Fake Professor, Misunderstood As Strong - Chapter 198

Chapter 198: The Palace of Twisted Curses… Part-3.
(Unknown memories)

“Daamir, follow the instructions faithfully, and the demon god will personally rescue you from here later!”

Daamir, the pseudo grade-2 mage, nodded his head and followed the instructions just like he was ordered.

Once all of the members of the expedition team retreated via the hidden teleportation altar, he destroyed it and thoroughly corrupted it with miasma.

This way, he sealed his own fate, and now he himself has no way of going back home.

However, his superiors had promised him that the demon god would use his powers to personally rescue him, so there was no need to worry.

Yet, time passed, and a week went by; nothing changed.

Daamir slowly started losing his patience, and his mind started to become blurry.

The False Dome Cult has the power to use forbidden magic to forcefully ascend a member of the false dome cult to a higher realm.

The method is simple; they use the power of miasma and darkness bestowed by the demon god and then use the souls of the innocent people as fuel for the forbidden magic.

This is how Abella was forcefully able to ascend to grade 1 from grade 2 without much effort, and the same was true for Rahnan and the other higher-ups of the False Dome Cult.

The only difference is that some people are more compatible with this method and some aren’t.

Those who have high compatibility for this method end up gaining immense improvement and powers like Rahnan, who jumped from Grade 5 to Grade 1 directly on the spot.

Those who have medium compatibility end up reaching ‘Pseudo Realms’, like Daamir.

Pseudo Realms are basically you being stronger than a certain grade but weaker than the higher one.

Daamir himself has the capabilities to be considered stronger than a grade-3 mage, but he can’t be considered as strong as a real grade-2 mage.

Daamir only had medium compatibility for that miasmic ritual, and he didn’t have much talent as a mage either, so he only reached this level.

The False Dome Cult has hundreds of such disposable subordinates like him who can be discarded whenever the need arises; they exist solely to serve the higher-ups of the cult.

As for the people who have low compatibility with this ritual, they end up becoming demonized mutants that have no brain at all and have hideously mutated bodies that look extremely ugly.

Most of them end up as cannon fodder for the cult that can be used to tire out the enemies in case of battle. That’s their ultimate purpose in the end.

For the False Dome Cult, only those in grade 1 are worthy enough to be favored; the rest are all just disposable cards that can be used at will.

After spending a whole week in the palace filled with dense miasma, Daamir figured out all this truth for himself.

He figured out that there would be no one coming to rescue him, and he had been abandoned; his hopes were shattered, and his mind was filled with immense despair.

As he has already accepted miasma in his body through the ritual, miasma doesn’t affect him much, and he is very resistant to its mind corrosion effects.

This is the reason why he was able to survive for so long in this palace without getting corrupted to the point of losing his sanity.

But the main problem is that even if he’s resistant to miasma, there’s a limit to his capabilities.

He can’t stay in this palace where Miasma is extremely dense, to the point it is too overwhelming.

Furthermore, his inability to breach the palace’s main door or magic barrier left him trapped inside with no escape route.

In that time of despair, Daamir decided to use the puzzle and go deeper; after all, that was his only hope; he wanted to find another path that could help him leave this place.

But Daamir forgot that he’s not completely immune to miasmic corruption; his despair-filled mind was already weak to begin with, thus his mental defense was lower at the moment.

As he headed deeper, the denser miasma became, and he slowly lost his mind.

The memories of his wife and his children flashed through his mind; he remembers how he slaughtered his own family just because he wanted to advance and become stronger.

He joined the False Dome Cult in search of strength and in search of power that could help him get stronger!

But to do this, he had to leave all mortal relations behind, so he murdered his own wife, killed his own children, and then used their souls as fuel in his ritual of forbidden magic.

And sure enough, he went from being stuck on grade-4 to directly semi-grade-2 in a matter of minutes.

The improvement was immense; he had never expected that he would one day be able to get so strong even in his wildest dreams. At that time, Daamir thought that all the sacrifices he made were worth it.

