"Everything is ready." Rin said, smiling to herself as she completed the magic circles in an old abandoned hunting cabin far away from civilization.
It had been a little more than a month since the Summer Baptism, and Rin had completed all of the preparations she had needed to make for the railroad. And with just Benno's work overseeing the construction of the actual train left, Rin had plenty of free time for her own research, and lots of magic power to spare for it.
Which brought her to her current situation as she and Angelica stood alone in the middle of nowhere, to make sure that nothing that Rin was about to do would be picked up by the damned Fake Priest, or cause undo damage to people around them.
"Angelica, could you move the zantze into the magic circle?" Rin asked as she got up from the ground and dusted herself off.
"Of course." Angelica said, picking up the caged Feybeast and placing it into the center of the circle.
The zantze meowed cutely as it stared in confusion, turning its head around several times as it looked for a way out of the cage.
Zantzes were not particularly dangerous Feybeasts that were basically just normal house cats, with both the appearance and effective strength of a fuzzy little kitten with sandy colored fur. And so long as they were not fed an extraordinary amount of magic power, they were one of the weakest Feybeast in existence, no different from an ordinary animal.
Rin felt a little guilty about experimenting on something so cute and harmless, but most weaker Feybeast were actually pretty harmless and looked cute, almost like it was a defensive evolutionary trait. And if everything went well, the little guy wasn't going to die. In fact, the objective was NOT to kill it.
Rin had performed lots of tests on Feystones and learned a good deal about them, but those had all been Feystones from beasts that had already been killed, so what about the Feystone of a living creature?
Rin's objective today was to do something that the scholars of this world declared impossible. She was going to dye the zantze's Feystone without killing it, turning it into her familiar. Something that was supposed to be impossible, because when a living thing, especially one with as little magic resistance as a Feybeast, was dyed with the mana of something very dissimilar to itself, it died.
No one had ever successfully dyed a living Feybeast or Feyplant without killing it before, but Rin was pretty confident that all she needed to do was exchange magic energy with the creature, forming a familiar contract, and then she could use that bond to slowly dye it without killing it.
Rin didn't know what was going to happen because of this, since Feybeasts were extremely prone to evolution and mutations when exposed to powerful magic energy. Their entire bodies were basically shaped out of magic power, similar to that of a Servant's, but with a much weaker soul. So if their magic signature was suddenly changed in order to match that of a much more stable being, what would happen to them?
Rin was curious, so she aimed to find out. But there was always the chance that the Feybeast will just turn into a twenty foot tall giant and need to be put down, given how much magic power Rin had.
"Alright. Angelica, stand by outside of the circle. If the zantze goes out of control, cut it down before it can run away." Rin told her guard, who nodded and drew her sword.
Rin took out a needle, containing her own blood, and injected it into the zantze, before drawing some of the Feybeast's blood and injected it into her own arm. Then, Rin took a deep breath and started to chant the incantation while channeling magic power into the circle.
Tendrils of black and white light rippled along the lines of the circle as Rin activated the mystery, using the blood she had put inside of the zantze as an anchor to slowly introduce her magic power into the Feybeast while drawing out its mana to help synchronize it with her own.
The energy passed back and forth between them, becoming a more stable blend of their two essences with each passing until the contract was completed with a giant flash of light that blinded Rin and Angelica.
And when they finally regained their sight, they found a very interesting sight awaiting them.
In the cage where the zantze had been moments ago was now an eight-year-old girl with sandy blond hair, a pair of cat's ears and a long tail, sitting with a pout on her face. She was also completely naked and 'nya'ing like a cat.
"Well… this is an interesting result." Rin said, immediately checking on the Feybeast child's body to make sure all of its vitals were alright. "She seems stable now."
Rin opened the cage and the zantze stopped crying and squirmed her way out of it before looking down at itself confused, though it didn't seem in any hurry to run away like before. It even tried to huddle up to Rin.
"She can sense our familiar contract. So that's good at least." Rin said as she patted the head of the Feybeast as it crawled up to her on all fours and pushed its head into her chest.
