Ferdinand's eyes shot open as he felt a tugging in the back of his mind.

In an instant, he was out of bed and rushing out of his bedroom and towards his office and the secret room in the back of it, not caring that he was dressed in his nightgown, rather than his normal blue robes, his Feystone body armor that he wore even in his sleep visible underneath the collar of his clothes.

The feeling that had awakened him appeared three more times before Ferdinand made it to his secret room, quickly drawing a sword as he pushed his mana into the Feystone in the center of the door.

The moment it unlocked, he threw the door open and was ready to cut down whoever it was that had invaded his private place, but his battle ready state turned to hesitation as rather than assassins digging through his things, he saw Tohsaka in her own night clothes lying on one of his benches with a book open in her lap.

"Wow, that was fast. I only just started calling you." The girl said as she looked at him from over HIS book.

"What do you think you are doing?" Ferdinand said angrily, wondering whether or not he should put his sword away.

"Studying. Same as I had every night this last week." The girl replied with a shrug. Ferdinand was stunned when he noticed a stack of the kinds of paper that the girl had from the Gilberta Company for personal use, covered in notes. "Your books are really good. A lot better than the one my family left me, but you don't have any basic reference materials, so there are a few things I'd like to ask you about."

"Get out." Ferdinand said flatly.

"Rude." Tohsaka pouted.

"What makes you think that you can just barge into my secret room without consequences?"

"Um… Because I'm cute?" The girl said with a wide smile, though when Ferdinand's hard expression didn't change she shrugged. "The Temple doesn't have any punishment worse than the Reflection Room and I'm not exactly afraid of being left alone for a few hours. Well, I suppose you could kick me out of the Temple or kill me personally, but I'm way too valuable for you to do that."

Ferdinand narrowed his eyes at her, not wanting to admit that she was right. She WAS too valuable to lose over something like this. Because of her, they had managed to increase the amount of mana in the dedication ritual from half what it used to be to 25% more than before the Civil War, back when they had more than twice as many Blue Priests as they did now.

She'd basically single handedly solved the Duchy's recent famine, and the gold coins she brought to the Temple had solved the Temple's budgeting problem as well.

Though she wasn't as untouchable as she seemed to think, as while they couldn't retaliate against her directly, there was the Gilberta Company that could suffer a retaliation from the noble class. If he desired, he could threaten her into line.

But there was something much more important to him at the moment.

"How did you get in here without tripping my alarms?" Ferdinand asked the girl.

"Oh, you want to know?" Tohsaka said, a playful grin that was unbecoming of a child on her face.

While normally, when in front of others, she would act like a model Blue Priestess, with a few merchant-like tendencies, now she was showing her real face.

Frighteningly enough, it reminded Ferdinand of Sylvester, only with more venom in it.

"How about a deal then? An exchange of knowledge for knowledge. I'll tell you how I got in and then you will answer my questions." Tohsaka offered.

"...Fine." Ferdinand said.

With a smile, the young girl took out a magic tool. A Feystone that was rigidly shaped in the manner of a diamond with a complex crystal structure, with runes fused into its surface made out of some kind of metal and some kind of stone suspended within.

"Whenever you open up the door with your magic energy, you leave a bit of a residue around it. All I had to do was amplify it in order to make it match the original." Tohsaka said with pride.

Ferdinand thought about it.

It was technically possible, but the trial and error that would normally be involved in fine tuning such a method would have alerted him that she was doing something.

"That isn't all of it." Ferdinand said accusingly before narrowing his eyes. "Let me see that stone."

Tohsaka passed it to him and he looked into it, wondering about its shape.

Feystones could change their shape based on the thought patterns of the one who dyed it with their mana, but the shape that Tohsaka had used was unusual, and Ferdinand wondered as to why she used a crystal structure. Almost everyone just used rounded stones, because they were easier to imagine.

"The horse rune. What purpose does it serve when you aren't compounding materials?" Ferdinand mumbled, asking himself, rather than the girl.

"The horse is more than about the attraction of opposites. It deals with any sort of bond. Including like with like." Tohsaka said with a sly smile.

…Of course. The crystal structure was to store a magic signature. She had taken several samples of Ferdinand's magic energy and had used the tool to compare them, filtering out the noise, until she had something that matched his signature perfectly. Then she fed it until it grew in strength.

It was something that could only be achieved with a high level of precision.

Putting the magic tool down on his side table, Ferdinand walked over to Tohsaka, surprising the girl as he lifted her up and started to carry her out of the room under one of his arms.

"Hey! What are you doing!?" The girl shouted as she struggled in his arms.

"Taking you back to your quarters." Ferdinand replied flatly as he closed the door behind him.

"My magic tool! Hey you can't just keep that! It's mine!"

"I suppose they will be sending me to the reflection room then." Ferdinand joked, throwing that one back in the girl's face.

"Are you really going to lie and steal from a child!?" Tohsaka said indignantly.

"Yes."

"You jerk! You're unbelievable and… and watch where you're grabbing, you pervert!"

"Don't flatter yourself. You're not even six."

Ferdinand had gotten to the door of his office and was about to open it when Tohsaka elbowed him hard. Hard enough to break through his Feystone body armor and knock the air out of his lungs.

