"Is that her?"
"She's the Master of the Shumils, isn't she?"
"That's the Master of Angelica? But she so tiny."
"Did she really read all those books? There is no way."
Rin did her best to ignore the onlookers that had started to gather in the library, as she took the latest documents on ancient practices within the Kingdom from over a thousand years ago and added it to the finished pile before grabbing another one.
Twelve hours, and two hundred books later, and Rin was starting to piece together an idea of what was different between the latest Civil War and those that had happened before.
A difference in the wording of how the ascension of a Zent was described, from 'obtaining' the Grutrissheit to 'receiving'. A difference that Rin had first believed was just caused by a difference in dialect, but turned out to be something more.
In the past, there used to be over a month between the death of a King and the ascension of a new King, when the Grutrissheit was being obtained. In fact, most Civil Wars where the crowned prince had died had used this time as a time to ambush and kill the prince.
More recently however, the Grutrissheit was being received from the previous Zent, getting passed down before his death. This was likely meant to be a method to decrease the fighting that would occur whenever a Zent died, as multiple royals could possess the ability to obtain the Grutrissheit and claim the throne, which caused civil wars to be common back then.
By making it so that the previous Zent chose his successor and no one knew how to obtain the book in any other way, the number of civil wars dramatically decreased.
In fact, it had been several hundred years since the last open conflict over the throne, where they used to have them once every hundred years or so.
Rin needed to figure out when exactly the change had taken place, from earning to inheriting, and what other changes in the royal family had occurred around that time.
Though she had a guess. Her gut instincts told her that she would find that the change in the method of inheritance would coincide with the change in the practice of having royal acting as the Archbishop. That the hidden texts inside of the Archbishop's copy of the scriptures, which she had been wondering about for almost an entire year, would contain hints on how to obtain the Grutrissheit.
"Lady Tohsaka. You need to start thinking about dinner." Lieseleta whispered into Rin's ear.
"Right. Of course." Rin said, closing her current book and standing up. "Weiss, please return these books to where they belong, then assist Professor Solange with her normal duties."
"Yes, Milady." The white rabbit said before getting to work moving the document back to the second archive, Rin topping the golem off on mana before she went, and doing the same for Schwartz on the way out of the library.
On the way back towards the dorms, eyes continued to follow the group, with Rin walking in the front, her chin held high, as if this was nothing out of the ordinary.
It wasn't like she hadn't received similar attention in highschool.
Taiga was less collected, though for different reasons then one would expect. "Why? Why does everyone want a familiar like Elysia and Tabitha? Why not me?" She pouted as she overheard the girls they passed gossiping about Elysia, Tabitha, Schwartz and Weiss and how they all wished that they could be Masters of such cute creatures.
"Don't worry about them. They just have immature tastes and can't appreciate how cool you are." Rin said with a slight smile, seeing her partner's insecurities.
At the orphanage, she was looked up to by many of the younger children as the cool older sister figure, despite her playful nature. But it seemed the nobles preferred cute and beautiful over cool.
Their loss.
"You aren't the one I want to hear that from. Not when you have those puffy cheeks of yours." Taiga said, giving Rin's baby cheeks a poke.
"They… They aren't that puffy." Rin said, trying to stop herself from pouting and making things even worse.
"Master is even more squooshy than Elysia is." Taiga said with a teasing smile, as Rin's face struggled and contorted with the effort of not pouting, looking absolutely adorable.
"Shut up! When I grow up, I'm going to be a cool beauty!" Rin snapped, before remembering they were outside and looking away, her face turning red.
"Not allowed." Taiga said, grabbing Rin from behind and squeezing her softly. "You have to remain my cutesy little Master."
"T…Taiga!" Rin whined, struggling against the cat girl, while Angelica giggled in the most elegant of manners, Lieseleta went glassy eyed over the cuteness and the rest of her guards exchanged looks.
Despite her high and mighty attitude, their Master really was too cute.
"Are you feeling unwell? You usually have a good appetite." Rin said, lightly poking Sylvester's buttons as they sat together at the dinner table.
Sylvester looked up at her before running a hand through his hair. "All of this was so much easier when Ehrenfest was just a backwater place that no one cared about."
"You brought this all upon yourself the moment you decided to adopt me." Rin pointed out.
"I did, and I don't regret it. But that doesn't make it all any less tedious." Sylvester said with a sigh. "Do you think everyone is up to the task?"