"Wow…" Angelica said, her eyes sparkling as she watched Rin interacting with the zantze turned girl. "Can I try it?"
"...Sure. Go and find a weak Feybeast and I'll let you try it too." Rin said, to which Angelica immediately disappeared from sight, rushing through the trees.
Rin watched her go, patting the head of her new odd pet.
"I'm going to need to find you some clothes."
"You aren't looking very well Benno. Are you alright?" Rin asked the Merchant as he came by the orphanage directors office to perform the routine deliveries and pickups.
These didn't strictly speaking need the boss man to personally show up, not since Rin didn't particularly care about the manners of the men sent so long as they didn't do anything violent, but Benno liked to take the chance to check in on her.
Though today, he looked noticeably pale and restless.
"I can't imagine why I would look under the weather. It isn't as if some unreasonable noblewoman told the Archduke that I would be investing my entire fortune into a single project all at once, leaving me no choice but to go through with it." Benno said dryly.
"...Well, I wouldn't say your entire fortune. You didn't have to use any of the workshops as leverage for loans, so even if you lost all that money, you could still have gotten it back." Rin said, not terribly apologetic about it, earning a miserable look out of Benno. "What? You act as if you don't trust me."
"Trust doesn't have anything to do with it. Any merchant would lose sleep over a project this big." Benno said with a sigh.
He had been fine for a while, but they were just days away from the completion of the train, and his anxiety was building up speed.
"Well, I don't want you to die on me on the final stretch. Nicola." Rin said, signaling for the Attendant Gray Priestess to bring something forward and place it on the table in front of Benno.
"What are these?" Benno asked as he reached into the box and pulled out a bottle, one of thirty.
"Potions of healing. The High Priests uses them all the time in place of sleep. While I don't want you to become as addicted to them as he is, using them once or twice a week won't hurt you." Rin said with a smile. "Honestly, if you need to delay the project for the sake of your health, do it. I don't mind."
"For the sake of my health, I need it to just be over." Benno said, looking at the potion with mixed feelings. Likely because he had at least some kind of idea what such a thing was worth.
Not a full understanding mind you, as Rin had stolen the recipe for the Fake Priest's personal stash, which was a good deal better than the normal variety, and then improved on it using some Feyplant fruits that she had gotten as a thank you gift for bringing Spring to the North. Fruits that were considered to be the most valuable fruits in the entire Duchy, to the point that the trees they came from were considered sacred. The crime of stealing from them had a death penalty to it, even for a high rank nobleman.
Benno thought that the bottle was worth around three large silver coins, but it was closer to ten large gold coins. Not that RIn would actually sell it. One bottle could wipe away all physical fatigue and recharge one's magical power to its fullest. The fact that Rin was willingly sharing her stash was a sign that she deeply cared for that idiot Benno, and didn't want him to work himself to death.
They spent a little more time discussing the details of the train cars, which would be completed in the following week, before walking down to the orphanage proper.
The orphanage was noticeably louder than before, with children all over the place playing simple board games together, practicing weaving or getting lessons on painting.
In the middle of it all was Wilma, whose shift it was to watch over the children, and was trying to teach the kids who were interested the basics of art.
Though no sooner had Rin entered the room than one of the 'children' perked up her cat's ears and turned to face her with a bright smile. "Master!" The zartze turned girl shouted happily, running up to Rin with a bright, energetic smile. "Master, look what I made!"
She held up a wooden board with a picture of what looked to be some kind of tree with yellow fruits hanging from it, looking like something drawn by a five-year-old. Though Rin praised the girl anyway. "Good job, Taiga. I'm glad to see you are improving."
Taiga grinned happily.
She had picked up the basics of language quickly, having learned to speak the local tongue after just three weeks, though her mentality was close to that of a young child.
She and Elysia, the eifinte that Angelica took on as a familiar, were both popular among the children of the orphanage.
