"So that was it. The heat was rampaging mana inside of my body and the weird dreams were caused by me absorbing mana from my surroundings and having miniature Dream Cycles. Interesting." Myne said with a playful smile that would confuse anyone, as just an hour before she was literally dying from an unknown sickness that had been plaguing her since her birth.

But as she lay there dying, experiencing the odd dreams that always accompanied the heat, a much more vivid and complete dream came all at once. The full memories of the life of one Tohsaka Rin, up until an experiment with the Second Magic.

It would seem that Rin had transported her Od into another world as a probe and that the magic power had been absorbed by Myne.

Equipped with Rin's memories, Myne had enough understanding of magecraft and the nature of the soul and memories to know that she was in fact, not Rin, but simply Myne with Rin's memories and with a magic imprint from Rin on her magic circuits, similar to how Shirou had been imprinted by Avalon.

So after getting her Od under control and chuckling to herself about the unusual nature of her magic circuits, being so easily imprinted upon that just a passing probe was enough to perform a complete memory overhaul, Myne got to work putting Rin's memories to good use and started a diagnostic of her frail and sickly body.

Honestly, she'd seen worse. Or at least, Rin had seen worse in her times. It was nowhere near as bad as the damage done to either Illya or Sakura leading up to the Holy Grail war.

Her muscles were atrophied from being too sick to ever leave her bed, but that could be remedied in an instant. Using her magecraft, she created tears in her muscles, the same way straining them would, and then healed the tissue in order to build up her muscles as much as three weeks of intense training would, with no wasted bulk.

Myne stretched her arms out, testing them with a smile, but her smile turned to a grunt at the next severe health issue. Her blood was unused to carrying a large amount of oxygen. A problem that sadly she couldn't just cheat her way out of. She'd need to build up her cardio if she wanted to do more than leave her bed. But that was still solvable.

So the only real long term concern she had was that her heart was currently almost completely encased in crystalized magic energy that was getting in the way of the flow of her Od and constricting her blood vessels. …Yeah, that was going to be a tough one.

While not an impossible condition to cure, it wasn't something that could be solved with a simple spell. Myne would need to gather materials and set up a ritual in order to safely remove the blockages.

In other words, Myne needed money.

Myne looked around herself at the dump that she currently lived in and grunted. This was going to be difficult.

"Thank you for taking me with you mommy." Myne said as her mother, Effa, carried her through the marketplace on a shopping trip.

"Don't mention it sweetie. I'm just glad you've been feeling better." Effa said, giving her daughter a smile.

Myne felt a little guilty for the physical labor she was putting on her mother, as she might be small, but she was still five years old, not a little baby. But she needed to take stock of what kinds of stores there were around and what the prices for things were, and the raw materials she could use in her work. Things like fruits with different citric acid, or sap that could be used as bonding agents. Things that could let her create something for the purpose of selling for money later on.

She was going to have to make enough money to cure herself before the stones around her heart eventually became too tight inside her growing chest and killed her.

With Rin's memories and skills, deciphering the number system of this world was a snap, so she understood that this world also used a form of base ten counting and that the currency also enforced this base ten system. Ten small coppers was worth one medium copper. Ten medium coppers equals one large copper. Ten large coppers equals one small silver and so on.

The copper coins were also not minted as pure copper, but a copper, nickel, tin and zinc alloy. Lucky for Myne. Those were all handy to have in magecraft, once she has the physical strength necessary to prepare a magic circle. It could easily let her produce a lot of product easier than if she did it by hand, if she could find a way of explaining away how she was making it.

She just needed to decide what kind of thing she wanted to make.

Looking around at the surrounding stores, she couldn't see anything that went for more than a few medium sized coppers at most, likely because this place was in the slums and no one could pay more than that. That is, until Myne saw something that caught her eye, a book inside of a glass case, with a price tag with a lot of zeroes on it.

…Looks like Myne had found her product.

"Good job Myne, you made it all the way to the guardhouse all on your own." Gunther said proudly as Myne leaned up against the guard house door completely out of breath as she tried to slow her heart rate before she completely fell apart.

"You did so well." Tuuli said proudly, smiling towards her little sister.

"Thank you. But I think this is as far as I can go. I don't think I'll be able to help with the gathering in the forest." Myne admitted, looking apologetically towards her older sister.

