Ferdinand didn't know whether to mope or be relieved as after two months, his brother finally found some poor fool to be forced to act as Tohsaka's guard knight.
The fact that an Anchducal Candidate was to be guarded by just a single knight, and an apprentice knight at that, a Mednoble who had yet to even graduate from the academy, was a travesty. But it seemed that Sylvester was beyond caring at this point.
He just couldn't find guards that would be willing to go to the Temple.
But the girl just had to be taken out of the public eye for a while.
Her insanity was beyond what they were expecting, with the casual use of magic circles drawn in the air in the middle of hundreds of nobles, demonstrating a level of control over her mana that exceeded that of a full grown adult with a schtoppe. Performing flawless healing magic without the discomfort of the target, which was exceedingly difficult. Reprimanding Wilfried's attendants, who were members of high nobility, ruining the reputation of their houses, in order to protect a girl who had injured Wilfried, and then taking on said girl as her sole retainer of choice, making people question if the attack was being rewarded.
Sylvester had read every report given to him by Justus, and became more worried with each one he read. More worried and more curious.
Angelica, daughter of two castle attendants who worked under Sylvester, the simple minded girl who Tohsaka had taken on as a retainer and the only person she allowed to join her in her secret room, to be present for her experiments and to receive her teachings, had received a massive boon. Within two weeks of training with Tohsaka, she had mastered body strengthening magic to a degree that most thought to be impossible, and easily brought down two Archknights who had recently graduated from the Royal Academy by herself, despite being a Mednoble girl who had yet to go to the Academy.
Ferdinand could only wonder why a child with such an abundance of magical power knew of a method for cutting down mana costs for body strengthening magic in the first place, but that knowledge would have been revolutionary for the Duchy. Only the girl refused to share it with anyone else. Nor did she share the compression method she had taught Angelica, which had caused the girl's mana capacity to suddenly jump.
This in and of itself was not unusual. Secret techniques, training and compression methods, and so on, were usually the secrets of their families. It's just that such knowledge was stuff that the Duchy was currently desperate for to help stabilize after the massive paradigm shift following the Civil War, but Tohsaka wasn't about to share, no matter how much money they offered her, or what concessions they would give.
A total of five hundred large gold coins was offered to her, but she replied by saying that 'the value of knowledge can't be measured in gold', despite it being an entire year's worth of profits she received from the Gilberta Company. It had Sylvester pulling out his hair in frustration.
It wasn't like the girl had all the money she could ever need. Research materials were expensive. The reagents she used went for a few small gold coins a piece, and she used multiple a day. Without selling any of her products like Ferdinand did in his Academy days, her receives were surely running low.
Ferdinand was standing outside the noble gate, waiting for the girl's arrival and wondering how long it would be before she would start to sell her research for funds, when rather than the gate opening to allow for a carriage to enter, a few Highbeasts flew over the wall, accompanied by the strangest thing that Ferdinand had see.
It was made out of the same material as a Highbeast, but its shape was not like anything Ferdinand had ever seen. After all, the idea of a car didn't exist in this world. And behind the windscreen, he could see Tohsaka and another young girl who he assumed was Angelica sitting in comfortable chairs.
"What is that thing supposed to be?" Ferdinand asked Sylvester as the nobles who were escorting the girl to the Temple disembarked from their own Highbeasts.
"That would be your niece's Highbeast." Sylvester chuckled.
"How does it even fly?"
"Who knows."
"...She's even worse than she was before." Ferdinand sighed, while Bezewanst came forward to greet his nephew and discuss what would need to be done to accommodate Tohsaka.
Meanwhile, Rin immediately went towards her Temple Attendants, who had gathered to greet her. "Sister Tohsaka, it is so good to see you back!" Nicola said, as happy as could be.
"Nicola, you mustn't speak out of turn, and it is Lady Tohsaka now." Fran scolded the girl.
Something that Rin ignored.
"Fran, please see that my things are delivered to my quarters. Lizzie, have a summons sent to the Gilberta Company, tell them I wish to see them for dinner tonight. Nicola, take me to the orphanage. I want to see how things are coming along." Rin said, handing out orders to make the two older attendants leave her alone, while she followed Nicola into the Temple and towards the orphanage, along with Angelica and Brigitte, her new bodyguard for while she was at the Temple.
