“I mean . . . as quickly as possible, to be honest,” I replied. It should be easy to portal back and forth to collect them. Even when I factored that in, there would surely be a few days before we were ready to go and get Kizuna.

“Can you start with the easy ones?” I inquired.

“Okay. I’ll kick things off with adjusting the gear you carried over with you and get to making new stuff later. Sound good?” she replied.

“Sure thing,” I confirmed. “Anything else?”

“Maybe you could try to hammer a little more accessory-making skill into L’Arc?” she said.

We were going to try this again, were we?

“He holed up in my studio for a while, determined to make something better than you can make,” Romina revealed.

“I taught him the basics, after all,” I commented.

“He’s so . . . clumsy . . . I guess is the word. And yet he was trying so hard. But he just couldn’t get any better. Eventually his face became more and more like you, Naofumi, and he fell asleep while making a new accessory. In his sleep he was muttering ‘he’ll take her from me . . . he’ll take her,’ whatever that means,” Romina continued.

“Talk about obsessed. He sure worries a lot about dumb stuff,” I observed. Encountering L’Arc at night in this shop would be like something from a horror movie. “When you teach him, I’d like an accessory made for Therese, so give him some of the four benevolent animal materials,” I told her. Romina worked directly for Kizuna, so she should have some pretty good materials. Quite a lot of time had also passed since we were last here. They could have quite a stockpile of good stuff. For the sake of Itsuki and my weapon, it was also worth having four holy beast materials in the mix. Even if the stats themselves were low, they had an unlock bonus.

“L’Arc managed to buy back some of those that went out into each region, so we should have some. We can use these materials too, I guess. I’ll get everything ready,” she said.

“Gotcha. You think you can restore functionality for my armor?” I asked.

“The one who made this armor has really increased his skills.” Romina quietly made an impressed sound as she examined it. “It’s much finer work than the last time you were here. I need to up my game.” I wondered if she could really tell that much. Some kind of craftsperson sense? “It is designed with adjustments in mind, so I should be able to pull this off pretty quick. I can also add some parts I’ve made to maybe boost its abilities.”

“You’re not going to get me cursed again, are you?” I asked.