Junichiro sat in front of his crappy little forge surrounded by a half dozen full charcoal bags, discarded newspaper, and broken pieces of metal that he thinks are probably steel. After waking up, he'd spent the first half of the day using his 'Loot Compass' to find more stuff and buying bags of charcoal from different places. It was pretty cool that some regular grocery stores carried the stuff. He'd also scrounged up another five thousand yen, though most of it was already spent on the charcoal and some food. He also bought some metal skewers with some meat and vegetables. He had charcoal, why not grill something while he was at it?
He got started by tearing up some of the newspaper and clumping it up in the cast iron pan he'd drilled holes through yesterday. Once he had a ton packed down to act as kindling, he dumped some charcoal on top of it. He picked up his cheap plastic lighter. Someone had thrown it away when it had just a tiny bit of fuel left. No way in hell would any place sell him a lighter. It took a few flicks of his thumb to get it to work and light the paper on fire.
While he waited a bit for the charcoal to get going, he arranged his tools. Those being his conjured hammer and the thick metal plate he'd dragged over to act as his anvil. It was a couple of millimeters thick and mostly flat. He was too scrawny to move anything else around so his idea of an engine block anvil was out, for now. Resting on the 'anvil' was a decently long piece of rebar. He couldn't remember if rebar was just iron or steel, but in this case it didn't matter a whole lot. He planned to use the rebar to make a pair of tongs. Next to the anvil was a broken metal container filled with used engine oil that would be used for quenching stuff later on. Not the best, but it would do for now.
Once the coals in the force had caught, he grabbed the blow drier attached to the hose and channeled some mana into it. The sudden influx of extra air causes the coals to immediately get significantly hotter. Probably not as hot as actual coal would be, but enough for his purposes. He grabbed the rebar with his other hand and stuck it right into the fire.
It took him two hours, five full bags of charcoal, and all of his mana, twice, but he couldn't keep from smiling as he looked at the super crappy, mostly rusty, poorly shaped, but functional pair of tongs. It was the first thing he'd ever made himself like this and he was pretty proud of himself for it. It was also strangely comforting and relaxing to be messing around with hot metal and a hammer. It felt... right and fulfilling. It was like he'd accomplished something significantly more impressive than what he'd actually done.
He set the tongs down and grabbed a smaller scrap of rebar to toss into the forge. He didn't have the tools to make a ring like he wanted, but he could make a bracelet... a wide bracelet. Wide enough to have enough space for him to carve the necessary runes into. The next item was going to be a notice-me-not bracelet. The effect would be pretty weak and definitely only work on regular humans. Anyone with even a small amount of active mana would see through it with ease. It was also pretty flawed. If he did anything to stand out, even something as small as poking someone with a finger, he would be noticed. On the bright side, as long as he didn't directly interact with anyone, or do something too outrageous, he would be practically invisible.
Seriously, with the bracelet on and charged, he could walk into a grocery store, fill a cart with food, and walk out without paying. No one would say anything since nothing he would do would be too outrageous. However, he could definitely not do the same thing with a bank vault. People just walking into a vault would definitely raise way too many flags and break the effect. Still, it would let him get away with petty theft and that would be something very useful for him to have. That, and avoiding police officers trying to drag him off to school or an orphanage. Fuck that noise.
Once the piece of rebar was nice and hot, he plucked it out of the forge with his brand new tongs and started hammering on it with his mana construct hammer. The hammer was kind of odd to use at first. It weighed very little since it was made from just mana, yet it struck with the same force as a solid steel hammer the same size would have. It made no logical sense! Something that light shouldn't hit that hard! But, that was just how magic was so he accepted it and got used to the light hammer doing good work.
Getting used to the oddness of the hammer was a good thing though, he needed it for what he wanted to do. To make his notice-me-not bracelet, he needed to turn the metal he was working with, be it iron or steel, into mana forged metal. To make it 'mana forged' he was required to channel mana through his hammer while pounding the metal. Each hit with the hammer would deposit some mana onto the surface layer of the metal. Once the whole surface was covered, he would then have to fold the metal and pound it together to 'weld' the mana in between the layers of metal. It was kind of like how the old sword smiths would fold their steel to spread out the impurities and strengthen the steel. Except he was layering and spreading out mana.