"How should I know? I'm a researcher. I don't know anything about attendant work." Rin replied bluntly. "I doubt it really matters. Regardless of what their opinions are of Ehrenfest, you currently have a monopoly over everything that has been created by the Gilberta Company. Unless they want to be left behind, they will need to suck up to you anyways. Honestly, I would focus more on how you are going to clean up the Lower District."
"The Lower District?" Sylvester said, puzzled.
"Of course. The place is filthy. Any noble or merchant who comes to Ehrenfest will see it and think that Ehrenfest has no idea how to maintain itself." Rin stated, having heard from Benno that it was actually unusual for high ranked Duchies to have cities that are as dirty and prone to disease as Ehrenfest's.
"Surely no one would just Ehrenfest based upon the condition of the commoners. The Lower and Noble Districts are kept separate for a reason." One of Sylvester's scholars said. Not a corrupt one that Rin was blackmailing, but incompetent nonetheless.
Honestly, all of Sylvester's retainers were just so bad at their jobs.
"Please keep quiet in front of your betters. You seem so much more intelligent that way." Rin said flatly, causing the man to stutter.
"Tohsaka is right. The Lower District is like the front door of Ehrenfest. Seeing it in such a sloppy state will doubtless look bad for us." Sylvester admitted. "So, how do we clean it up?"
"How should I know? I'm a researcher. I don't know anything about waste disposal." Rin said for a second time, getting a twitch out of Sylvester.
While habitual use of structural analysis and a creative mind was enough to reproduce most common everyday materials and items Rin had interacted with in her old world, Tohsaka Rin had never learned anything about a water treatment plant.
If push came to shove, she could probably design SOMETHING, but honestly, she'd prefer it if other people just did it.
It was going to become a serious problem though with travel
"Why don't you ask the nobles of Ahrensbach how they keep their city's filth under control instead of me." Rin suggested.
"Right… We'll try that." Sylvester said, sounding a bit unwilling.
He had a bad relationship with Georgine, who hadn't exactly left Ehrenfest gracefully before becoming the third Wife of Aub Ahrensbach. She resented him for being born and taking away her position as Aub Ehrenfest from her.
Rin wished they would just get over it. Their pettiness could only be matched by people like Luvia.
"Speaking of things that will need to change, I assume Rihyarda has spoken to you about Wilfried." Rin said casually.
"I wouldn't worry about it. Veronica is looking after him, so at worst he'll end up just like me." Sylvester said.
'...That's pretty bad.' Rin thought, but didn't say out loud. Sylvester turned out to be a fairly good human being, but he was below par as a ruler of men.
"I'm more concerned about his retainers rather than Wilfried himself. He's young, and while he seems to be falling behind Charlotte when it comes to his studies, it isn't to a degree that can't be made up. But his adult retainers are another issue entirely." Rin said, wording it as to not be an attack on Wilfried. "They are lazy and don't do their jobs, and they seem to be giving false reports to you and Veronica so as to not make themselves look bad. I'm terrified to imagine what will happen when Wilfried is Aub and has to depend upon such people. If I was you, I'd dismiss them all and gather a new batch."
"That's a bit of an extreme measure isn't it? Do you know how many families that would be insulting?" Sylvester said.
Actually, she did. Twenty-six of them, about 5% of all Ehrenfest noble families. Most of them Mednobles, but with three Archnoble houses closely connected to the Archduke family mixed in, including Karstedt's family through his second son. It would also be a spit in the eye of Veronica herself who selected most of them in the first place.
"People who can't accomplish a task as simple as watching over a five year old child can't be trusted with the stability of the Duchy." Rin said brutally. "If you would like, I can give you a list of Gray Priests you can temporarily hire as replacements for them."
Jaws dropped in shock at the insulation that commoner priests were more competent than trained nobles.
Sylvester didn't know how to respond to this, but he wasn't given a chance to think of one as the door to their private dining room was thrown violently open, causing Angelica, Brigitte and Taiga to jump to Rin's defense with weapons drawn as Rin herself threw back her chair and prepared to fight with a knife in one hand and a Feystone in the other.
"Good reactions." Hirschur said as she walked into the room, giving Rin's current guards a nod of approval, not even offering a glance towards Sylvester, for home only Karstedt had moved to defend his Lord, with both Karstedt and Sylvester already putting away their schtoppes.
"Hirschur, you can't just enter our private dining room unannounced." Sylvester said in a scolding tone of voice that went completely ignored by the woman as she still focused entirely on Rin.