Brigitte was a Mednoble apprentice knight, age 13, with deep red hair pulled back in a ponytail. Her parents had died the previous year and left her elder brother in a bad position as the new head of family despite having just come of age and not having the training needed to oversee the territory. It was something that Brigitte's fiance wanted to take advantage of, causing Brigitte to break off an engagement to a family more powerful than hers.
It had only been a year, but her territory was already thoroughly screwed, with all of the nobles who used to support their family abandoning them, requiring her to 'volunteer' to accompany Rin to the Temple in order to secure enough points with the Aub so that traders would visit their town again to stop them from falling completely.
It was a very pretty story which failed to distract Rin from the fact that Brigitte was a desperate girl who could be easily bought. Not someone to be trusted.
Well, she'd make a good training dummy for Angelica.
"I'm glad to see that you are still well. Has anything noteworthy happened in my absence?" Rin asked her.
"Ah… no, Lady Tohsaka. There hasn't been anything of note that shouldn't have been reported to you already during your time at the castle." Nicola said.
RIn smiled. "Relax, Nicola. Nothing has changed by my adoption. I prefer you to be comfortable instead of all worried like this. Speak to me like you would before."
"Of course, Lady Tohsaka!" Nicola said, brightening up. "Everyone at the orphanage has been doing very well of late. Sisters Aio and Rae have been taken as attendants to Blue Priests, and Sister Jade has returned to the orphanage pregnant, but as per your instructions, she has been allowed to stay."
"I see. Are Aio and Rae doing well? And how are plans for when Sister Jade needs to give birth? Are there still those in the orphanage who know how to act as a midwife?" Rin asked.
"Aio and Rae have taken their new positions in stride, but no. No one at the orphanage knows how to deliver a child." Nicola replied.
"Then I'll need to talk to Benno about finding someone who will be willing to give them a lesson on that." Rin said, not really worried. Even if everyone, nobles and commoners alike, avoided the Temple, a fair sum of money would be able to get a few midwives to come to the Temple and teach the Gray Priestesses how it is done. Rin also had a pretty good understanding of the process. "If I am around when it is time to deliver the baby, I'll do it myself."
"You will?" Brigitte said, more than a little surprised.
"Why not? I have an accurate understanding of the human body and know forms of magic and blessings that would make the processes painless for the woman and safer for the child. Is there anyone better?" Rin said confidently.
"Even so, it is not below my lady's station to be acting out the role of a midwife?" Brigitte said nervously. She might not care too much about it herself, but what would happen if word got out that the Archduke's daughter was helping to deliver babies?
"I have taken on responsibility for the orphanage, and as such, nothing that happens there is below me." Rin said in a voice that said she would not accept any more objections out of the older knight. "Brigitte, I understand you are new here, so let me be blunt with you. While I may pay my respects to my father during public gatherings to let him save face, neither he, nor anyone else, controls me. I do as I please and they can only hope to benefit from my actions. So if you wish for your family's province to receive help, I'm the one you should be trying to gain favor with, not my father."
"Y…Yes." Brigitte said, wondering just what kind of child she had been tasked with guarding.
"Still, there is a chance that I will be out of the Temple when the baby is being born, so a back up plan is definitely necessary." Rin said, already moving back to the previous subject.
"Maybe we can ask Tuuli if she knows anyone who can help." Nicola said, nearly causing Rin to stumble.
"Tuuli?" Rin repeated, fairly sure there was no orphan by that name.
"She's a girl from the Gilberta Company who has been helping everyone at the orphanage learn sewing and embroidery. She's super sweet." Nicola said with a bright smile. "Her father is the city guard who has been guiding the younger children in gathering on his days off. I think she should be at the workshop right now, if you would like to meet her."
"..." Myne didn't respond, as she felt like running forward and that her feet had turned to lead at the same time.
"Sister Tohsaka is back!" One of the orphanage children, a boy named Tori, cheered as Rin entered the orphanage workshop, causing a dozen children to start running towards her.
They stopped as Angelica swiftly moved between them, hand on her hilt. But Rin put a calming hand on the blue haired girl's back. "Don't worry. You don't have to be on guard at the orphanage. It is a tightly knit group, so infiltration is impossible, and no one here would want to harm me." Rin told the girl.
