It wasn't long before there were two steaming lumps of food stuffed into boxes and placed into a bag. Without even needing to be asked, Junichiro placed two thousand yen on the cart, "Thanks mister!"
Junichiro took his food and scampered off like an excited child. As soon as he took the first corner out of sight, he stopped that kind of behavior and started walking normally. He retrieved one of the steaming hot piles of food wrapped in a crepe and took a large bite out of it. He didn't regret the searing heat as he huffed in and out to try and cool the food off in his mouth. It was just so damned good! Plus, he was starving.
Breakfast was usually the only meal he really ate a large amount at. It was crucial so he could have the energy to get through his day. If he didn't eat enough, he could run out of energy at the wrong times. Without fuel how could he possibly run away from irate business men that he'd gotten caught pick pocketing? He was good at it, for sure, but he wasn't a smooth as many of the older kids on the streets. But they had more practice, so it wasn't a fair comparison. Being able to eat dinner was entirely dependent on just how much cash he managed to steal. Lunch was almost always out of the question, unless he snagged a whale. He always made sure to save enough money for breakfast. If there was excess and nothing more important to get, then he would get dinner. If there was an unexpected windfall, he would get a small lunch.
Yesterday was one such day, thus the excess money this morning. Hopefully he could get more today, and quickly. But... Either way he was heading back to the junkyard around lunch time to at least scrounge around and see what parts he had for a gas forge and what he would have to find, make, or steal to finish it up.
He continued to munch on his breakfast as he window shopped a bit. He stopped to look through the display window of an antiques shop. All the shiny brass and gleaming wood drawing his attention as he went over what kind of cool enchantments he could give things. Well, provided he had the power. Like that cool ass brass telescope. A couple of good runes and that thing would be able to see for miles and have a zoom function. With more power it could even see through things. How cool would that be?!
He could easily turn one of those pirate looking chests into a Chest of Holding. Like a bag of holding, but bigger... and a chest. Still, who wouldn't like more storage space, right?
As he finished the first half of his breakfast, he caught sight of a small item. It was a nice brass compass glittering brightly in the window. He frowned a bit as he moved through the information in his mind. There were some things he could do with a compass but none seemed all that impressive. Or... wait...
His eyes widened as a bolt of inspiration struck. What he was thinking of wouldn't be all that useful to most people, but it would be perfect for himself! He glanced at the placard for the compass and grimaced when he read, '35,000.' That was more than ten times the money he had this morning. Well, that was fine. He turned away from the store and started looking for another one that might sell a more modern compass. As long as the case of the compass was made of metal and not plastic it would work for what he wanted!
It took two hours of wandering and several stores, but he finally found what he wanted at a model gun store, also known as airsoft. He'd found other stores that had camping sections, but all of their compasses were plastic. Plastic is great for tons of things, just not magic things. The compass he found looked like brass, but was likely just painted zinc or a zinc alloy, not that it mattered. What mattered was that it was only eight hundred yen! That left him only six hundred yen, for now.
He quickly ducked into a dark alley and hid himself behind a large dumpster. He didn't want to do his work out in the open. Thanks to a nice breakfast and the hours that had passed looking for the compass, and how small it was, he was back to full mana reserves. Good thing as he needed it now.
With a thought he created the low quality engraving tool. It took a little focus to build up the rune sequence he wanted to use within his mind, but once it was ready he began carving into the exterior sides of the compass. It was definitely just painted zinc, once the engraving tool scraped little slices of metal out, he could easily see the silver color of the zinc. How weird was it that almost all metals had the same silver coloring?