The bodyguard, who had been in the background until now, reached out and looked at the pyramid. Then, seemingly satisfied with whatever he saw, the man deemed it harmless and handed the item over to his boss, where another examination followed.

[Stasis Skill Crystal

Quality: excellent

Effects: Entities who channel their mana into the crystal are able to learn Stasis skill. (Freezes their body to stop a number of status conditions.)

Description:

An ice crystal which is rather heat resistant. Yet its true value lies in the spell circle in its center. Created by a genius, it grants its users the Stasis skill. Excessive use might destroy the otherwise surprisingly resilient crystal.

]

That or something similar was likely what the two men were reading. It had taken her quite a while to get the description just right, even with her perfection skill and massive amounts of mana. But she couldn't have everyone figure out the secrets of the item. Having souls mentioned in the text would have likely caused a lot of questions.

"That is one interesting item, i have to say! And you are willing to simply part with it?" The merchant finally asked.

"Yes... While we have money, using that much just to gain workforce is a bit excessive. But trading for it with this, which is already useless for us, as you surely know by now, would be much better. Also we wouldn't need to worry about guilds getting annoyed that we sold it to their competition." Sera explained.

"I see, i see... Well, i don't s-" "Boss!" The bodyguard tried to interrupt, but was quickly shut down by the owner, who was still focused on the pyramid. "Not now! Anyway, i also wouldn't mind the trade." Even if he didn't have the greed skill, it was clear that he wanted the item. It didn't happen every day that items which granted skills were found. Especially not those, which could be used repeatedly and had life-saving skills in them, regardless whether the skills were only effective in quite specific circumstances or not.

Placing the item back on the table, he quickly pulled out some prepared contracts and handed them off to the other party to double check them.

Yet the moment he was about to lean back and celebrate the for him advantageous deal, he noticed that his hands seemed stiff. Trying to move the fingers, didn't appear to work. No, it was actually making it worse?! But, before he could question the weird feeling, the stiffness had already spread even further.

Confused over the situation he looked over to the girls. Yet the three seemed to be still reading the contract. No spell circle could be seen and they didn't seem to be affected. So he turned to his bodyguard.

Or the ice statue of his trusted aid, forever frozen in a pose about to attack the girls his boss was just negotiating with. Spooked by the sudden turn of events, the owner nearly jumped out of his seat, yet his legs had already stopped to listen to him.

"Hm... About a minute, if no skills are used. Way to slow. Though i guess it was pretty hard to detect, if not even a trader in the underworld noticed the trap. And once it becomes noticeable a skill use would accelerate it." Sarah noted.

"What?" Was the only and last word he got out of his slowly freezing body.

"Oh, don't worry about it. Just insurance." The scientist had stopped seeing him as a human being and just another guinea pig for her experiments. A normal scientist would likely record the process or at least make notes, but for her with her memory such equipment wasn't necessary. So she simply watched.

The true function of the item had finally shown its effect.

But calling it the function of the pyramid was also wrong. The pyramid did exactly what had been written in the description and the stasis skill, while she would evaluate it as a trash tier skill, was also completely functional.

No, what currently happened was caused by another item, one hidden behind the spell circles in the ice crystal. Exploiting the fact that bags didn't display their content in their descriptions and ominous stuck swords triggering traps didn't warn their would-be-victims about the danger, she disguised her trap as a coveted item.

Three rather time consuming steps, as she had to come up with a trap, a cover and then fuse everything together without people getting suspicious. But, she did have a lot of time while the other two girls were slaughtering their way through the realms.

Though she didn't create the pyramid just to pass time. It was her attempt at finding a way to use large-scale spells without causing wars or at least which let her get away, before she got involved in any fights.

Not using such rituals was also an option, but spells affecting a large area or those having a big impact on the realm were the best ways to level her class until now and she wanted to advance preferably fast.

So, the scientist needed a way to either reduce the mana required, the time required to collect the mana or prevent Eas from forcefully starting a war before she finished her preparations.

Getting to influence the last was unlikely. She knew too little about Eas and those who might have information about it, if they even existed, would likely not just share it with her. If she caused more wars, she might be able to come to some conclusions, but she would prefer, if that didn't happen. Each war was an unnecessary risk.

Her ability to regenerate mana would also increase over time, with the addition of more souls to her orrery and higher levels in her mana acquisition skills, but she didn't want to wait that long. Creating additional skills and tools to gather mana might be possible, but even her current inventions had taken a lot of time to create and were already using all her knowledge in regard to souls and mana. Unless she had some breakthrough, she doubted she could advance this area.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Therefore she had to find a way to reduce the mana required. Maybe something similar to what she did with the barrier against the spider in their first dungeon. But then she would need some pre-existing spell, which she could hijack.