"That alright, you just keep focusing on getting better." Tuuli said, cheering Myne on.

It made Myne feel guilty, as before receiving Rin's memories and stabilizing her condition, she had not been a good sister to Tuuli, always complaining and wishing all the hurt she felt onto her older sister. So she resolved herself to help Tuuli as much as she could, and make sure that her older sister would be able to live easily and happily.

Easier said than done, considering it took her two weeks to build up enough stamina to even reach the guardhouse from two blocks away from her house, something that should have easily been possible for a child half her age and without magical powers.

"Come on Myne. You can stay in the guardhouse until daddy is done with work." Gunther said, picking Myne up and carrying her into the guardhouse.

The guardhouse's office was a room a little larger than their apartment, with a table, a few chairs for waiting and a fireplace for the long and terrible Winters that they got. At the desk was a toothpick of a man who one would not expect to be a guard, and that was because he wasn't your standard guard.

"Otto, look after Myne for me while I guard the gate." Gunther said, dropping Myne off into one of the chairs.

Otto looked up and smiled as he saw the girl. "Sure thing, boss." The former merchant said.

Myne had seen him before once or twice when he would come to their house, but couldn't claim to know him, as she had usually been in too much pain from her rampaging mana to think straight. During one of her few moments of lucidity, she had heard that Otto had once been a traveling merchant but after settled down and was now doing the bookkeeping for the guards.

Gunther deposited Myne into a seat next to Otto, where she could see what he was doing, writing reports about the day's troubles and the taxes collected for the merchants entering the city on inch thick wooden boards. Myne watched him do this for a few moments after Gunther left before asking Otto a question. "Could you teach me how to read?"

"Huh? You want to know how to read?" Otto asked in surprise.

"Given how weak my body is, I don't think there are many jobs I'll be able to do. But if I could at least learn to read, then I might be able to do something." Myne said, giving Otto the most pitiful look… as well as a small hit with hypnosis. "Please, Uncle Otto?"

"Ah… sure." Otto said, one hand on his head as he suddenly really wanted to help Myne learn to read.

"Thank you so much." Myne said cheerfully. "Also, you added the numbers here wrong." She added, pointing towards a point on the board.

Otto blinked and stared at the board before looking up at Myne in disbelief, seeing the smile on her face.

"I've been gone for two bells, what happened?" Gunther said as he returned at the end of his shift to find his daughter having completely supplanted Otto in the paperwork department, happily writing the reports, using a quill and ink pot like she had been doing so her entire life, her handwriting and speed much better than that of the former merchant.

"I have no idea." Otto said in disbelief as the man proof-read things. "I've never heard of anyone learning to read and write this quickly before, and Myne is better with numbers than I am."

"Isn't it great daddy? I'm a genius." Myne said proudly. Of course she was a genius at picking up languages and grinding out numbers. Rin had been a highly talented magus who had been able to speak and read more than a hundred different languages. Learning to read one she could already speak was a snap to her. "Now I'll be able to help people too."

"Ah… yeah." Gunther said, confused but happy. "But it is the end of my shift, so let's go home."

"'Kay. Thank you for your help, Uncle Otto." Myne said with a smile before letting her father lift her up out of the chair and carrying her back home.

There were seven days in the week in this world, called Light, Dark, Water, Fire, Wind, Earth and Life's Day. Why? Myne wasn't sure. But Earth's Day was basically the universal weekend of this world where most people had the day off.

After learning to read, Myne started to work at the guardhouse on Light, Water and Wind's Days for one small copper coin a day. It was honestly not much money, but it was something, about as much money as Tuuli made in her own job.

Myne could have used hypnosis to get more pay, or even make counterfeit coins with her magecraft, but fusing two small copper coins into a large, but that would have caused too many questions. While she wanted money, she wanted plausible deniability too.

But after two months of this, she gathered enough money to make a few small purchases of different cheap oils and other bonding agents. She also asked her sister to gather a little bit of soot from the chimney. She then put it all into a bowl and got a wooden stick to grind it together with.

With all of this, she just needed someone strong to do the mixing for her, which luckily she had someone like that.

Her father had the kind of muscular build one would expect from someone who worked his ass off to win the love of the daughter of a captain of the city guard. Just mixing a few ingredients was child's play for him.