"Understood." Angelica immediately relaxed, her friendly smile returning as she moved to once again stand behind Rin.
"It is nice to see you all again. You are looking a lot healthier." Rin said, making eye contact with Tori in order to hypnotize him into regaining the excitement from moments before.
"Yeah, ever since the workshop opened up, we've all been eating a lot better!" Tori said, his excitement infecting the other children, quickly making them forget Angelica's aggressively defensive actions.
Some of the older Gray Priests and Priestesses were nervous, looking at the two new nobles that were with Rin, but none interfered.
"What took you so long to get back here? You said you were only going to be gone a week, but it's been almost an entire season." Delia demanded.
"Sorry. I wasn't counting on being forcibly adopted by the Archduke. I didn't mean to make you all worry." Rin replied with a smile.
"I… I didn't say I was worried." Delia mumbled as she fiddled with her shoulder length red hair.
"Of course not." Rin chuckled. "So tell me, what has everyone been up to while I was away?"
The dozen children all started to try to talk over each other, wanting to be the first to tell Rin how hard they had been working. Delia was hanging back at first, before joining in the chaos, wanting attention too.
Rin listened to them until a few words caught her attention. "And Tuuli's been teaching us how to use a thread and needle."
"Tuuli…" She said, the name hitting her hard once again.
"Yeah, she's been showing up every now and then to help us learn. It's really hard work too, though none of us have graduated to using the hook yet." Delia said, making various hand motions to indicate the activities she was describing, motions that Rin remembered from when she would spend time sewing with her mother and Tuuli. "Come on. We'll introduce you to her."
Delia and the other children formed around Rin and started to guide her towards the back room before she could think of a way to argue, her two underaged guard knights walking behind them, Brigitte with a puzzled expression while Angelica just smiled to herself.
The door opened to what was once an oversized utility closet, now a separate room for those who wanted a slight bit of quiet, to find Tuuli sitting there with a dozen children, walking them through how to stitch a basic flower pattern into a piece of the workshop's mass produced cloth.
"Right now we are just getting a rough outline so you can stick a few threads here and there, since no one will be able to notice once we fill them…" Tuuli was saying, but stopped when the older children she had been instructing all got up out of their seats, placed down their crafts and all lined up to bow, upon seeing Rin enter.
Tuuli blinked at all of them, puzzled until she turned her head to see Rin standing there, dressed in her blue robes and surrounded by the young children.
"I… Ah…" Tuuli quickly started to scramble to get up and kneel like the gray robes, bowing her head to Rin.
"...No need to stand in ceremony. Just be at ease." Rin said to the entire room, though her eyes were fixated on Tuuli.
She hadn't changed much in the last few months. Maybe she was a little taller, and a little paler. No one got much light during the Winter, but they were far enough into the Spring that she should have seen some as she had gone around.
Had she not been eating properly? No. Ella would have never let Tuuli not eat at least one full plateful. Then it was sleeping. Did her sister have insomnia? She would need to fix this. She'd have to talk to Benno about making sleeping medicine so that Tuuli could get a full night's rest.
"It… It is an honor to meet you, Lady Tohsaka." Tuuli said, her words getting through Rin's thoughts and piercing her heart.
Tohsaka.
For a moment, Rin forgot that she was using that as her given name, due to the fact that nobles usually had longer names and a short name like Rin would seem unusual. It had felt ordinary for her to be called Tohsaka by everyone who didn't know her well, since that would have been the norm back in Japan.
But to hear her own sister call her something so formal… Memories of Sakura, refusing to make eye contact as she addressed Rin in the same kind of formal manner, came unwelcome to her mind.
"I'm sorry. My manners really aren't good enough to meet someone of your status." Tuuli said nervously after a moment of silence.
Rin had to shake herself out of it before she started to blubber, giving Tuuli a smile and adopting a casual stance with one hand on her hip. "Don't sweat it. I've never had problems with the way commoners talk. After two years spent in the company of merchants myself, I find the directness of it familiar." Rin said, letting her tone match a lower city ascent for a moment, shocking Tuuli, before she switched back. "So long as you are not purposely disrespectful, I won't have a problem. I was just wondering how to thank you for assisting at the orphanage while I was gone."
