Cain pondered ways to convert other's mana into his own while using SRI to teleport the inmate's heart back into his body. He selected another inmate from the tag database and performed the same actions as before to create a mana model of the subject's heart.
Cain shifted the portal that monitored the dead inmate to the one whose heart laid before him. He refrained from teleporting the subject's heart in front of himself since he needed to see the effects of his experiments with their hearts still in their bodies.
Cain directed the mana within the inmate's tag, Subject 2 for convenience's sake, to convert some natural mana then directed it into Subject 2's body. Cain's mana surrounded a portion of Subject 2's mana with a ratio of 2:1.
Cain's mana pounced onto Subject 2's, ferociously converting it into his own. As the battle took place, the rest of Subject 2's mana attempted to aid the surrounded portion. Yet, nothing could be done as the magic cuffs stopped them from moving even a millimeter. Subject 2 convulsed slightly, his body was forced to bear the burden of his mana attempting to bulldoze through the cuff's restraint.
The battle of mana lasted for a few seconds; Subject 2's mana calmed down afterwards, no longer able to detect Cain's disguised mana. Cain took note of this experiment then continued to try various ratios of mana, starting from 1:10 to 3:1, Cain's mana to Subject 2's mana. (Note: 1:10 can also be read as 0.1 of Cain's mana for every 1 of Subject 2's mana)
These tests took a few minutes as Cain changed the ratio by increasing his mana by 0.1 after every test (1:10, 1:9… 1:1, 11:10, etc. or 0.1:1, 0.111111111:1… 1:1, 1.1:1, etc.). Each test contained 10 units of Cain's mana, regardless of the ratio. The next series of experiments were all conducted with a ratio of 1:1 with various amounts of mana involved.
The first test started at 10 units of Cain's mana, then increased by 10 up to 100. After the 100 mark, it increased by 100 up to 1000, and so on and so forth up to 30,000; at which point Cain had consumed roughly 110,000 mana. This was roughly the amount of mana Cain perceived around Subject 2's heart. By the end of Cain's experiments, Subject 2's body perished due to the burden of the conflict between his mana and the cuff's nullifying force.
'There doesn't seem to be any burden on my soul at all…' Cain thought while analyzing his state of mind. He dismissed all materials related to Subject 2 then swapped the view of the portal, and the heart mana model to Subject 3. Subject 3 had around 150,000 mana around his heart, on the verge of breaking through to the 5th circle.
Cain performed the same round of experiments with 10 units of mana and a varying ratio. He started from 1:10 and slowly decreased it until it hit 3:1000. In other words, Cain's mana consisted of 10% of the target mana and decreased until 0.3% in increments of 0.1%. He stopped here because he felt a slight pain within his soul.
Cain then created another set of monitoring portals and model hearts targeting a new subject, Subject 4. Subject 4 had roughly 95,000 mana around their heart. Cain performed the same tests as before, this time starting at 0.3% and decreasing each test by 0.01%. Cain felt pain within his soul around 0.21% and stopped immediately.
—Dms: Cain and Bob— (3ms)
Cain: How much is my soul power rn?
Bob: roughly 44.83 million.
Cain: Well dang.
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Cain stopped the operations on one of the processing magic circles that were still running. He divided Subject 3 and 4's mana count by his soul power. He opened the operations folder and discovered the output to be roughly the percentage he stopped at. Thus Cain moved on to convert 10,000 of Subject 3's and Subject 4's mana with a factor of 0.0031 and 0.0022 respectively.
Once the operation was completed, Cain analyzed his mental state and found no damage to his soul. Thus he converted the rest of the two subject's mana to his own using the same factors. Cain examined his state of mind once more and the effects on the subjects' bodies.
Surprisingly, the burden on their body decreased as Cain's mana increased. He conducted a few more rounds of experiments on Subject 5 and 6. He discovered that the least amount of strain their body experienced occurred when the ratio was 1:1 and did not decrease no matter how far the ratio skewed into Cain's favor.
Cain hypothesized this occurred due to the minimal movement that took place during the mana battles. The less movement the subject's mana experienced, the less strain the subject's body went through from the mana traveling through pathways that did not exist to fight off Cain's mana. Cain tested this hypothesis on Subjects 7, 8, and 9, confirming it to be true. [1]
Out of curiosity, Cain looked through the tags to see how many death row inmates remained untouched by his experiments. Only 3 existed, so he decided to put the rest of his experiments on hold and focus on his original purpose: studying the anatomy of the human heart and increasing his proficiency in healing it. Although Subjects 5 through 9 were still alive, they were in no state to receive more stress on their body.
While he was on his short break, Cain checked the time and realized two and half hours had passed. "Victoria, how much longer until Jacob is healed?" He asked when he realized they should be done around now. "Jacob can fight right now, but I really don't recommend it. It'll only worsen the injury and it'll be harder to heal later." Victoria stopped regenerating her mana to reply.
"How much longer until it's completely healed?" Cain asked while glancing at Veronica and Jared. They were still completely focused on their cultivation, paying no mind to what occurred around them. "About 2 more hours…" Victoria responded meekly, aware of how long they had to make Cain wait already. At this rate, they won't be able to explore anything and will need to come back tomorrow.
"That's fine, I need to simulate some spells anyways." Cain replied while swapping his materials to that of Subject 10's; including teleporting her heart into the disguised cube. "Is… that why you've been staring off into space and looking at that portal this entire time?" Victoria asked warily. Curious, yet aware that prying into one's secrets of spell creation was similar to asking them to hand over their family heirlooms for free. Cain noticed her caution and replied with a short "Yep," satisfying her curiosity while also keeping her from awkwardly asking more.
