He grabbed the extremely rusty cast iron pan by what was left of its broken handle and set it flat on the ground. With some of his, once more, recovered mana he conjured a hand drill. With the drill formed, he took his tubing and set it about the center of the pan and scored a line around it with the drill bit's tip. That way all the air holes would be in the right spots. With that done, he got down to the tedious and energy intensive process of drilling through the cast iron. Lucky for him there was only one hand drill that could be summoned. Due to the drill being unbreakable and ever sharp, it worked pretty well regardless of material. Though he did have more powerful options for harder materials. No way anyone was ever drilling through Adamantine by hand!
The only plus side of the tedious work was his slowly recovering mana. Which was good because once he finished drilling the last hole and dismissing the drill, he summoned his inscribing tool once more. He started with the cast iron pan by inscribing runes on it that would give it some protection from heat by helping focus heat into a smaller area. Next he got to work on the busted hair dryer since he obviously had zero access to electricity, so even if it did work he'd have to enchant it.
Unfortunately that meant breaking it apart somewhat to get to the electric motor inside. Plastic couldn't be enchanted so the exterior casing was in the way. The motor though, that was mostly metal so he could inscribe runes on it. Just another simple set that would force the motor to turn as long as mana was applied.
With that done, he began assembling his forge. The chair was unfolded with the busted home satellite dish placed where the seat used to be. He stabbed a hole into the dish and fed the somewhat wide hose through it. Once the hose was in position he taped it up nice and good then set the cast iron pan on top. He made sure the holes he drilled matched the position of the hose for unobstructed airflow. After that he taped the hair dryer to the other end of the hose. He now had a really, really, super duper, crappy forge. It'd likely melt in just a few uses, but those few uses would mean a lot to him.
He pat the forge gently and made his way into the rusty car. The sun was beginning to go down and dark would arrive soon. He had nothing to see with at night so it was time to call it quits. After he got himself some breakfast and loot tomorrow morning, he would come back and begin forging his first item. It was definitely going to be the notice-me-not enchanted jewelry. With that he could move about much more freely, as long as he didn't do something crazy that drew attention.
That though put a smile on his face as he wrapped himself up in his threadbare blanket and rested his head on a pillowcase stuffed with ripped teddy bears. Life was definitely looking up for him!
AN
And that takes care of Junichiro's first day as an artificer.
So, how do you guys like the changed beginning and abilities?
I did this rewrite because I felt like in the original Junichiro was just able to have anything and everything with a minimal amount of effort. It made the story kind of.. boring. I did have fun thinking of things and writing the story but, like I explained before, it became boring. At least this way when Junichiro becomes an all powerful being of infinite everything, he'll have earned it!
It's also more fun for me to write because he, essentially, has no actual power! The things he got for reincarnation didn't give him any instant power boosts. Even the weakest of Sacred Gears give their user a minimal amount of power. Even a healing focused one such as Twilight Healing offers some power to the user in their ability to heal allies. Even a pathetic user of Sword Birth can make a basic sword with a sharp edge to fight with.
An Artificer though? He has zero instant power. He does have a fair amount of knowledge and, yes, knowledge is power. But it's only power when you can actually apply that knowledge. Sure, he knows runes to make weapons that would make a fully merged Excalibur look like a child's toy. That's nice and all, but he can't actually do anything with that knowledge since he lacks the power to actually make the enchantments. Not to mention lacking proper magical materials to make it with. That's why I like this version a bit more as an author. It's going to let me expand the world a bit, make up new materials, and have logical limits on my OC without having you all screaming 'NERF!' when he's not instantly stomping everyone.
Instead of giving him instant, easy, power, I gave him potential. Especially with the Essence of the Blank. With that he can, essentially, learn to do anything and limitlessly grow in personal power. But, again, it will take time and effort on his part. Effort that wont really begin until he joins Rias's peerage. And yes, that is still very definitely going to happen. Though it makes a lot more sense this time around. After all, she can provide him with a massive budget to make all kinds of goodies with, ya know?