With a jolt, Junichiro Arai awoke. He groaned as he stretched and went over the fresh information in his skull, "So... I'm a reincarnation? Sweet!"
The memories were... odd. He knew they were of his past life but there was a weird disconnect. Like... he no longer felt he was his past self. He was very much Junichiro! After all, he'd spent the last thirteen years as Junichiro. So, yeah, past life gave him some pretty nifty info but didn't really mesh with who he was now. After all, what use was knowing about his past life's leisurely life compared to this one? Years sitting at a desk in an office reading reports, collating data, and writing reports? USELESS! Less than useless even!
Though the new knowledge about his world and what it contained was so very helpful. And also a lot terrifying. Fucking gods, angels, devils, and other scary ass shit just walking around? Mutated monsters that would love to eat a cute little homeless boy as a midnight snack? He really didn't need the new nightmare material, thank you very much.
On the bright side, he now knew a fair bit about magically crafting items and how to get started on it! Bonus! He could actually feel his teeny tiny little mana core at his heart. It seemed that as an apprentice Artificer, he knew the basics of many crafting professions such as Blacksmithing and Leatherworking. Just enough to get started in a bunch that he needed to know. The coolest thing though? He knew, like, fifty different magical runic languages for enchanting! Granted, he could only use the weakest of them because the more powerful languages required... You guessed it! More power! Something he clearly did not have.
He also knew a ton of ways to infuse magic into items. Though he, once again, lacked the necessary power so it was all academic really. Still, with a minimal amount of materials he could make a weak magical item of some sort. Given what he'd just learned about his world, he knew exactly what some of his first items would be. Goddamn ward stones! Magic would attract everything to his cute little ass and he wanted none of that. The wards could help hide any emissions... well any weak emissions. They would be weak ass wards, to begin with. Ugh.
Okay, enough of that crap.
Junichiro reached into the pocket of his hoodie and pulled out a small vial. It was elegant while being minimalist in its design. Contained within the vial was a clear liquid, the Essence of the Blank. His memories told him why he'd wanted it as an item and not as an ability. If he chose to become a Devil, specifically under Rias, he couldn't have this Essence active. Due to the Evil Pieces basing the cost of conversion on potential, having limitless potential would mean having a limitless price. If it was based only on current strength then Issei would have cost less than a pawn to resurrect.
He stuck the vial back into his pocket and looked around the interior of the junk car he'd spent the night inside of. It wasn't the worst place he'd ever slept but it also illustrated just how few resource he had on hand. Still, no one ever came to this old ass abandoned junk yard so he had free reign of the place. He'd been the sole soul to come here in at least the last year.
"Right, first things first."
He reached around to his back and pulled out his hand made shiv. It was exceedingly hard for a minor to buy a real blade, so he improvised. His shiv was nothing more than a sharpened piece of metal with duct tape wrapped around the lower half to make a handle. It was rusty as fuck and not actually all that sharp. The hell would anyone expect when he'd used a rock to try and sharpen it? Now though?
He closed his eyes and went over the information he had on conjuring tools to work with. It was an extensive list of items and many of them he just knew he couldn't conjure with his current available mana. However, the first one he wanted wasn't a problem. He held his hand out, palm up, and focused on what he wanted to make. A soft blue glow enveloped his hand for a brief moment before it all flowed into his palm and coalesced into a basic sharpening stone.
Junichiro opened his eyes to look at the softly glowing blue sharpening stone. It was fifteen centimeters long, seven centimeters wide, and one centimeter thick. Not very big, but it would have to work. After examining it, he couldn't help remarking, "First bit of magic I do an it's not something badass like throwing waves of fire or freezing some bastards balls off. Nope. My magical journey begins by summoning a fuckin' rock! A rock that cost half of my goddamn mana!"