The underground laboratory had undergone considerable changes during this time.
A month ago, it had still been nothing more than a damp, gloomy basement built from rough stone bricks.
Mold stains covered the corners of the walls, and the air was thick with the scent of earth and rotting wood. The gas lamps could not illuminate every corner; shadows always lurked beyond sight.
Now, silvery-white metal had replaced those stone bricks, covering every inch of the walls.
It stretched from the floor to the ceiling, its seams fitted so perfectly that the space seemed carved out from a single enormous metal ingot. The metal surface emitted a soft pearly-white glow, steady and even, leaving the entire laboratory without a single shadow.
Walking inside felt like standing beneath shadowless surgical lamps at all times.
Experimental equipment filled the space as well.
Various glass vessels were neatly arranged across a row of long tables against the wall.
Beakers, test tubes, petri dishes, distillation flasks...
They came in all sizes and shapes, yet every one of them was spotless, gleaming with a translucent sheen beneath the pearly-white light.
On the workbench on the other side were various pieces of equipment Benjamin had taken from his Internal Grotto-Heaven.
Several metal cabinets stood in the corners, their doors tightly shut. Inside were various anomaly fragments and sealing materials.
Simple runes had been carved onto the cabinets' surfaces to isolate energy fluctuations and prevent the different samples from interfering with one another.
And the space itself had far surpassed its original size.
When Benjamin renovated this basement, he had used the Space Expansion Technique commonly employed in the Wizard World to "stretch" the existing space larger.
If anyone entered this basement now, they would surely be astonished, because its interior was nearly the size of a