He staggered and the girl slipped from his grasp, grabbing him and throwing him in and over the shoulder toss, causing him to hit his head and land on his back, staring up at the ceiling.

His vision was blurred by stars as Tohsaka stood over him, glaring down at him with her sharp blue eyes. "Let that be a lesson to you about how to treat a lady." Tohsaka huffed before tossing back her hair and walking out of the room on her own. "Stupid Fake Priest."


Rin was still angry the next morning.

Sure, she had broken into his secret room to read through his magic books and research documents without his permission, but he had lied to her after they had struck a deal. Doesn't he know if a noble's word is shown to be no good than their lives are basically over?

This must have been why he was in the Temple, because he is a habitual liar.

Besides, it was his own fault for being so damn cocky when he set up his defenses. He should be glad she only snuck in rather than dismantling them all and taking the materials he had used to make them, like she had with the Merchant's Guild.

He was basically asking for it.

"Is Sister Tohsaka not going to go and assist the High Priest today?" Lizzie asked as Rin had yet to leave her room, choosing instead to pour over some of the boards she had received from Benno about progress in the lower city over the Winter.

"No. If he is going to refuse to make good on our deals then I won't assist him either." Rin said with finality as she continued her own work.

The blacksmith shop had finished making the casts for the hand pump, a crucial piece of technology for their Duchy, not simply because it makes water easier to draw, but because it draws the water from below the water's surface. If carefully maintained, it would allow for water to be easily accessed even in the brutal Winters, when ice would normally have formed over the well. And with all of the pieces in the form of casts, mass production was just around the corner.

It seemed that the blacksmith they brought it to was shocked by the concept of welding together separate casts to make pipes rather than forging the complex shapes. A revolution in blacksmithing that Rin had simply introduced by accident. It was hard for her to remember what did and didn't exist during certain time periods. It wasn't something she thought about when she would casually use Structural Analysis on things in her previous life. Not to mention that the dominance of magecraft in the wealthier part of society oppressed some inventions.

Rin smiled to herself as she saw Benno talking about setting up his own rival Merchant's Guild in order to give a middle finger to the Guild Master, saying that he won't be stopped.

He really was an Unapologetic Capitalist.

Of course, to make this a reality, he would need connections in noble society that were higher than Gustof's, so he was counting on Rin to attract the attention of someone big. Well, not that big. Gustof's backers are only Laynobles.

It was while Rin was reading his suggestions with a smile that a knock came at the door. "You may enter." She said, schooling her expression. The door was opened by a gray priest attendant, who stepped to the side to let the High Priest enter. "This is an unexpected visit. Forgive me for not having tea prepared for you." Rin said, taking a sip of her tea as she did so.

What she was really saying was that he broke social protocol by not arranging a meeting. Even if she was of a lower social status than him, that was quite rude.

"You did not come to my office today." The High Priest said in his usual neutral tone of voice.

"I saw no need to. We had a mutual agreement, and if you don't stand by your end of the deal you can't expect me to still fulfill my end." Rin said with a lady-like grace.

Ferdinand's eyes might have narrowed just slightly before he glanced back towards the door. "Arno." One of his attendants came forward with something wrapped in a cloth and placed it on the table, unwrapping it to reveal a box containing a stack of parchment. "Your reference documents, as promised."

Rin looked at the pieces of parchment, which hadn't been among those in the High Priest's secret room, and then up at the Priest himself. "I see, thank you very much." She said with a bright smile that would seem childish to anyone but Ferdinand.

"You will do twice as much work tomorrow to make up for skipping today." Ferdinand said before leaving the room with his attendants.

"Hmph. Stupid Fake Priest." Rin said as she took out one of the documents.


"Have you been adjusting well?" Bezewanst asked Rin after having summoned her for a meeting.

"I am doing quite well. The gray priests are well trained and while these Winter months have been dreadfully dull, I have managed to find ways to pass the time." Rin replied.

"I am glad to hear it." Bezewanst said with a nod of his head. "However, I have to say that I am concerned. You have been spending a lot of time with the High Priest."

"You mean the Fake Priest?" Rin asked, surprising the man.

"Fake Priest?" Bezewanst repeated, surprised.

"It is clear enough to anyone who so much as speaks to him that he isn't like the rest of us. He is crude, heartless and does little to hide the fact that he looks down on the rest of us. I can see why all the other Blue Robes choose to avoid him." Rin said, berating the High Priest so she wouldn't be thought of as in his corner.

"I see. If you know that already, then why do you spend so much time with him?" The Archbishop asked, puzzled.

"For the same reason you made him High Priest, I would guess. Because he has skills and knowledge that I want." Rin replied. "In the world of business, you often have no choice but to make deals with those who you don't like in order to achieve your own goals. I may hate the Fake Priest, and he has no love or trust for me either, but I want his knowledge of the ancient language and he wants my ability with accounting. Thus we are stuck together."

"I see your point." Bezewanst said with a nod of his head, a smile playing on his cheeks and he stroked his beard. "But if you are aware of his unpleasant nature, that is good. If you see him do anything out of the ordinary, please inform me at once."

"As you wish, Archbishop." Rin said, not really having any intention of playing spy.