Fake Professor, Misunderstood As Strong - Chapter 159

Chapter 159: The Benevolent Fairy powder… Part-1.
Walking down the narrow path in the cave, Jareth used the glowing mana orb to illuminate the path.

Right now, Jareth and Aria are at least ten kilometers deep underground; oxygen is nearly nonexistent in this place; and the temperature is also very hot.

But for individuals in grades 3 and above level individuals, lack of oxygen and fluctuations in temperature matter very little.

You can just deploy the mana barrier and use mana to forcefully pull oxygen molecules from the air inside the mana barrier.

Even if there is no oxygen outside, they can still manage to survive on mana alone for a day or two.

On the other hand, Grade 1 individuals don’t even need oxygen in the first place; they can just use the mana as their primary source of energy in the body.

Thus eliminating the need for ‘oxygen’ to break down proteins in the cells to form ‘ATP’, you can use mana instead of ‘ATP’ to power your body cells and can eliminate a lot of complex procedures.

Although this is a complicated ability, the mana control of a grade 1 mage is strong enough to accomplish it.

Thus, they have no need to either eat food, drink water, or even breathe; they can survive on mana alone.

This is one of the reasons why grade 1 individuals aren’t even considered proper mortals anymore.

Reaching grade 1 is said to be the very first step to breaking out of your mortal coil.

…

‘If it were me from previous lives, I would have likely never been able to experience this feeling of wandering in random hell holes like this where no one wants to come…’

Only when you are strong will you have the confidence to travel to any and every place in the world.

Embarking on adventures needs confidence, and if you are strong enough yourself, then you won’t need to worry about losing confidence in any situation.

‘This feeling is kind of similar to when I used to raid low-grade dungeons with my max-level character…’

Jareth glanced at Aria, who was shaking from fear of the darkness.

Seeing that she might faint and become a dead weight on his shoulders, Jareth had no choice but to ask random things to distract her mind from the fear.

“Professor Aria… Why did you choose to become a mage? In my opinion, you would have lived a much better life without entering this dog-eat-dog world of selfish mages…”

Hearing Jareth’s question, Aria was taken aback for a second. She thought that Jareth noticed that she was at the end of her wits and was shaking from fear, so he was being sarcastic.

‘Ugh, is he trying to say that I shouldn’t have become a mage in the first place as I lack confidence in myself?…’

If it were any other person, Aria would have definitely glared at them and said that they were being rude for doubting her abilities as a mage.

But since Jareth was the one to ask the question, she dared not talk loudly.

She has no idea what goes on in his head or when he might get angry, so she didn’t take any chances and just told the truth in a calm voice.

“Well… I wanted to become a musician originally, I had interest in music, all of my childhood friends chose to pursue their careers and ambitions, all of them avoided becoming a mage like a plague…”

“My parents had a lot of expectations from me… The younger me didn’t have the courage to say ‘No’ to her parents, so she went along with their wishes and became a mage…”

Aria sighed at her own words and said,

“I wanted to make my parents proud of me… But the younger me didn’t know the harsh truth: in this world, everyone and everything pursues ‘benefits’…”

“There are no eternal relationships, only eternal benefits… My parents were urging me to become a mage from start to finish, all because they wanted me to earn a ton of money for them…”

“It took me a very long time to understand this harsh reality…”

The younger Aria did her best; she trained and trained… Eventually, she became one of the best alchemists in the whole human empire.

She earned tons of money just by filling out one or two commissions from the rich.

But the harsh reality was that all that money that she gave to her parents was never enough.

It is a human tendency that once you start getting benefits without putting in much effort, you become addicted to them and want more and more.

The same happened in this case too; her parents kept demanding more and more money.

There came a time when they started to threaten and use abusive words when she wasn’t able to give them money on time.

At that moment, Aria asked herself a question:

‘All these people do is just threaten me and abuse me… Do I really need to appease them? Do I really need to continue caring for them?

That is how Aria matured; now the only two people she cares about in this world are her sister and the person with whom she is engaged.

She has stopped doing free charity work; she has stopped giving people money because they begged her with fake tears in their eyes.

Most parents have the so-called ‘superiority complex’ when facing their children. They think that their children can’t make their own decisions and have no rights to do so at all.

They can’t afford to see the bird that was previously in their cage and used to sing and dance for their entertainment, so they leave the cage and fly away to pursue its very own sky.

Most parents fail to realize that this very act of putting their children in a cage of false emotions will cause the children to become numb to their daily bullsh*t, and eventually there will come a day when they will lose them forever.

Aria grew numb to her parents’ daily bullsh*t and went on to pursue her own career.

She started living in the academy dorms and cut her ties with her family.

Now, she is living a very peaceful life.

Although she isn’t strong, there’s no one who will disrespect one of the best alchemists in the whole human empire.

She was able to cure too many mana-related conditions and has even received several national awards by now from the president himself.

Young alchemists from all over the country worship her as their idol and source of motivation.

She may seem weak and cowardly, but doubting her capabilities as an alchemist would be a big mistake.

“Well, things are going well for the most part… The only trouble I have had recently is that my younger sister, Airin, she seems to like a shady person…”

“I think she told me that the guy’s name was Allen; he’s been urging her to bring more and more training potions and rare elixirs lately, and she finds it hard to refuse him…”

“This situation makes me think that she’s being taken advantage of… I am worried about it, but I fear that I will interfere with her love life if I do something…”

Jareth already knew most of Aria’s backstory from the game; he was only listening to it because he didn’t want her to faint and was trying to distract her from the darkness of this cave.

But when Aria mentioned Allen’s name, he suddenly felt the urge to slap that sh*tty protagonist again.

He glanced at Aria and said in a calm voice,

“Allen?… Ah, isn’t that the student who got suspended for harassing his upperclassmen and getting into fights with quite a few students…”

“Also, I remember some students saying that he beat up random classmates and extorted money from them… Aside from that, he’s been repeatedly reported by many female students..”

“Professor Aria, I think you should really have a serious talk with your sister… Hanging out with a shady person like that will create a lot of problems for her future…”

Actually, Jareth wasn’t even lying to Aria; many of the female students did report complaints against Allen because they saw him beat up Mia badly during a sparring session.

Ever since Jareth saw that complaint, he has had doubts about Allen.

‘Everything in this world has been tainted by corruption… I won’t be surprised if the protagonist himself has been corrupted too.’

Jareth was already expecting things to go in a different direction due to his own interference, which was further enhanced by corruption.

‘Still… it’s kind of weird that the protagonist, who was depicted as a bright and sunny person in the story, has now become a scumbag and sadist type of person…’

Aside from Jareth, Aria was also frowning at this situation.

She didn’t know much about Allen, but now that Jareth has told her about his dark history, her resolve to deal with Allen has strengthened.

‘I don’t want my sister to suffer like I did… People only see benefits; he’s likely only pursuing her for the resources too… I need to be strict on Airin this time, it seems…’