Eifintes were squirrel-like Feybeasts the size of large cats, with pinkish red fur and a pair of short horns sticking out of their heads. Like zantze, they were weak and harmless Feybeasts. Though once Angelica took the squirrel as a familiar, it had changed into a humanoid shape as well, only keeping its squirrelly tail, ears and the tiny horns.
Elysia had a very sleepy personality and looked like she was nine years old. While she had picked up a few words, she didn't advance as quickly as Taiga due to lack of interest. She mostly just memorized the names of foods and the different children she would occasionally play with.
After seeing them for the first time, the overworked Fake Priest got an aneurysm from pent up frustration at the absurdity, while Leiselita had gone down on her knees and begged to be let to turn one of her shumil pets into a familiar as well.
Taiga had been the first to try to show off her work to Rin, but she was by no means the only one, as a wave of children came, all wanting Rin to praise their efforts, so it was a while before she could talk to Wilma.
"How are the new children doing? Are there any problems?" Rin asked the attendants she had taken on in order to produce art for her picture books.
"There have been no problems at all. I'm actually surprised how well behaved they all are. They act nothing like the Apprentice Blue Priests the Temple usually gets." Wilma reported with a happy smile, not put off at all by Benno being there.
Wilma had androphobia, a fear of men, after having nearly been raped by a Blue Priest while she was still underaged, but Rin had helped her get over it. Not by any sort of slow process of encouraging her to conquer her fears and therapy, but by simple hypnosis, removing the cognitive connection between men and danger.
She would need the occasional reapplication for a little while, but without the constant fear, she could interact with men around the workshop, and gain confidence in herself. Soon, she wouldn't need the light brainwashing in order to face them.
"These kids aren't like the Blue Priests. They were never treated like nobles and were only given enough so that they wouldn't die from anything other than mana sickness." Rin said with a shake of her head. "To them, the orphanage is heaven."
After her talk with the Archduke, Sylvester had openly declared that the Duchy would no longer be overlooking unbaptized children who died from mana intoxication, and that, from then on, if a family was found to have allowed their child to die, they would be severely punished. But they would get out of this responsibility by relinquishing guardianship and sending the child to the orphanage.
Shortly after, the orphanage saw a wave of unbaptized children, ranging from newborns to five year olds, many of the older ones on death's door from the mana that had been building up inside of their bodies.
Rin had expected to get five or six children, which already would have been enough for her proposes and would have one day made a good private task force for her, once properly trained.
Instead, just over a hundred children were sent to the Temple orphanage, and Rin was left in complete shock. How could Ehrenfest even produce this many unwanted noble children?
They outnumbered the normal unbaptized children almost two-to-one, and about 80% of them were boys, which had left the Gray Priests scared, considering how rotten most Blue Priests were, but the children who had been left to die were different, having received no acknowledgement from their families and never once being treated like a noble, or even as a human being.
For these children, getting to live in the orphanage, being allowed to play and make noise, getting to eat three meals a day of good food, and being told that their lives had meaning was like being in paradise. None of them ever complained and they didn't look down on the other children at all.
They did have trauma though, so Rin started a group therapy session for all of them, along with the other pre-baptized children from the orphanage.
This basically always involved crying children hugging either Taiga or Elysia. Which worked out fine, because the two Feybeasts could drain the children's small bits of excess mana, removing the need to buy expensive tools or arranging with the Fake Priest and Corrupt Bishop to let the children interact with the Divine Instruments.
Rin talked to Wilma for a little while longer, Rin moved on to the other person doing teaching in the room.
Tuuli was instructing the new kids on knitting, teaching them the patterns used to make basic flower designs, just like how Myne had once taught her, using the large knitting needles with the hooks.
It gave her a feeling of nostalgia, seeing her older sister dexterously moving her hands while barely looking at what she was doing, already so skilled, despite only just being baptized.
"How are things going over here?" Rin asked, trying to keep her cool.
