Adam had turned the devil into a magic staff, but he had not restricted it to existing only in staff form; when there was no fighting to be done he still let it go wherever it liked, and so the devil played even more wildly than before. It felt a certain urgency now — with a master like that, its life might part company with it at any moment.
After the devil left, Adam shut himself inside the avatar laboratory.
Expanded many times over, the laboratory's interior had grown enormous. Numbered culture dishes lined both walls, and the eye could scarcely find the end of them; in every dish floated an avatar identical to Adam.
Analysis of the rune group behind the Soul Split spell was essentially complete. Adam had found three key runes within it: with a slight alteration to those three, the spell would split off only threads, with no soul involved at all.
Bang.