"Go papa! Go!" Myne cheered the man on, causing him to work even harder until the black mixture started to get a shiny quality to it. "That should be enough." Everyone at the table watched as Myne took a bit of the substance on the end of a stick and drew symbols with it. "It worked! We made ink!"

"Really? Wow." Tuuli said as she looked over at the small bowl of freshly made ink.

"I thought ink was really expensive." Effa hummed as she looked at the mixture.

"It is. This much ink would usually sell for around one small silver coin." Myne said proudly as she looked over at the stuff.

"Wait! But the ingredients only cost you eight small coppers!" Tuuli said in complete disbelief. "Is making ink really that cheap?"

With 1 small silver being worth 1000 small coppers, Tuuli's shock was to be expected, especially since they hadn't even used all of the ingredients that Myne had bought yet. When they were done, they would have almost 5 LARGE silvers worth of ink, or half a year's salary for a guard, after just four hours of hard physical labor. All of Myne's family members were staring in disbelief.

"Usually, no. The inks that they sell in the store use fermented tree sap and iron salts, which are pretty expensive and time consuming to make. So this is a new method for creating it." Myne said, happy that it had worked.

While the gall ink was actually better for most forms of magecraft, if mixed with blood and a little copper, that didn't mean that Rin hadn't known of other methods for creating ink. Actually, she knew of more than a dozen different methods, as well as the abstract reasons for why ink worked. So picking out the cheapest ingredients for its creation was a piece of cake to her.

"Now we just need to sell it… does anyone know how we do that?" Myne asked her family, receiving blank looks and shakes of the head in response. "...Oh."

"Thank you for arranging this meeting for us, Uncle Otto." Myne said as she waited for Otto's merchant friend in her father's arms.

"Don't worry about it. This kind of thing is what merchants do." Otto said with a shrug, a smile plastered on his face. This worried Myne somewhat, as she thought she would have to buy the man out somehow, since he was sort of a merchant, but he just simply went with it after they asked and showed him their product. Sure, Gunther was his boss, but he was being way too easy about this. "Have to say I'm surprised that you cleaned yourselves up for the occasion."

"If we want to be taken seriously, we have to look our best." Myne said, puffing out her little chest with pride.

Myne had explained to her family that people usually take people who are clean more seriously than those who are covered in dirt, so before the meeting, she had taken some of the fruits that Tuuli gathered in the woods and a little bit of salt and created shampoo and body soap… or she got her mother to do it as she advised… stupid tiny, weak body. They also washed their clothes, with Myne sneakily using magecraft on them as they dried, since she didn't have any natural detergents on hand.

Their clothes and skin were a lot cleaner than those around them, and Myne's hair had a healthy shine to it. Her father was also clean shaven for the occasion.

"Well aren't you the savvy little business woman." Otto chuckled before glancing at his boss, who was visibly nervous at the prospect of meeting with a wealthy merchant. While Otto had been a merchant, he was from the lower traveling variety, whereas the man they were meeting today was from a higher social class than the poor city guardsman. "Don't worry about it. With what you got, Benno won't be a jerk."

"R…Right." Gunther nodded his head, looking at the small bucket that he and Myne had refilled with the ink they made, a damp cloth over it to stop the mixture from drying out.

The bucket had taken two Earth Day's to produce and was supposed to be worth two large Gold coins, or 2,000,000 small copper coins. An absolutely shocking amount of money to a poor peasant family, the equivalent of multiple years of Myne's parent's salaries.

It had been hard labor to produce it that quickly, but every time Gunther was getting sore, Myne would give him a shoulder rub and sneakily break down the built up lactic acids to make him feel as good as new, as well as repairing and boosting his muscles a little.

Gunther believed it was the power of his daughter's love giving him superhuman strength.

"Ah, there he is now. Hey, Benno! Over here!" Otto called out, getting the attention of a man in a coat that looked too expensive for the outer edge of the commoner's district.

Benno was a man of normal height and built for a member of the working class, despite his money, and had wheat colored hair and red eyes that almost made the Rin in Myne prepare for the worst. He had an annoyed look on his face that made Myne pretty sure that Otto hadn't actually told the man what he was there for, and his first words confirmed it.

"This had better be good, Otto." He said in a tone that made Myne wonder what kind of relationship existed between the pair, as Otto didn't have the status to force Benno to show up, and Benno didn't seem to like Otto much, but he showed up anyways.

