Trinket Crafting

"One trinket table please!" Ruby slapped the coin onto the counter of the shop. The man looked at her confused, and Ruby seemed to have gotten embarrassed.

"You're still trying your hand at this trinket crafting, Ruby? Well, good luck this time around..." The man said. Hmm, she must've tried beforehand.

"I don't get it, how are we supposed to carry that big table home?" I asked her. Ruby turned to me with a blunt smile and I started to fear the worse as the man rolled out a dolly with a bunch of boxes.

"Hehe... hey Anima... do you think... possibly..." I stopped Ruby from talking and picked up one of the boxes. She was going to make me build the damn thing.

"Do we have to build everything we want to put in our house, or do they come prebuilt? I'm not much of a handyman..." I mumbled.

"Really? So, there is something you can't do! Can't you just make a potion for that?" Ruby asked me.

"Wait, can I? Is there a potion for that?" I asked. Ruby shrugged. I guess there was no way she could know.

"So, now that we're on our way home, when we set this up, can we take a nap before our next activity? I'm a little tired..." Ruby told me.

"Ruby, you woke up two hours ago, how are you already tired?" I asked her. She hung her head low onto the box she was carrying with her eyes closed. When Ruby acted like this, it was annoying.

"You can sleep then and I'll build the damn table. Come on, let's hurry up." I told her.

-

We made it back home and Ruby fell asleep at the top of the steps. I went to work on building the table.

It had an interesting look to it. The table had a small indentation on the top that looked like it had unique shapes in it. Maybe for the trinkets? I wasn't entirely sure. The table wasn't hard to build, but the tedious amounts of nails and screws I had to handle with primitive tools were outdated compared to the ones I had on Earth.

I finished in about an hour of work... but nobody returned home yet. That was making me nervous, how long did it take to buy ingredients? I was getting hungry.

"Good morning." I heard from the steps.

"It's three in the afternoon. But good morning." I told Ruby.

The table was finished and I was testing it out when Ruby woke up. I was trying to make my own trinket, but I couldn't figure it out completely. I hope Ruby was good at this because I couldn't do it for the life of me.

Ah, I'm not really good at anything, am I?

It was small moments like these when I was simply building a table, where I realized I wasn't really good at anything.

As much as I hate sulking, I wasn't good at anything in my previous life either. I couldn't save my friends here, I couldn't do anything on Earth, and I can't even do anything here either. Dammit, it was just a table, why am I about to cry over this damn table...

"Thanks," Ruby said. She put her hand on my face and pushed me out of the chair and immediately got to work while half asleep. Ruby's staff, which looked like a farming scythe, came out from her back and she slammed the tip of the blade into the table. I was about to yell at her, but she looked as concentrated as she's ever been.

She made a chain with some sort of mana material, I wasn't really paying attention, but she took her mana and turned it into a chain. I was confused... but could I do that in my inventory as well?

Ruby was a monster when she was half asleep and making trinkets seemed like something she was good at. She kept working on the trinket, turning her mana into a solidified object and threading it with the chain. It became a shortened necklace. Ruby held it up with drowsy eyes and gave it to me.

"Mana boost." She said.

"Mana... boost? Is that what it does?" I asked her. Ruby nodded and got up from the table.

"North. People, large cluster of them." Ruby said.

"What are you talking about? A large cluster of people? North? Where is that coming from?" I asked Ruby.

[Anima! We need you at the North Gate, quickly!]

[Clairvoyance] shot off, which meant Soul was in danger. I looked at Ruby as she was starting to fall asleep again. I grabbed her wrist and led her by the armor.

"Hey! Suit up! We have a lot we need to do!" Ruby snapped out of her drowsy state like magic and seemed like something urgent was about to happen.

"Ah!" Ruby finally understood the problem. We gathered everything we can and Ruby left. I ran back to pick up her staff and joined her in running to the North Gate. Did Ruby have a premonition? How the hell did she do that?!

"Hey! Are you omnipotent or something?! How did you know about the people?!" I asked Ruby as we ran through the streets. Something was off, everybody was off of the streets now.

"I don't know! It just felt like it! Hey, do you think Joro is there right now?!" Ruby asked me.

I had only understood that there was danger, I never assessed who it could've been...

"If it's Joro... we can kill him there, and then we can move on with Ken to go visit Pretoria," Ruby told me. That's right... maybe Ken and Ipa are already there and fighting against Joro.

"You're right, but you'd stay here to defend Dorrendale and I would be going to Pretoria. Anyways, we need to hurry!" I yelled out. Ruby looked a little upset at first, then focused on running at full speed.