Benjamin woke naturally from a deep sleep, though he had no idea how long he had been out.
He opened his eyes to the familiar rune lines on the laboratory dome. A long-lost feeling of clarity and vigor flowed through him.
The fatigue built up over fifty years and the numbness left by all that killing seemed to have been washed away by this thorough sleep.
He got up and stretched his stiff limbs.
Rather than dive straight into research, he dealt with the work that had piled up.
Through his Magic Network Terminal, he quickly reviewed and answered the messages he had missed over the years. Most were invitations to academic exchanges or routine notices from Noren Academy on the Eloria Plane.
Then he carefully checked the laboratory facilities on the Eloria Plane and used a remote link to confirm that development on the Purgatory Sulfur Plane was proceeding normally. Only then did he finally set his worries aside.
Once the odds and ends were taken care of, he brewed a cup of invigorating spirit-leaf tea.
Sitting at his workbench, he began to take stock of what he had gained from the fifty-year expedition.
First came the material gains—and Benjamin shook his head helplessly.
On the Giant Spirit Realm battlefield, his Great Light Manifestation and the Black Giant had performed brilliantly, and he had discovered that treasury. His haul had been substantial.
Energy crystals, soul crystals, rare materials—they had piled up like mountains.
But the Fungus Lord's uncanny conceptual contamination had turned all of it into bubbles that burst.
To stay alive, he had been forced to abandon every piece of physical loot.
Later, while carrying out the Purification Protocol, he had strictly followed the principle of "destroy, never acquire."
As a result, when it came to resources and