If mana wasn't that aggressive and destroyed small objects, exploring some of the microorganisms living in the realm might have also offered solutions. Their ability to quickly replicate would have made for an interesting attack vector. But unfortunately there were none. No one got ill, food didn't spoil, dead stuff simply dissipated. Mushrooms did apparently exist, but they were closer to their living variants often found in games and fiction than what they had been in Sarah's old world without giant underground mycelium networks.

It was depressing.

But she moved on.

Discarding approach after approach, she was looking for some common part in most spell circles, which she could use to take over most spells, when inspiration struck. Unfortunately not for some common part among all spell circles, but weren't skills just spells inside the body? Wasn't mana in the body basically constantly on the move, more or less focused depending on the amount and quality of self enhancement skills one possessed? Wouldn't a flow of mana be enough to sustain a spell? Nothing big, just some self-replicating minor debuff?

The short answer was however that it was impossible. Like with her sacrifice attempts, it was hard to get her own mana into some other still living entity. Healing and similar affinities likely had ways around it, but she still didn't have a healer yet.

But what if she didn't try to inject her mana and spell in the other party and let them do it on their own? What if she exploited common actions to let the others infect themselves?

Like a mana-based virus.

And a lot of trials and errors later, she managed to create a prototype.

[Diamond Dust Virus Source Prototype VI

Quality: excellent

Effects: Entities who interact with this item will get infected by a bio-magical virus which then slowly freezes their body. This effect isn't restricted by temperature or body composition. Frozen entities will become sources themselves.

Description:

This densely inscribed gold-silver sphere is the vile creation of a genius from another world. Combining magical and biological knowledge to create a virus on mana basis, this unleashes an unseen terror to the Realms. While it has currently still a lot of weak points, its creator is also still trying to improve it.

]

The noted weak points were issues she had to still fix.

It wouldn't work on those with too little mana, because it couldn't propagate.

It would work on those with too much mana, but take forever to spread through the body.

Had one already encountered her virus or something similar, they could simply stop their mana flow for a few seconds. Not the best option in combat as it would also hinder all other skills, but an option nonetheless.

Was the infected person desperate, they could even just sever their infected limbs and later reattach them, once the virus had been purged.

A lot of work was still to be done, but regardless, the prototype could already be tested.

And the prototype was currently sealed in the pyramid the unsuspecting merchant had willingly touched.

Then only another statue was left of the man.

But the two frozen statues were also problematic, as they did technically still qualify as being alive. Therefore she quickly broke them down with now more visible magic. Silent, but visible magic, she should add. There was no need to alarm the clerk outside of the room.

Next she quickly went over the prepared contracts and changed a few of the clauses. The ones already written weren't bad, but she still preferred some of the wordings from her old world and the deniability that she never forced a contract onto another being.

The updates done and the rest of the now unnecessary contracts stored for later use, she then turned to her soon-to-be new property. "So... it would be nice if you could sign those contracts." Just a wish. No compulsion and no thread, yet with the current situation, one could easily jump to conclusions.

And the two girls did. Throwing a glance at the pitiful remnants of the now quickly dissipating statues, they decided that the contract would be the better end and signed the paper.

"Good. From now on, some stranger had killed the bodyguard while the owner brought you here. Then, noticing the dead body as he came back, he was about to flee, but fortunately got stopped at the last moment. You then informed the others who had been held here that the owner died and that they are now free, which resulted in them looting and destroying the whole building. Later while walking away from the slum, alone and just with your friend here, you two happen to meet us and decide to join our party.

Hm... That sounds plausible enough. So you can go and do your informing and looting." Sarah instructed her new party members about the "truth".

Nodding, the girls then quickly left, clearly not quite comfortable in the presence of their new master.

The mage would have preferred it, if her sister could have handled the explanations, but getting Sera to properly include all the details would have taken too long. So Sarah had to annoyingly handle it herself.

With the two new girls gone for the time being, she returned her attention back to the pyramid, which was still lying innocently on the table. And she noticed that her sister's hand had started creeping closer to it. Again.

"Sis? Stop it!"

"Yes!"

"Your insanity doesn’t make you immune to its effect."

"Then why don't you make me immune, like yourself?"

"Because everything is still a prototype, as i've told you already 9 times."

She quickly picked the item back up, before an accident happened, but didn't store it away immediately. An additional test couldn't hurt. More data points were important. And they needed to get rid of the clerk anyway. The less witnesses the better.

One unlucky employee would soon have his best, worst and last few minutes of his life.