The light of the teleportation array slowly faded within the main laboratory of the Purgatory Sulfur Plane.
Familiar elemental fluctuations, mingled with the faint sandalwood scent of the Incense Divinity Path, flooded into his nostrils.
Cold blue illumination still spread steadily across the workstations and array displays, casting the entire laboratory in a somewhat chilly light.
Benjamin stepped out of the teleportation array and raised a hand to roll his neck.
His joints cracked softly, and only then did his body, stretched taut to its limit, gradually loosen from deep within his muscles and bones.
As for the Octopus-folk captives and the intelligence on the coordinates of the Multi-Race Alliance outposts, Viola was still searching for suitable buyers.
She could certainly package it all up and sell it directly to the Star Ring Federation military for a considerable sum of Military Merit, but she clearly had no intention of making such a hasty sale. Rare intelligence was something to shop around with; compare enough buyers, and she could always squeeze out a few more shares of profit.
Benjamin had no objection to that.
In any case, the portion due to him had long since been agreed upon.
He had already received the reward of five billion low-grade Military Merit in advance. As for what price Viola could sell the information for later, that depended on her ability. Before parting, they had also agreed that once she found a buyer, she could simply transfer his share directly to his Magic Network Terminal.
As soon as Benjamin returned, he first went to the cultivation area beside the laboratory.
The environmental parameters in that separate cultivation chamber had already been adjusted according to the conditions of Viola's plane.
Stellar lighting with a pale violet spectrum, relatively high air humidity, weakly acidic soil rich