Mittelts eyes bulged as the very idea slammed into her mind. She did not understand runes and could not even guess at what they did without Junichiro explaining them. That said, she had seen them used in a lot of his work and their versatility combined with their potential power blew her mind. Adding in the ability to have them added to the swords he summoned was a mind boggling idea that kind of terrified her. She had no doubt that once he got used to Sword Birth, he would be a force to reckoned with and she would cease to be stronger than him.
Junichiro grinned at the look of shock on Mittelt's face slowly turning into dawning comprehension and then a small bit of fear. He still hadn't testing impregnating runes directly into the creations for Sword Birth, but he saw no reason that it wouldn't be possible. If his eyes hadn't started to feel so dry and his body wasn't telling him to get some sleep, he'd stay up the rest of the night and do nothing but create swords and test theories. Sadly, it looked like he would need to wait until tomorrow.
It would be a glorious day.
Junichiro walked out of his bedroom with a wry grin on his face. He'd just noticed the date and realized he'd spent the last week doing nothing but playing with Sword Birth and testing his theories about it. Needless to say, he was a VERY happy camper. However, he'd missed out on all the activities he normally participated in during the week and had been neglecting his work. Not to mention his date with Mittelt was imminent. It was tomorrow, in fact.
After a quick breakfast, he made his way into his workshop and checked his job log. He never gave a time frame for custom orders because he didn't know all the possible materials or have a huge supply of them laying around. He was required to do research before each job, then order the materials. It could take some time so giving a deadline was not something he did, yet.
On the list he read over the description for a custom battle axe that brought a smile to his face. He decided to get some work done on that for today. With the job selected, he made his way over to the massive coal forge that was a center piece of his workshop. The coals were cold, not using the forge for a week would obviously have such a result. It was no issue though. He lifted his hand and concentrated causing a small spell circle to quickly form in front of his palm. Flames were quickly conjured and used to ignite the coal within the forge.
Over the last year he'd spent plenty of time studying the intricacies of human magic. Even so, he'd only managed to make and learn two spells. They were two excellent spells for his work though. The first was his little flame conjuring spell that he could use to ignite whatever he needed to. The second was a water conjuring charm so he could put out stray fires or rapidly cool things down, or even just get himself a nice cold glass of pure water. And yes, he'd had a few accidental fires. Oil fires from quenching oil were the worst since he couldn't use his nifty spell to put them out.
He couldn't help smiling at the thought of heating up some metal and pounding it out on his anvil. Before awakening memories of his past life and gaining the knowledge of an Artificer, he would have thought something like this was pointless. Now? Now he was looking forward to the day he made something that caused Excalibur Prime to cry in shame at its own weakness.
A few hours after lunch had come and gone, Junichiro was in his home gym when the door opened and Azazel stuck his head in. Azazel paused while taking in the scene he saw before him. Junichiro was laying back on a bench doing bench presses. Nothing unusual there. What was unusual was what Junichiro was using to do the bench pressing. It had to be the single weirdest and ugliest sword he'd ever seen in his life!
Sitting in Junichiro's hands and being pushed up and down was a double sword of weird proportions. The handle, to which two sword blades were attached on either end, was at least a meter long. Then there were the 'blades' of the sword at either end of the handle. They were both short and fat, yet he could still recognize that they were supposed to be sword blades.
"The hell is that? And why are you bench pressing it?"
Junichiro lifted his head to glance at the door, "Back so soon?"
After lowing his head, Junichiro racked the sword he'd been bench pressing and sat up. After grabbing a towel and wiping the sweat off of his forehead, he looked at Azazel and smirked, "That, was a sword specifically designed for bench pressing. I was using it, instead of the usual weights, to test it out and because I could."
Junichiro's smile turned into the picture perfect example of smug, "It's an enchanted blade that always pushes back against the user with just slightly less force than the user can exert. In other words, using it this way its possible for me to always bench press near my maximum without exceeding it and even if I dropped it, it wouldn't crush me."
Azazel goggled at Junichiro in shock, "You... you used Sword Birth to make enchanted workout equipment?!"
Junichiro was practically radiating smug as he looked at Azazel. The fallen leader continued to look at the kid in surprise as he said, "That is the smartest dumb thing I've ever heard!" He shook his head and calmed down a bit, "Damn kid. Usually people with that Sacred Gear just make elemental swords and crap. One of the Heiresses that are maybe coming here has a knight in her peerage with Sword Birth, that's what he does with it! Normal crap."
Seeming to realize something, he turns a weird look on Junichiro, "I noticed that Mittelt-chan was wearing a new necklace. A red sword shaped necklace."
Junichiro's even more smug look, if that was possible, was answer enough for Azazel, "Goddammit kid. So what does that one do?"
"It absorbs heat and flames to protect the wearer. It's not immune to the limited durability that all things made with Sword Birth suffer from, but it's good enough to protect her from a surprise attack or to help her escape a burning building or something." He turned a smirk on Azazel, "It's red because its made with Hihi'irokane."