"Don't worry Benno, this will be well worth your time." Otto said, slapping Gunther on the back, trying to push him forward, but not moving Myne's muscular father even an inch.

"I… Um… Look." Gunther said, showing the bucket to Benno.

Benno looks at him a little before peeling off the corner of the cloth to see what is inside. "...Alright. What is it? Because it just looks like ink."

"It is ink." Otto said.

"You called me all the way here to try to sell me ink?" Benno said in disbelief before looking down at the ink again. "I suppose I could buy some, but this is way too much. No one needs this much ink."

Gunther looks a little downcast at this, but Myne quickly steps in, metaphorically speaking, calling out from her position in Gunther's other arm.

"I'm sorry Mr. Benno, but I think you misunderstand." Myne said, getting the man's attention. "The ink we brought today is merely a gift."

"Myne?" Gunther said, shocked by his daughter's words, but she kept moving forward.

"What we are proposing on selling isn't the ink itself, but the production method for creating it." Myne said, causing Benno to raise an eyebrow. "What would you say if I told you that this ink you see here is just what my father could make by himself during two Earth's Days, with ingredients you can get in the market for a few measly coppers?"

"...I'd say you are trying to con me. Or I would, if Otto wasn't involved." Benno said, glancing at the former traveling merchant. "Is she for real?"

"Seems that way." Otto replied with a shrug.

"If you are afraid of us trying to trick you, then we won't discuss an upfront payment. If our production method doesn't produce results, you will have lost nothing and gained a bucket of ink worth two large gold coins. But if it turns out that what we tell you has value, we get a cut of the profits." Myne said with a playful smile that gave Benno the feeling he was dealing with a high class noble, rather than a little girl from the slums.

"And what makes you think I wouldn't just take the ink and leave?" Benno asked the girl.

"If you did, then you weren't worth working with in the first place. Only a fool would value a few gold coins over information that could make them hundreds." Myne replied with that same playful smile.

A smile started to curl on his lips. "Alright. I'll bite. Let's go back to my office and we can work out a contract."

In the beginning, Benno attempted to work with Gunther, before realizing that the guardsman didn't have an understanding of negotiations, and REALLY trying to have him be the one to lead things. Luckily, Myne took complete control and guided the resolution to the formation of the contract.

She was surprised when the merchant brought out a 'magic contract' but her surprise didn't show on her face. It was the first bit of magic that Myne ever came across, and her parents never really mentioned it either. Or maybe they had and she was just too consumed by her sickness to have heard.

Strange thing was, the magic contract wasn't all that magical. Upon being completed, it would catch fire and its contents would be transported somewhere else, but that was it. It didn't directly do anything.

After a few questions, Myne found out that the contract would only work within the boundaries of the city, clueing her in on the fact that the city was contained within one massive bounded field, with a corner stone located somewhere within it that the Archduke had access to.

Interesting.

The contract merely stated that Myne would hand over the production method and that Benno would have complete control over who got to make ink using it, in exchange for 25% of all profits made to be granted to Myne. Another thing that surprised Benno, figuring that it would have gone to her father instead, but no, Gunther insisted that it was Myne's idea so it was Myne's money.

Not that she didn't plan on sharing a bit of the love.

"Having to use the ink we had made as a gift is an unfortunate set back, but the materials required to create the ink are easy to gather and Benno's business should be able to establish a workshop and find buyers quickly. This should soon give us a passive income of around a few small gold coins a week." Myne said happily as her father carried her back towards their little apartment room at the edge of town.

"You… sure are good at this." Gunther said, looking at his daughter with confusion written all over his face.

"Is that a bad thing?" Myne asked, looking up at her father with a concerned face that she knew would make him back peddle and assure her that everything was alright.

She felt a little guilty for manipulating him like this, but she didn't want to share the source of her knowledge and skills with him. She loved him deeply, but information was dangerous. She'd taken enough risks that day with Benno.

Gunther smiled down at her. "No. I'm just glad you have been having fun."

Myne didn't say anything. She just leaned into him and hugged him tight.

When they got home, Gunther would find a damp patch on his coat.

For however long it lasted, Myne would cherish the family she had.

Note that things move a lot faster.

She is meeting Benno an entire year earlier and never so much as spoke to Lutz.