A month later.
Inside the surviving base codenamed "Anvil" in the Northwestern Theater.
Jack hunched over a metal table dug out of the ruins. A thick stack of papers lay spread before him, crammed with formulas and symbols.
He looked as though he had just swallowed a live bug, every feature of his face scrunched up.
"I think you're abusing a prisoner." Jack raised his head and gave Benjamin an aggrieved look.
Benjamin stood with his back to him, gazing across the rolling wasteland beyond the base. He did not turn around. "When did you become a prisoner? Keep working. I want to see how much you've improved lately."
"I've been at it for three hours." Jack jabbed his pen at a diagram of a rune structure. "This stuff is ten times more complicated than the researchers' notes back at our base. Are you sure you're not messing with me?"
"For a wizard, knowledge is power." Benjamin finally turned, a faint smile on his lips. "Weren't you complaining that the system's enhancements came too easily? Now you have a chance to gain power with your own hands, and you don't want it?"
Jack rolled his eyes and bent over the papers again.
He complained, but his pen moved quickly. Benjamin saw that and said nothing more.
Taking over the base had been far simpler than expected.
On the day they arrived, the base was under siege by a horde of creatures from another world that had surged down from the north.
The creatures resembled crocodiles with six legs. Thick bone plates covered their bodies, and each possessed the strength of a Level 5 Transcendent. The surviving defenders had fallen back to their final line, which was on the verge of breaking.
From a distance, Benjamin fired several weakened blasts of