It sounds to me like Ruti is looking for a weapon to give to her brother to entice him back into her party. An equipment upgrade, since the sword he gave back when he left wasn't enough. I was wary of the assassin girl until she introduced her spider pet.

As for the rest of the episode, I agree. The flashbacks all felt like dreadful filler to pad out the time. They could have compressed all that to five minutes and it wouldn't have changed a thing. The tone of the flashbacks felt very strange too, like a 4koma at the end of a manga volume that goes back to play gags related to events of the main plot.

The best part of the episode was when Rit was essentially proposing to Gideon, they both knew it, and were both embarrassing the crap out of themselves attempting to pretend they didn't know exactly what the subtext was of the conversation.