But now.

After being betrayed and abandoned to die, and on his last few breaths, Daamir finally came to his senses; he remembered how happy he was when he was living that peaceful life.

He had money, he had a loving wife, and he had filial children; he had all the things that most people in the world want to achieve.

But he destroyed it all with his own hands; only now, when he is at his death’s door, does he remember the beautiful smile on his wife’s face.

His body became thoroughly corrupted and turned into a twisted, mutated beast with rotten skin falling from its body and its eyes hanging out their sockets.

At that point, Daamir could only say two words, and nothing else came out of his mouth.

“F-forgive me… for-forgive m-me…”

He asked for forgiveness from his wife and his children, but it was too late by then; the palace, which was once called the palace of hope, has already become the palace of twisted curses, where miasma runs rampant.

There is no hope here anymore, only twisted curses.

…

*Step**Step*

‘Those chairs above are really fascinating; once the hidden stairs appear, the chairs go back to their original positions on their own, and the hidden path will close once you enter it…’

From the moment he became Jareth, he has had a great thirst for seeing interesting and mysterious phenomena.

Maybe this is the unique thinking process of a scientist-minded person like him.

The original Jareth was a genius scientist after all; now that he is in this guy’s body, the urges of this body affect him too.

Even though he has made this body completely his own, this body won’t just forget its years of muscle memory so suddenly after all.

‘Well, let’s hope things are more interesting down here…’

Walking down the stairs, Jareth could feel that he was getting closer to his goal.

After walking downstairs for a few good minutes, Jareth finally arrived at a gigantic hall.

The hall had a massive pillar standing in its center, and there were thousands of magic circles engraved upon it. The only problem is that pillar was now in a broken state.

It has lost its magical shine and is now in a completely dilapidated state.

‘As expected, the node of the false dome seal has been broken…’

Aside from the broken pillar, there was a hideous mutated monster whose body was stuck to the broken pillar like a parasite or some kind of fungi.

It had a humanoid face that was constantly murmuring the same thing.

*Forgive me* *Forgive me*

‘Er, don’t tell me this guy is that false dome cult member who stayed behind?’

Looking at that disgusting parasite-like body whose innards were literally hanging out of its body while it was desperately trying to cling to the broken pillar, even Jareth felt pity for the other party.

‘Sigh, from the looks of it, the other party likely got tricked into staying here… Forget it; there’s no point in feeling pity for the members of the false dome cult; none of these guys are innocent…’

Jareth knew that nearly all members of the False Dome cult who maintain their sanity perfectly after the transformation are not good people.

If you are a good person, you will have low compatibility with the miasmic ritual and will become a brain-dead cannon fodder.

Those who can become stronger via that miasmic ritual are evil from the start.

As the other party was strong enough to break that high-grade teleportation altar, then this guy must have been an evil person too, so Jareth didn’t feel pity for him for too long.

[Grade-5 Fire Magic: Flames of Purification!]

Jareth waved his finger and used a low-grade spell to burn the other party to crisp.

Daamir had already lost his sanity, and thus he had no method of defending himself at all; his control over his powers was already gone; thus, Jareth was able to easily burn him without any resistance whatsoever.

The only thing Daamir could do was scream the same words ‘Forgive Me’ again and again as he was being burned.

Jareth completely ignored the dying wails of the other party and shook, increasing the mana output to increase the burning speed.

Once Jareth got rid of Daamir, he was able to get a full view of the pillar.

Despite getting hit by Jareth’s flames, it was still completely fine, and there wasn’t a single scratch on it.

‘I guess they freed Konda so that the other party could break the seal as it’s simply too powerful for them?’

Jareth didn’t know that the demon god is currently in a state of recovering his powers; thus, he can’t use his own powers to help the followers break the seal.

And even grade-1 mages aren’t strong enough to break these seals; thus, they had to use the roundabout method of using Konda’s help to break the seal completely.