"You don't have to do that!" Tuuli said, embarrassed. "Benno said that teaching can be the best way to learn and sent me here to gain some experience before I became an official apprentice at the Gilberta Company."
"I see. Is he paying you for your efforts?" Rin asked her.
"Ah, well no." Tuuli admitted.
"Classic Benno. He's got you working for him for free. And if you confront him about it now, he will probably claim he was doing it all in order to teach you a lesson about not letting people take advantage of you." Rin chuckled. "I'll talk to him about that when I see him."
"You know Benno?" Tuuli asked, surprised that Benno was on casual terms with a noble.
"I wouldn't have a workshop connected to his company if I wasn't. He's been supporting me with money and unique goods in order to gain a connection among the nobility. Though I doubt he expected anything like what he'd got." Rin explained.
"The Lady Elvira." Tuuli mumbled with a nod of her head.
Wanting to get Rin's favor, and to claim everything she had been starting as part of the Florencia Faction's influence, Elvira, who was the true leader of the faction, had jumped on the Gilberta Company and started to do a lot of business with it. Or so Rin had been led to believe.
"Regardless, thank you again for your assistance, and if you need anything, don't hesitate to ask." Rin said before dismissing herself from the room before she threw herself at her older sister.
An older sister who hadn't recognized her even when she was just a few feet in front of her.
"May this meeting, ordained by the divine guidance of the gods, be blessed by the God of Fire Leidenschaft on this vibrant summer day so that…" Benno said, his head lowered as he knelt before Rin, dressed in his finest clothes and with his wheat blond hair combed back.
Rin looked at the man with a deadpan expression. "Cut the crap, Benno. I get enough of that in the noble district, I don't want to waste half my day talking around the subject with you." Rin said, though she casually performed a silent prayer to the God of Fire and threw the blue sparkles in the man's face. "Take a seat and talk to me normally."
Benno looked over at the shocked Brigitte, Lizzie and Fran before sighing as he took a seat. "I see your recent entry into high society hasn't changed you at all."
"I will behave when it is covenant, but I won't waste time when I don't have to." Rin said as she motioned to Mark to hand her the reports on the various industries. "Anything I should know?" She asked as she read over the progress reports.
"Aub Ehrenfest has declared everything you are involved in as an official Duchy industry. He's trying to order me to expand into a dozen places at once." Benno complained.
"So? Just hire more middle management people then." Rin replied.
"I can't do that, because whoever I hire to set things up is now going to have to speak directly to the nobility. And nobles who are actively trying to pick a fight with us so that they will have an excuse to put us down." Benno explained.
"Who? Who would be dumb enough to purposely go against an order of explanation from the Archduke?" Rin asked, wanting names so that she could make examples of them.
Benno started to list them off, four names in total, three of which were Sylvester's own scholars.
"Great. People who if I confront them can just claim to Father that you are lying and it will be your word against theirs." Rin said, blowing raspberries. "I could crush them anyways, but that will probably result in retaliation. So instead, I'll make you some magic tools that can capture people's conversations. Use them whenever you're talking to these guys and then we can blackmail them into doing what we want if they try to be difficult. Forcibly recruiting nobles is a lot faster than training merchants to deal with them."
"That's… certainly a method." Benno said, taken aback by the casualness that she mentioned blackmailing high ranking members of her father's staff.
Not that it was an idea that wouldn't work. If they had undeniable evidence that they had been working against their lord, their lives and the lives of their entire line were ruined. They wouldn't dare to do anything that would anger Rin while in such a position.
"The next topic of discussion is Illgner. Brigitte, tell us about it." Rin asked the knight straight out of the blue.
"You want to know about Illgner?" Brigitte said, more than a little surprised.
"Yes. Since you are going to work for me, the future of Illgner will be important. After all, it is a place you hold so special to you that you ruined your life in order to protect it." Rin said with a smile.
Brigitte was speechless, though she fundamentally misunderstood Rin's intentions.
Rin wasn't doing this out of the kindness of her heart. By investing in Illgner and gaining complete control over its economy, she could prevent Brigitte from ever rebelling against her. If she remained loyal, Illgner would prosper, if she worked against Rin, her home would be ruined.
