing on a wooden crate that contained the rest of his knives. The crate was on its side so he could reach into it easily. He made his pricing simple, each individual knife was priced at ten thousand yen, a set of eight was discounted to seventy thousand yen. Essentially, buy seven get the eighth free. Considering it had only taken him time and effort while his material costs were... nothing. It was pretty much pure profit. If he sold every last knife and knife set over the weekend, he stood to make four hundred and ten thousand yen.
Of course, knives weren't all he'd spent his time creating. He'd finally made his mana concealing amulet. It didn't actually hide his mana, that would be stupid since everyone had at least somemana. No, it took a reading of his mana pool when worn and 'locked' the aura of his mana to that level. As long as he wore the amulet his mana pool would appear to only be the tiniest bit bigger than any other random idiot on the streets. Which pretty much made him invisible to the supernatural as the small extra bit could be chalked up to good genes or an ancient mage ancestor. Nothing even remotely interesting or impressive.
The second item he'd made was similar to his notice-me-not bracelet except it was more of a -notice-my-age-not. Basically, it made people who saw him completely discard the relevance of his age to any activities he performed. He had thought of it while wondering how to get himself adult-only stuff, like a larger propane tank. You had to be an adult to buy crap like that and he couldn't steal them with his notice-me-not on since they were usually locked up in various ways. However, with his new bracelet, his age was dismissed as irrelevant.
Sadly, it couldn't be used to get himself a bank account. All the paperwork they required along with their electronic systems would notice something was up pretty quickly. Even if the person opening the account for him didn't think his age of thirteen was relevant, the computer systems likely would. Even if he managed to lie about his age, or somehow get an account regardless, he still didn't actually have the proper paperwork and had no idea what it looked like to forge any. He'd spent a few hours going down the rabbit hole of hoops he would have to jump through to get it to possibly work and it was just beyond his skills, for now.
He was quickly brought out of his musing when a middle aged man stopped in front of his little crate and appraised the knives sitting on top of it. Junichiro smiled brightly at him, “Good morning sir! I see you're admiring my hand made knives. If you have any questions, or would like to test one, feel free to let me know.”
The man nodded, “Thanks young man. You say you made these yourself?”
“That's right, sir. I forged them by hand myself. They're well hardened and maintain an excellent edge.”
Junichiro opened a bag of groceries containing fruits and vegetables he'd bought just for use as testing subjects. He selected a carrot and set it on top of a small cutting board on his crate, “Feel free to give them a try.”
The man, who judging by his outfit was most likely a chef, selected the gyuto first. With hardly any effort the chefs knife cleanly sliced through the thickest end of the carrot. The man hummed in interest and set the knife down to pick up the nakiri knife. With a practiced hand he began to slice the carrot in a circle, essentially skinning the carrot like one might a daikon radish. The razor sharp nakiri knife easily shaved the exterior of the carrot into one long thin sheet.
After setting the knife down, the man looked at Junichiro, “They're rather impressive knives.” He glanced at the sign that listed the prices for individual knives and a full set, “I'll take a full set, young man.”
Junichiro smiled brightly and pulled out an eight piece set, each blade carefully wrapped to prevent accidental cuts, while the man counted out the seventy thousand yen. Once the exchange was made, Junichiro brightly smiled at the man, “Thank you for your patronage!”
With that his first ever sale was complete. It looked like today just might be a great day!
-----Line Break-----
AN
So, what do you all think? It's a bit slow for the moment, but it will pick up as things begin to snowball for Junichiro.
Personally, I like this beginning a lot more than the previous one. He's not instantly powerful, instantly rich, and Chad-ing it up. Ya know? It's nice for their to be some struggle and indecision.
Also, yes, he will be joining Rias peerage. That's pretty much non-negotiable for me. Though, I admit, it makes a lot more sense for this Junichiro to join her than the last super OP one. This one can't make BS stuff from random garbage. Just decent stuff.
Also, if you guys have any ideas, please throw them at me. King hand axe is the reason behind using internet cafe's to order stuff off the internet. I hadn't even thought of that because internet cafe's are an extreme rarity here in America.
Comments
BookDragonling
I like the MC's plan for the future.
Cody S.
I love your ideas. Definitely something I will keep in mind. As for armor, I plan to start with something simpler and progress up. You know like Cloth -> Chainmail -> Platemail -> Etc All enchanted of course. Probably still will. He'd do the improved cloth, some defense at least, while gathering enough titanium and tungsten to make an enchanted chainmail shirt. Gotta go through the tech tree right?! lol.
King hand axe
I have to agree with Abdullah, I really, really enjoy the start to this story so far. He's interesting and relatable, makes no excuses for stealing but also isn't is a bad guy, just doing what he needs to survive without hurting people. Loved the idea of kitchen knives, those things are expensive!. He's got a long way to go but I'm rather enjoying reading about the steps he's taking. Just to throw another idea out there about possible armor for the future, one of my favorite movie scenes and I think many would agree with me, was when Frodo gets stabed by the Cave Troll and his mithril under shirt saves him. Now I'm not saying that level (i mean its Mithril!, thats mythical stuff), but a similar designed one with available material would give an amazing hidden protective armor. Like daily wear so he can't get caught out. And another (Sorry!) But Darts from the game are normally Tungsten... and golf clubs are commonly made of titanium, now it's not alot in each, but old crappy ones? Cheap as chips and available everywhere In second had stores. Tungsten alloy / Titanium alloy's are basically the strongest, least brittle metals available today. With Artificing, he could make some seriously amazing armor and weapons with just that.
