On the bright side, he'd garnered himself something of a reputation at the weekend market. He'd sold out all of his knives that first weekend, his last one only selling just before the market closed that Sunday. However, word had spread about the quality of his work by word of mouth and the next weekend he'd sold out on the first day. Then came the really lucrative thing, custom orders! He charged three times as much for a basic custom order and then even more if they wanted something fancy.
Thanks to his popularity he hadn't had to steal much in the last two months. Just the occasional item that no amount of magical trinkets would get people to sell him. Things like the massive chemistry set sitting over to his left. Now that he had a good source of income, he was planning to branch out into a few more fields, Potions, Wands, and Scrolls. Each of which had some startling costs. It wasn't like he could just scrounge up potion ingredients in the junkyard. Scrolls required expensive paper and parchment along with equally expensive inks. He'd had to hold back on wands until he had a working gas generator, a lathe, and cash to buy precious metals a semi-precious gemstones. The generator and lathe were rather expensive pieces of equipment to have shipped to the junkyard, but who would think twice about shipping them here?
Before that, he had to do one more thing. He hopped back into his nice comfortable seat with a grin. He'd had a 'do it yourself' style shed delivered to the junkyard once he'd saved up enough money. It was just a small ten-by-ten shed with a tin roof. Nothing special, but once he assembled it deep in the center of the junkyard where it would be impossible to see from the road, he officially had his first lab! Since then he'd been improving it and his security.
For security, he'd followed through with his first set of ward stones. Sadly, they were actual stones carved with runes and smeared with his own blood. They were nothing to write home about, and rather weak. They did their job though and once he'd gotten his hands on a proper smelter, crucibles, and molds, he'd made much better ward stones. Making mana infused steel cubes, carving deep runes into them, and filling those runes with mana infused gold made some excellent mid-tier wards. If his judgment was right, only a being of middle-class power or higher could even detect his wards, and only by coming close to them. The wards prevented all outbound mana transmissions, up to a certain point. As long as he wasn't setting off Megumin style explosions, he would be fine.
Thanks to the smelter, making mana infused metals was a cinch. Just melt the metal, pour it into the mold, and feed mana into it while it cools. Then he could use his new mana infused ingots to do some mana forging and really get some excellent results. Stacking mana into the metal like that gave any runes or enchantments and excellent boost so power and efficiency. Both things that he needed with his low mana pool.
Once he was comfortable, he picked up his conjured inscribing tool and a second gold ring. He had his shield, but now he wanted a second layer of defense to protect his life. He didn't care how long it would take, his life was worth the effort.
Several days later, Junichiro set down the second gold ring and smiled brightly. As much as he wanted to get this second ring done as fast as possible, inscribing runes for twenty or so hours straight, even over two days, was a bit much. So he'd taken plenty of breaks to work on his custom orders and the next set of standard knives for the coming weekend. Despite his much improved income, he still wasn't making nearly enough. He wasn't willing to push his luck to try and find someone to sell a magical item to though. Way too risky.
This second golden ring had runes inscribed in it much like the first, only it had a greenish tint to the gold. Weaving the enchantment into the ring to make it work had tinted the gold somewhat. Once he gave it a last look over, he slipped it onto his left hand. Once it re-sized to fit perfectly, he picked up a small knife sitting on the edge of his desk, "Here goes nothing."
Taking a deep breath and tensing his whole body, he drew the razor sharp knife across the tip of his index finger. The blade effortlessly parted his flesh causing blood to rapidly well up and begin to drip. Just that simple slice had sliced his fingertip to the bone. Junichiro had to start taking deep breaths to fight off a bought of nausea. Cutting yourself on accident was one thing, self mutilation was something completely different.