Having finished the setup of her temporary workspace, Sarah could finally focus on the fun part of her research!

It wasn't necessarily what most people would consider as fun, but, in her opinion, drawing spell circles had something to it...

She created an ice field in a section of the room to use as a canvas for her spells. Due to the heat she had to constantly channel mana to her arrowheads, but it was still better than the alternatives. Engraving it in the floor directly? Any mistakes and changes would require her to remove the top layer of the floor and start over again. Create the spell with mana? Sure, the souls could hold the unfinished spell, but it was still more mentally taxing than using ice. Also she wasn't fond of looking for hours into her glowing spell circles made from mana. Ice was therefore the logical conclusion and closer to what she had worked with in the past.

Some could have still counted the ice as part of the setup, however as the girl had control over water she used the moment the element froze to already imprint a few parts of the spells she was going to work with. Not the complete spells, as the liquid was still a bit too hard to control for the details, but enough to save her some work later on.

[Your Water affinity has reached Lv 14.]

[You have reached Lv 9.]

Also it helped her in leveling her underused affinity.

Though getting it up to an acceptable level and ready for evolution would be an issue.

An idea came to her mind. Unsure whether it would work, but unwilling to let her affinity level stagnate when there was hope, she added a spell circle to her orrery. It would keep a ring of water afloat and induce a stream into it. Utterly useless, but the required mana was neglectable with the amount of affected water and her abnormal mana regeneration. If it worked, she would have an easy way to increase her affinity level without actually using her mental capacity, and if not she wouldn't lose much either.

[Your Soul Orrery skill has reached Lv 2.]

Well, something seemed to be positively affected by her idea.

Next the mage placed her soul ring on the ice. For one so she wouldn't need to provide all the mana for it herself, but much more as an indicator, whether her experiments could damage a soul or not. It wouldn't be perfect, but without willing test-subjects nearby...

The golems could regenerate, the elementals would melt her ice, the lizards most likely wouldn’t survive in a dismembered state and their guide was still needed.

Connecting the items and different parts of the spell created a giant pattern on the iced floor, but it was necessary to reduce any unexpected interference between different parts of the structure and to allow her to control it more easily from a distance. Running one spell tens of meters away was hard, however having a bunch of them active was on a completely different level. And planting souls into it would give her less control.

At least the girl had already experience in creating giant spell circles, as she used them to gather mana back in her old world. Unfortunately it had been quite annoying to gather the required souls for that specific type of spell back then. Animals either didn't have one or were too weak to be usable. Well, she had enough volunteers, though getting her sister and security to let them live long enough to prepare the spell wasn't always a possibility. Not to mention the issues it created with the authorities, when they weren’t looking in another direction due her family's wealth and influence.

The pattern finished, two souls were extracted from her skill and placed into the center of the spell formation, which would soon press them together under extreme pressure.

Sarah observed them for a few moments to make sure they wouldn't dissipate unexpectedly or were otherwise influenced by her circle, then she distanced herself from her experiment. She would have liked to witness whatever was about to happen personally, but the risks were too great. So the results would have to suffice until it was clear that there were no dangers for her already damaged soul or her soul sense expanded further.

Looking into the eyes of her sister for a few moments, Sera seemed to understand what the scientist wanted to convey. As much as Sarah disliked making decisions based on instinct, she had to acknowledge the results. Also it saved her from a conversation.

A few steps down to the next floor, Sarah placed her souls in front of herself. Then with a thought the mostly dormant spells were activated.

It would have been better if they could have distanced themself further from the experiment and put more of the spatial distortion of the dungeon between them and the experiment. The only thing the scientist could currently think of, which could possibly shield them from potentially dangerous side effects aside from her souls. However it would also increase the burden on her mind and mana to an extent even she couldn't keep up. Yet.

Waiting for a few minutes without anything happening, Sarah returned to the room.

"So what was this all about?" Nia questioned the weird actions of the twins, though the scientist only registered the world, as she was already focused on her spell. If it was some important question Sera would probably answer it. Or not. Sarah didn't care. She had greater things to take care of.

As usually the mana during the cast had destroyed parts of the spell formation. Nothing she wouldn't be able to fix, though before that she had to look for the results. The environment could destroy them, especially with how easily vesselless souls seemed to be affected by it.

Examining the space the two test souls had occupied, it was empty...

Had the environment already claimed the product of her experiment or was there simply nothing left?

Repeating the process with slightly different setups, Sarah reduced her distance from the experiments further and further. Neither the ring nor the souls she used as a shield showed any signs of damage, so she deemed it safe enough.

In the end, now being able to observe the experiment, she came to the conclusion that souls would, when put under enough pressure, quickly dissipate. Maybe a way to prevent too many souls appearing in the same location, though it wouldn't explain where the souls came from. It was also a possibility that they were simply moving through a higher space dimension, however their behavior wasn't right for that, as far as she could judge that.

The result was a bit boring. She wouldn't have to worry about accidentally stuffing too many souls into her orrery as long as she kept them away from her own. Though them simply vanishing also meant that there wasn't really an option to weaponize it or use it as defense.

Out of curiosity the girl also fired two souls against each other, though the result was still the same. Mostly. If their size was different enough the bigger one seemed to only reduce their size. It would be a possible explanation why the spider she fought in the last dungeon survived her attacks, though her missing the shots was also very likely.

She needed some intelligent lifeforms to test it on which could answer some questions afterwards.

Apparently noticing that Sarah had finished her current experiments, her sister came a bit closer.

"Hey, would you mind using your sacrifice thing on the lizard?"

"You still haven't given up on cooking them?" Sarah asked skeptically. "Also there wouldn't be much flesh left, as the environment here has more mana and the remnants of the body would dissipate into black smoke..." She added.

"Eh..." Disappointed by the dismissal Sera still tried to bring her sister to at least try it. "Can't you just try something to prevent it? You did manage to reduce the mana in the environment as we were summoned..." Suddenly remembering the items she had found in the abandoned mansion, with reignited hope she pulled out the crystals as well as the books. "Could those help?"

Going over the loot the scythe wielding girl had placed on the ground, the crystals stood out. More to research for the scientist, though nothing which would help her for the moment. Maybe she could investigate the space crystal, however she doubted it would offer much insight. Why would it, if not even the dungeon managed that.

The books could be interesting, but, as Sarah had expected, they were mostly just randomly picked. Some of them seemed to be written in a code, others were most likely just tables of data, useless without the knowledge of what they represented.

Sighing, she replied. "No, but i guess i can look into the sacrifice skill anyway. If i could make it into a spell... Anyway, don't get your hopes up."

"Thanks sis!"