"Everything is fine." Tuuli said. Her complexion was much better than it had been before her baptism, though she still seemed to have a troubled heart, though the reason know was different. "I was surprised to see so many new children though. Who knew that the nobility had so many orphans." Tuuli said, not fully grasping that these children weren't orphaned by their parents dying, but by their family's abandoning them. "They are all so small." She finished softly.
While several of the children around her were around four or five, they were all as small as three year olds, similar to Rin herself.
"...A stunted growth is a product of difficulties with mana. The ether that accumulates in the body weakens the soul, which leaves the body confused as to how to perform the basic functions needed to grow." Rin explained, sharing her sadness.
"I see. So that's why Myne was always so small." Tuuli mumbled, before looking up at the children, who were staring at her. "My little sister had been born with magic as well. …She died from it last Winter."
The children lowered their heads with sad expressions, all of them knowing how particularly hard the Winter months were when you were overloaded on mana.
"The devouring. That's what they call it when a commoner is born with magic power." Brigitte said, sounding apologetic. "They call it that, because unlike noble children who are born with a small amount of resistance to magical energy, even without the help of magic tools, the commoner children have no defense against it. It is rare that a child with the devouring survives even a single year."
"Well, Myne always was a stubborn girl." Tuuli said with a small smile.
Rin didn't know what to say, and felt a sting of jealousy when Angelica gave Tuuli a comforting head pat, knowing that while no one would find it odd from the air-headed guard knight, she wouldn't be able to do it herself without drawing attention.
"Lady Tohsaka is small too." One of the children pointed out.
"Yes, well. For me, things are a bit more complicated." Rin said with a smile. "Much like you, I am weighed down by mana, but while you will all soon start to grow up at the normal rate, I'm probably going to remain a little on the small side for the rest of my life."
"Huh? Why is that?"
"Because I simply have too much mana. More mana than I can even get rid without hurting myself." Rin replied. Rin pulled back a sleeve to show seven high quality magic tools strapped to her arm, each one glowing to show that it was almost completely full. "When I was adopted, my father gave me a high quality magic tool that should have been able to keep draining an Archducal Candidate's mana for years. It was full to the point of almost breaking in three days. Now I have seven of them that have to be routinely drained."
This was only partially true, but that was because Rin was actively producing more Od, rather than passively like everyone else, and it wasn't hurting her because she was removing the high ether content from her body. The magic tools were really just for storing her power for later use. So that wasn't the reason she was always going to be short.
No, the reason she would be relatively short for her entire life was because of Rin's magic power imprinting on her soul, changing her growth pattern to more closely match the original Rin's. That of a normal Japanese girl.
So in a society where the average woman grew to be 5'8'', she was going to be lucky to see 5'1'', due to her late start.
The fact that most socialite women wore 3-5'' heels, which she personally avoided due to the lack of mobility involved in them, only made things worse. Rin was currently 3'2'' and only came up to Brigitte's waist. Even Angelica, who looked so much like Saber, was already an inch taller than the King of Knights had been while only 10 years old. She'd probably going to continue to tower over Rin in the future.
IT WASN'T FAIR! SHE DIDN'T WANT TO BE TINY!
"Lady Tohsaka, is something wrong?" Tuuli asked, seeing Rin's expression and worried that she was in pain.
"No. Nothing is wrong. Just lamenting the fact that I am going to be the shortest person in the room for my entire life." Rin said with a sigh.
Maybe there was a secret to why all of the nobles in this world were so freakishly huge, and Rin just had to find that secret.
She wouldn't just accept being the short one for the rest of her life.
"Lady Tohsaka." Lizzie said, coming up behind Rin with a wooden plate in her hand, which she immediately recognized as a summons. "Your father has called you back to the castle."
Rin held back a groan, wondering what the Archduke wanted this time.
Funny thing, Myne's height at age 10 was supposed to be 4'1'', which is fairly normal for a 10-year-old Japanese girl, but she is treated as a dwarf by the people around her.
One of her female attendants is 5'3'' at the age of 12 and isn't even considered tall. She also wears heels on top of her normal heigh, something Myne probably didn't wear due to her poor physical health.