After Reinhardt had left, Jin took a break from his thoughts and made his way to the place where the debris was stored. He thought he needed a change of pace, and also had to make the birthday present for Elsa.
He intended to make use of the serviceable fragments of the broken golems as material.
By all rights all the materials from the broken golems ought to have been collected and recycled by now, but collecting for example Mithril used as plating would take a lot of time compared to the tiny amount that could be gathered by doing it, and it would’ve been impractical. Therefore there was a mountain of stored debris.
But an individual could ignore the efficiency factor. And so, Jin went rummaging through the debris. Of course, he gave notice to the manager of the debris pile.
“Hmm, most of the metal is bronze, huh.”
That was obvious, as the valuable materials had been collected by the mobilized magi knights and magi.
Even so, seek and ye shall find,
“Oh, this bronze is coated with Mithril.”
“Yes! It’s a piece of Mithril!”
Little by little, he gathered up Mithril.
However, it wasn’t quite enough to make a blade.
“Oh my, Jin-kun, what are you up to?”
Jin raised his head to look at the speaker, and there stood Celuroa Kingdom’s Magi Craftsman Stearina.
“Oh, Stearina-san.”
“Material-hunting?”
“Yeah, you could say so.”
“But why at this hour?”
Stearina’s question was natural. The time was past five, and it was starting to get darker.
“Ah, there’s something I want to make that’s a little urgent.”
Jin responded.
“Hmm, what a problem.”
Stearina said, and continued,
“You’re a Magi Craftsman, right? Why don’t you just turn it all into a single lump and separate the components?”
She said.
“I-I see…I could be doing that, huh.”
Jin appreciated the help. That method was certainly reliable.
Stearina looked at Jin and,
“…As if. Who could do such”
She began to talk, but,
“[Fusion]!”
At full throttle, Jin fused the pile of debris together in one go right in front of her.
“Eh?”
“[Extraction], copper. [Extraction], iron. [Extraction], tin. [Extraction], zinc. [Extraction], Mithril. [Extraction], aluminium…”
“Eeh? Eeeeeh?”
Stearina couldn’t understand what was going on as in front of her eyes lumps of copper, iron, zinc, tin, and then Mithril etc. were made.
“…Woah.”
As you’d expect, Jin looked a little worn out. All the debris in front them must’ve weighed ten-odd tons. Melding it all together at once with [Fusion] and taking the ingredients out with [Extraction] one by one. Finishing all that in a short period of time, getting tired was natural.
“Y-y-y-you, do you even know what you’ve done?”
“Yes?”
Why are you surprised when I only did what you said, Jin thought and stared puzzledly at Stearina.
“You did in a moment what would take days for a normal Magi Craftsman to do…”
“Eh?”
Jin, who had taken seriously Stearina’s joke, wondered if he just blew it but now was too late to worry. However, then a good idea occurred to him.
“Excuse me, Stearina-san?”
Jin timidly asked her.
“…What, Jin-kun?”
Stearina replied while stepping back from him. She must’ve thought he was going to silence her.
“I used this thing.”
Jin displayed the object he had in his hand.
It was a gemstone. It glittered light in the evening light.
“…Could that be Elradrite?”
“Yeah. See, when Dominique was caught, I forgot that I had seized this from her. I planned to hand this over to Kelhidore-san after this, but it should be okay to use it once, right?”
He said and showed a smile. The truth was that he had an Elradrite but didn’t use it. But Stearina who didn’t know that was relieved.
“Whaat, so that’s how. You scared me. I thought Jin-kun was a monster or something, being able to do that.”
Hearing that made a cold sweat run down Jin’s back. At the same time, he thought he really needed to get a piece of Elradrite. Of course, for the purpose of hiding his strength.
“Oh well, I don’t think anyone will complain about returning it late after making the debris usable like this. Rather, I think they’ll be happy.”
Stearina completely bought that the stunt just now was done using the Elradrite’s ability.
“So, the thing you wanted to make, what is it?”
She returned to her first question.
“A dagger. Something a woman would use.”
Jin replied honestly. The woman in front of him was a capable Magi Craftsman, so maybe she’d be able to give him advice.
“Hmm, did someone ask you for one? Ah, perhaps that platinum blonde miss?”
Jin guessed that by platinum blonde miss she was referring to Elsa and said,
“No, I wasn’t asked to make one but some time ago she seemed interested in a dagger so.”
Jin said, and for some reason Stearina wrinkled her well-shaped eyebrows and frowned.
“…Could you be planning to make that a gift?”
She asked. It was precisely that, and Jin replied frankly,
“Yes. The truth is, I just heard that tomorrow is her birthday, so.”
Stearina just took a long hard look at Jin and then sighed,
“Well aren’t you an idiot.”
She criticized Jin.
“It seems you only focus on being a Magi Craftsman and don’t know anything about how to handle women, right?”
“…”
Jin didn’t know how to reply so for now he kept quiet.
“Listen, gifting an edged tool expresses the intent that ‘I want to cut off relations with you’. A ring or a necklace means ‘I want to be bound to you’. Ah, but bound doesn’t mean actually bound, got it?”
“Uh, huh.”
“Gifting clothes means ‘I want to undress you’, and inviting for a meal means ‘I want to eat you’.”
Somehow the topic seemed to be rapidly entering perilous territory so Jin said,
“I-I got it. You want to say that a dagger isn’t an appropriate birthday present, right?”
“Yeah. Unless you have an inseparable bond, in other words a blood relative gifting one for self-defense is acceptable.”
When told so, Jin became even more troubled.
“In that case, it should be fine if the dagger’s gifted by Reinhardt, and then some kind of an accessory would surely be…”
Thinking it through that far,
“Well then, what would a brooch mean?”
He tried asking Stearina. She replied,
“That would be ‘I want to live inside your heart’.”
That should be fairly decent, Jin thought, and decided to make a brooch.
“Jin-kun, it’s about dinnertime.”
Elsa then arrived to where they were. It seems she got worried and searched for Jin when he wasn’t in his room even though it was dinnertime.
“Ah, so it’s that late already. …Stearina-san, thanks for everything.”
“Oh, no problem, anything for Jin-kun.”
She said and saw Elsa and Jin off. Jin was empty-handed, seemingly intending to come back later to pick the things up.
“…Youth is nice, isn’t it.”
It looked like the two didn’t hear her muttering. However, it was clearly audible to Reiko, who was invisibly following Jin while under [Stealth].
“Jin-kun, what were you doing?”
It was a natural question for Elsa, but there was no way Jin could answer honestly,
“Let’s see, I thought there might be something useful, so I went searching.”
“Mine always says thing shouldn’t be wasted. Jin-kun’s excellent.”
Jin received praise in a strange manner.