"So you are the one who is behind all of this." She said. Rin recognized the madness of a researcher long denied their subject in the woman's purple eyes. "Explain it to me. Explain everything."
"Fascinating." Hirschur said as she looked down the high powered microscope that Rin had made, looking at the cell samples she'd had taken from various plants and animals, including two blood samples from humans, one of which was sick with a bacterial based disease. "So the Winter's Crawls is a sickness caused by these incredibly small parasites."
"That appears to be the case. If a form of medicine could be manufactured in order to kill those kinds of parasites without killing the host, it would be of great benefit to prevent some of the plagues that routinely sweep through the common people. Something that is going to become more important as transportation becomes easier. The same principles will also be applicable to livestock and agriculture." Rin said, explaining the relevance to the woman.
Of course, she didn't have a clue how to manufacture an anti-bacterial medicine. She'd never even had one before, or a shot for that matter.
A foreign magic power was as deadly to bacteria and viruses as it was to other forms of life. The reason why nobles in this world rarely got sick, on top of the fact that unlike the commoners, they had things like toliots, took multiple baths a day and used soap. They were not at any real risk of getting sick to begin with.
Only sicknesses that themselves were magical in nature could affect them.
Still, with the amount of money and labor lost by a plague, it was beneficial to the nobility to learn how to stop them.
There were also experiments relating to the nature of light, gravity, mathematical research, and economic theory.
"So, what do you think?" Rin asked, crossing her arms.
"...They are all interesting results, despite not being based upon magic." Hirschur admitted. "But aren't you going to display any of your magic research? Like those 'familiar' or the tools you used to make yourself Schwartz and Weiss's Master?"
Hirschur looked at Rin with eyes full of curiosity. Not just about the subject matter, but as to why Rin was hiding it.
"Absolutely not." Rin said with finality. "I would never do something as irresponsible as sharing my magical research with the masses."
"Why is that?" Hirschur asked with a frown. "Knowledge is something that should be pursued regardless of factions or politics."
"I'll agree with you there, but not regardless of ALL consequences. I'd rather live my life with a relatively clear conscience, thank you." Rin said. "Or do you deny having to shoulder responsibility for the actions of the 'Lord of Evil'."
Hirschur's objection died in her throat and she twitched. "What do you mean by that?"
"What do I mean? What do you think I mean? You trained Ferdinand to create magic tools, did you not? Doesn't that make you partially responsible for the things he did with that knowledge?" Rin said with an air of harsh judgment. "I'm surprised that his behavior didn't bring down the Purge on Ehrenfest's heads. The deaths he caused by selling magic tools meant for war to both sides of the conflict during the Civil War. The underhanded tactics he taught their military leaders certainly escalated the conflict to the point of no return. All the while he became rich off of it."
Hirschur's face puckered up in anger. "He… He was just trying to protect himself from Veronica. He isn't to blame for what they did with the tools and strategies he made."
"If you really believe he wasn't doing anything wrong, then why didn't you join him in making a fortune?" Rin said, hitting the woman where it hurt. "Every villain always has an explanation for why they are the victim, and I honestly don't care what the excuse is. I am not going to make a Lord of Evil."
Hirschur bit her lip at Rin's cruel and rational words.
She hated hearing her star pupil, the prodigal child she had looked after and protected, being treated like a monster. And she knew full well that Ferdinand had started selling his weapons of war in order to pay for her own debts after Veronica slashed her research budget.
It was something that she didn't want him to continue, but after all the attention he had gotten from it went to his head, he just kept selling magic tools to the different military factions and teaching them underhanded tricks to hurt their enemies, not just physically, but spiritually.
Rin was right. Ferdinand had escalated the conflict to the point where none involved were willing to bury the hatchet. But he had only been a child. Hirschur's child. He didn't understand the scope of what he had been doing.
...It was her fault for failing to stop him.
"...Fine then. Show me the rest of the research you are willing to display." Hirschur said, embittered but not ready to give up a chance to gain knowledge.
In the end, research was more important than politics.
It is something that is just glossed over, the amount of damage Ferdinand did to the country by being a war profiteer arming both sides of the conflict.
Ferdinand is the riches made in Ehrenfest because of how many weapons he sold during the Civil War, while he was still at the Academy. Which is frightening to think about. And the fact that Hirschur still has money problems says what she thought about his behavior.
He really does deserve the title of 'Lord of Evil'.