Fake Professor, Misunderstood As Strong - Chapter 193

Chapter 193: Inside the City of Horrors… Part-2.
The moment Jareth took his first step inside the city, the atmosphere became ominous all of a sudden.

The surroundings became darker, and it seemed as if several ‘things’ were staring at him from the dark the moment he came inside.

‘Grade-1 illusion magic… Moreover, it’s corrupted with miasma, so its effects will be more lethal if you don’t have proper defensive measures…’

Illusion-type magic usually has a lot of restrictions.

First of all, if you have a legendary skill, then the illusion magic will not work on you at all.

On the other hand, the higher your grade, the fewer chances there are of the illusion magic working on you, as your soul, will, and consciousness will all be more and more strong the stronger you are.

Only those with weak hearts, like Professor Aria, are most susceptible to the effects of illusion magic.

If she were here, she would have fallen for the illusion magic almost instantly, not only because it is of a higher grade than hers, but also because she is less resistant to illusion magic.

If it were normal, then Jareth would have been completely immune to this illusion magic, but not only is the magic of peak grade-1, it also has miasma boosting it.

Right now, Jareth is in a place where mana is nonexistent, thus his mana singularity is more or less in a suppressed state.

It can’t show its full power here as there’s nearly no mana in the surroundings; if it were above-ground, where mana is abundant, Jareth wouldn’t have been affected by the illusion in the slightest.

‘Anyway, the illusion is only working partially on me; it can’t keep me restrained at all. I just need to keep my calm, and I can easily walk through this…’

Among all the areas of the Abyss Altar, this place is much easier as the path is more or less linear; all you need to do to pass this area is to not fall for the tricks of the illusion and reach the ‘Golden Path of Hope’ in three hours of time.

The city’s main road is massively wide, and there are five lanes on both sides of the road.

You just need to keep walking on this road till the end; this road will directly lead you to the ‘Golden Path of Hope,’ and there’s no need to take any detours along the way.

In this whole journey, the main thing that you must make sure of is that you mustn’t fall for the illusion; otherwise, you are dead.

‘Originally, you would need to find the ‘Talisman of Intersecting Paths’ for this area first, but I don’t need it…’

There are many types of illusion magic in this world, but one of the most common and lethal types is the illusion magic where you get trapped in an unending path.

No matter which direction you walk into and how long you walk, you end up reaching the same spot from where you started.

These types of illusion magic focus on slowly building up mental stress on the victim, and eventually the victim collapses from a mental breakdown.

Although these illusions are strong, there’s no such thing in this world that is completely without any weaknesses.

Everything has its own advantages and disadvantages. The ‘Talisman of Intersecting Paths’ is a loot dropped by one of the three mini-boss monsters in the upper grounds of the forgotten city.

Jareth didn’t go to defeat those three bosses, as he had no need for their loot and those three medallion fragments.

The main function of this talisman is that it can help a person ‘partially’ awaken from these ‘unending path’ types of illusions.

In the game, if you don’t equip this talisman, you can’t pass through the ‘City of Horrors’ area, as the character will instantly fall for the illusion and then get corrupted by Miasma until it dies.

Equipping the talisman will help the player character to gain partial consciousness from the illusion, and the unending path will become finite.

This way, all you need to do is cross the city and pass that infinite path while ignoring all the tricks that the partially working illusion may throw at you.

The reason why that ‘Talisman’ was completely useless for Jareth was because he has ‘Mana Singularity’, which is already helping him to be partially conscious of the illusion anyway.

Even if he equips that talisman now, it won’t increase the effects; the effects will just overlap and won’t work together to enhance the illusion resistance power.

Jareth will still be only partially immune to the illusion, even if he had it equipped.

Thus, he didn’t bother to go and get his hands on it; it would have only been a waste of his time.

‘I kind of miss the background music of the game…’

When you walk into the City of Horrors, the background music that plays has a creepy and horror-related theme.

The music makes the area creepier and scarier and adds a taste of horror to the city.

Without that music, Jareth kind of feels that the area is ‘Lacking’ in some aspects now. (Imagine standing several kilometers deep underground in a hellhole with no one to rescue you and saying that the place seems ‘Lacking’…)

While shaking his head, Jareth walked forward without hesitation.

*HEHEHE* *WAAAAAhhhh!!* *KEKEKEKEKE*

The moment Jareth started walking, various creepy sounds started ringing out in his ears from all directions.

Jareth glanced at the top of a nearby broken wall and noticed a strange flock of birds that had humanoid faces, and they were laughing creepily while staring at Jareth.

Maggots and worms were crawling on their bodies, and their eyes were bloodshot as if they had gone insane.

Even when Jareth’s overbearing presence pressured them, they still didn’t flinch and kept laughing at Jareth mockingly.

Then, on the other hand, there was a wormlike creature peeking its humanoid face out from under the rubble of the broken houses and was making weirdly creepy sounds while staring at Jareth.

Jareth could feel several dozens of different creepy mutated beings staring at him from various places.

Some were laughing like maniacs, some were crying and wailing in sheer pain, and some didn’t even have mouths to make any noises.

Although Jareth had seen this scene in the game, he was still a bit taken aback after seeing it in reality, as the atmosphere seemed very ominous and creepy.

Just standing there, Jareth was having a feeling that those beasts were laughing at his courage and his thoughts of coming to this place.

‘Imagine if you came to the city looking for refuge from these burning trees and saw this scene instead… and then you ended up getting trapped in this illusion forever with no way out…’

‘That would be such a miserable end…’

Most of the mutated creatures in the city met this very exact fate; those who came from the upper grounds and the garden to take refuge here ended up encountering this scene and were driven insane by the illusion and tension.

Eventually they mutated, became monsters themselves, and joined the various monsters to laugh and welcome the newer victims into the city.

These beasts are laughing at Jareth’s decision to come to the city, as they think that Jareth has also fallen into the trap and will also end up like them sooner or later.

The voices and mocking laughs of these monsters are so overbearing and hard to ignore that even Jareth felt a bit irritated by them.

But he didn’t kill the beasts, even when he was irritated by them.

The reason is that all these beasts are just pawns of the illusion magic; even if you kill them, nothing will change; there will be more beasts to replace their place.

Killing them will just waste your magic and waste your time; the most optimal thing is to just ignore them and keep moving forward towards your destination.

*You are pathetic! Hekehekehe!*

*You will never make it out of here!*

*You are unworthy!*

The mutated beast started to twist their bodies like maniacs and then started to hurl insults at Jareth to annoy him further and make him use his magic to get rid of them.

‘Good thing that I came to this place only after taking full control of this body…’

If Jareth hadn’t eliminated the assassination organization’s remnants and still didn’t have full control over the body, the original Jareth’s remnant will inside him would have definitely reacted at this moment.

The original Jareth was an arrogant person; he would have definitely gotten angry once these beasts insulted him like this.

But now that he has full control over his body, he can easily ignore these insults, as they are completely ineffective on him.

His body will only move if he wants to; no one else can convince him otherwise. This is the benefit of getting full control over the body.

*You are a failure of a human being!*

*You were not able to live with her because you are undecisive!*

*You are unworthy!!*

‘Tch, whatever you may say, I won’t react to it. I left behind my regrets of my past life behind already; there’s no point in trying to use that against me now…’

This illusion has miasma backing it, so it can use the memories of a person against them.

Every person will perceive the illusion differently because it affects their own brain.

The illusion doesn’t know Jareth’s memories itself; it’s just using his own brain against him.

Jareth didn’t care much about it, though; he just kept moving forward, and the more insults thrown his way, the faster his movement speed became.