'Huh… is my subject a female this time? Their heart seems to be smaller.' Cain looked through the portal to see a female inmate scratching at the walls with a sharpened utensil. 'Sus… pretty sure she's not supposed to have that. Anyways…' Cain dismissed the legality of the subject's actions and prepared to convert all of the subject's mana into his own at once.
Cain fed his mana throughout Subject 10's body, swiftly avoiding their mana to prevent starting the confrontation earlier than planned. Only a miniscule part of Subject 10's total mana was frozen inside their body by the cuffs; most of it being around their heart. Once Cain's mana positioned itself accordingly, he enacted the operation.
Subject 10 coughed vehemently, some blood spurting up with each cough. Due to the effects of the cuffs, Subject 10 was unable to notice anything wrong with their mana since they could not interact with it. Subject 10 spit out a mouthful of blood then continued on as if nothing happened.
Cain led his mana outside Subject 10's body upon the successful operation. The mana around Subject 10's heart simply left the disguised zone. Cain rotated the subject's heart until the left ventricle laid on his right. In other words, the heart laid before Cain just as it would have if it were within the subject's body and they were face to face with Cain.
Cain grabbed some adult stem cells from Subject 10's bone marrow then ordered SRI to teleport them onto a freshly created petri dish within the disguised space. Cain directed the stem cells to reproduce en mass with the aid of the natural mana fed by his mana. With a stable supply of the subject's stem cells, Cain began his experimentation of damaging and repairing the heart.
Over the next two hours, Cain cut, tore, burned, slashed, issued a blunt force, and punched through many different parts of the subject's heart. After each action, he healed it to the best of his abilities using the stem cells put aside earlier and his mana, then had Dresil check his work. Each action was simulated with his mana on the arteries, blood vessels, muscles, tissues, and valves.
He had to switch subjects two times; the previous two's hearts gave out due to the repeated stress. By the end of his experimentation, Cain was now able to completely heal a human heart, no matter the gender or the damage received. Theoretically, that is.
Since all of his experiments were done on the heart, outside of the subject's body, he had no experience in managing the blood flow while healing the heart. These experiences were categorized under the veins/blood management stated earlier and thus required a live subject before Cain. Live, not only as in alive, but also present a meter or so before Cain. [2]
He dismissed the disguised zone and everything within; teleporting the subject's heart back into their body and turning everything else into mana. "What do you guys plan to do now? We can either explore the ruins or call it a night." Cain asked Victoria, who had just finished completely healing Jacob.
"I think it's best if we call it a night… Sorry." Victoria meekly stated, fully aware they just made Cain wait for half a day only to start again tomorrow. "No worries. What should we do about these two?" Cain gestured to Veronica and Jared with each of his hands. "We can just leave them be. They can cultivate for roughly 10 more hours before they need to take a break." Jacob stated while grabbing his and Victoria's dinner.
"Can you secure our surroundings? Jacob and I are thinking about taking this time to cultivate as well." Cain nodded then surrounded their little huddle around the campfire in a box of portals, similar to the doorway portal. The only difference about this cube is that it notified Cain when something passed through.
Dresil deposited more food on the mats laid out earlier for Cain's dinner. He ate leisurely while observing everyone gathering techniques; all functions of his eyes enabled. He noticed that Jacob's 5th circle changed and shifted, becoming more vibrant by each passing second.
'Hmm… makes sense since I just made a general 5th circle because I didn't know what I was doing. Had to mash together everyone's circle and make some assumptions.' Cain concluded while eating a few skewers. From what he could see, it appeared as if Jacob's gathering technique fine tuned his 5th circle to suit the cultivation.
The adventurers used the mana gathering technique to gather natural mana and annex into their own; tempering the muscles, veins, and bones it flowed by. Their cultivation techniques described how the extra mana should be stored around their heart and how their next circle should be created.
In Jacob's case, because he was given the 5th circle by Cain, his soul power, veins, muscles, and bones were not up to par. Remember, the people on Ouroboros increase their soul power unknowingly by trying to increase their magic circle count. The amount of soul power depicts how much mana they can control.
Anyways, because of this gap, Jacob was more akin to a pseudo 5th circle tank, rather than a proper 5th circle. Cain noted how everyone's cultivation and gathering techniques worked, along with the improvements done to Jacob's 5th circle by his techniques.
He added the following experiments to the "To-do list" within the digital storage:
"Increase the magic circle count of the party, increase the soul power w/o the subject's influence, temper the muscles, veins, and bones of the subject with mana, and read through, improve, and create cultivation and gathering techniques. Note: The last one is to confirm my understanding, destroy the manuals after they have been confirmed to work."
He reached out to grab another skewer, but his hand chanced upon a loaf of bread instead. Unfortunately it had been out too long and became a little hard. Cain picked apart the parts that were still soft and ate them while ordering SRI to deposit some skewers near Sinclair. The wooden stick evaporated into mana as it fell onto a leaf mat prepared by Dresil's clone.
Cain observed the party's techniques for about one more hour while taking notes and storing them in the digital storage. Once he completed the notes, he stood up and stretched his muscles, occasionally walking around the small cube that extended a few meters beyond Jacob's back. Dresil took this opportunity to make Cain's bed.
Cain laid in the soft sleeping bag like setup Dresil made when he came back, establishing the sound-proof magic circles around his ears. Dresil put a leaf over Cain's eyes and thus the boi drifted off to sleep 30 mins later.
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These footnotes just sum up their respective areas for those who skimmed through the details.
1. Cain can now convert someone's mana into his own, although the burden on their body is still pretty violent.
2. Cain can completely heal any human heart regardless of damage, but he has little experience on controlling the blood flow of the body during this process. Complications can still arise because of this.
You shouldn't skim the things about the gathering techniques and such; basically everything from [2] down. I can't really sum it up w/o skipping details that come up later or copying and pasting it.