Rin was generous, but she was not merciful.
Brigitte told her a bit about her hometown, about how it was a place so backwater that most people still stuck to the bartering system rather than coins, and nobles and commoners mingled like ordinary neighbors, similar to how Rin had acted in the orphanage, at least in Brigitte's opinion.
Sadly, the girl couldn't tell them more about the actual natural resources available there other than that its main industry was lumber. She also couldn't tell Rin about soil ratios or temperature ranges for the climate.
While a Mednoble in status because of her quantity of magic power, Brigitte was a meat head who was skating by at the academy with only acceptable grades and was mostly uneducated by Mednoble standards. She didn't have any sort of mental disability like Angelica, she was just not provided with opportunities to learn. No noble tutors would visit a backwater place like Illgner and she had been unmotivated to seek a scholarly education, not when people praised her for her strong shoulders and arms.
She was more of a power-type fighter than Angelica, and while she certainly had experience swinging her blade around with all her strength behind it, she didn't have Angelica's grace.
"I'll need to head down there myself to check and see what kind of materials we would have to work with, but at the very least, paper would be a possible industry for them." Rin hummed to herself. "Benno, how long would it take to get the equipment for another paper making workshop in order?"
"They aren't complex, so… two or three days." Benno replied.
"Good. Brigitte, send a letter to your brother telling him that we are going to be establishing a workshop in Illgner and wish to perform business negotiations with him. With my Highbeast, we can move immediately once everyone is ready" Rin instructed the knight.
"Yes, Lady Tohsaka." Brigitte said, standing at attention.
"Are you sure about this?" Benno asked Rin. "No offense meant to Lady Brigitte or her territory, but with how out of the way Illgner is, we'd be losing a lot of profits to transport costs. Several days transporting high cost goods between rival Giebes is hard and dangerous work. Teleportation circles are possible, but the expense of using one would cut deep, even to the profit of selling paper."
There were magic circles that could access a teleportation system engraved into the Duchy's foundation, which could be used to move high value goods, but because of the expense of doing it, it was generally not worth the asking price.
They could afford it and still make a profit while paper was a relatively unexplored industry, but that would not last forever.
"You have a point. That is the entire reason Illgner is in the position it is in in the first place." Rin said with a frown, before a sinister smile started to split her face. "So in that case, how about we remove the problem of transport?"
"...What are you planning?" Benno said, smelling money in the air and grinning as well.
"Something expensive. Really expensive. Maybe as much as a ten thousand large gold coin investment, but if we get it running, all the money we have made so far will look like chump change, and whoever controls it will literally control everything." Rin said confidently before turning her attention towards her attendants. "Fran, send a message to the High Priest. Tell him that I want to speak to him and Father about something that will change the course of history. Nicola, I need paper, ink and a map of the Duchy."
It was time for Rin to step out of the little leagues.
She was going to start designing the first functioning railroad system.
I like Angelica as a character, despite her apparent one dimensionality, because she is the polar opposite of Myne, in such a way that she is exactly the same.
Myne was born into a commoner family, has a good deal of intelligence, but that simply didn't matter because she was too weak and uncoordinated to do any of the jobs that are available to a commoner, ultimately resulting in the family that loved her basically giving up on her every producing anything of value and preforming some of the absolute worst micro-aggression as they say that it is okay that she is a cripple and will never be able to do anything with her life.
Meanwhile, Angelica was born a noble and has a good deal of strength and coordination, she can preform any kind of menial task and can sew better than even Tuuli, but she's an idiot, and as such noble society views her as an inherent failure and her own family removed her from the line of succession and had always assumed she was going to fail at life.
Feybeasts won't be that much of a threat to trains.
Despite being magical in nature, most Feybeasts are just odd animals, not super dangerous monsters. A lot of commoners hunt them for food without the need for magic or even proper weapons. They aren't very large or physically powerful, unless they have devoured thousands of other Feybeasts and grown to a massive size, which makes them very obvious.
Without a reason to target the railroad, the odds of damage to it or to the train isn't any higher than with any other animal, specially since the material that is going to be used, the white stone the cities are made of, is harder than steel and magic resistant.