The metal panels of the underground laboratory steadily cast a pearly white glow.
Benjamin stood before the workbench, a half-dismantled Sealed Rune Slate spread out before him.
The slate was silver-gray, its surface etched with dense, fine grooves. Pale-blue rune powder remained within them.
His fingers slowly traced the grooves, their tips coated in a membrane of spiritual force formed through Alchemy, which analyzed the slate's structure layer by layer through touch.
This was what he had been doing for the past half month.
His research into the Shadow Thief had already reached a temporary conclusion.
What Benjamin was studying now was the Hazard Level aberration he had purchased at the auction, sealed inside a metal box.
As for the Shadow Thief, Benjamin had studied it inside out countless times over the past half month.
Its energy structure, its mechanism for devouring shadows, the way it connected to its host on the level of life itself—even its "dormancy" cycles while sealed—had all been repeatedly dissected with the All-Purpose Eye and Fate System, then documented.
The results were naturally quite substantial.
To the left of his work area, new Glimmer Eyes were slowly growing in nutrient solution inside a row of Incubators.
As one of the rare aberrations that possessed a physical body of its own, the Shadow Thief offered Benjamin more than merely a subject for researching aberrant power.
Its very structure of existence and energy distribution could serve as a reference for optimizing the Glimmer Eye.
The energy frequency of the second-generation Glimmer Eye had been recalibrated. Not only had its lifespan been greatly extended, but it could now also "coexist" with the aura of most aberrations, reducing the instinctive alarm that made Psychics' hackles rise.
After completing the preliminary examination of the Sealed Rune Slate before him, Benjamin