Fake Professor, Misunderstood As Strong - Chapter 219

Chapter 219: The Elven Capital! Part-3.
“Hoh, now this is quite surprising… Be proud, Mark; only one in a million people is worthy enough to be chosen and trusted by fairies so easily like you…”

“She didn’t even hesitate to come close to you; this just shows how immense your affinity is with the pure elements of this world…”

Hearing that high praise from Jareth, Mark felt quite happy.

Jareth is the type of person who rarely praises anyone, and Mark was extremely happy that his idol gave him such high praise.

Seeing that Mark was acknowledged by a fairy, Risa and Azul also wanted one for themselves.

Looking at the eager looks on their faces, Jareth could only shrug his shoulders.

‘They are such a spoiled bunch…’

“Actually, fairies also have elemental types; this little one is an earth type fairy. Mark has a high affinity for earth elementals; that’s why she got attracted to him…”

“You will need to find a Shadow type fairy if you want one Risa, and for Azul, you can find either a Fire type one or a Space type one… But in these times when fairies are nearly extinct, finding them is impossible…”

Sylvia also nodded her head at Jareth.

“Yeah, in the past hundred years, this one is the only fairy we have encountered up until now… Sigh, perhaps the miasma has made the environment in our elven capital unsuitable too…”

Ignoring the concerned look of Sylvia, the little fairy flew higher and sat on Mark’s head as if it were her new home now.

She even brought out her lounge to tease Risa on purpose when she glared at her.

“I am Lily, a great fairy!”

The little fairy giggled with a childish voice, even the voice seemed so gentle and cute that it could melt the heart of anyone.

Seeing her giggle so happily, Sylvia couldn’t help but shook her head helplessly.

‘Big sis was right; fairies have no sense of danger at all; they are all too innocent for this cruel world…’

‘Jareth has already seen her; what do I do now… Should I increase his payment so he forgets about the fairy? Ugh, this is a great tragedy…’

Despite Sylvia’s worries, Jareth wasn’t thinking too much about this matter. He just wanted a small favor from the fairy.

‘If I can get a few of her hairs and a broken piece of her wing, I can research it to create a better, improved version of that ‘Fairy Powder.’ That way, there would be no need for tormenting fairies for that in the future.’

‘Just use some other chemical formulas and you can get the same results…’

Don’t forget that Jareth is literally the once-in-a millennium research genius. He can create inventions that can change the course of an entire civilization.

If Jareth was born a hundred years ago and had appropriate tools, he could have researched and created an alternate process to create the fairy powder, and the ‘Fairy’ race would have never gone extinct.

People would have stopped hunting fairies and torturing them for small gains.

Jareth’s method would have been a hundred times more effective and easier for mass production as it would have involved science, not some unreliable blood ritual!

Fairies are living creatures too; they shed hair and wings from time to time, and they regrow on their own, so those are things that Jareth can get without causing much harm to the other party.

And he just needs to study the chemical compositions and how mana affects them with his mana singularity.

He can make a new method in just a week!

(This situation is so ironic; so many thousands of innocent lives could have been saved if only grade 1 mages in the past had put even a little bit of effort into researching some other alternate method to produce the powder…)

…

Seeing that Lily refused to let go of Mark’s hair, Sylvia gave up and led the group herself.

Unlike how an elven capital is usually described in those fantasy novels and games, the elven capital of this world is completely different.

The sand, stones, and even the trees—everything looks depressed and dying in this place.

The ground is pitch black in color, and instead of lush greenery, there’s rotting trees everywhere that seem to be in a dying state.

There are small huts made out of wood and big dried leaves of some kind of tree.

They look unreliable to live, but Jareth can sense that all of these weak-looking huts are actually blessed with grade-3 magic barriers.

‘The situation here is more serious than it was in the game…’

In the game, the elves were still living on trees, and their houses looked quite cozy and beautiful, but now everyone’s house is on the ground, perhaps because there are not enough trees to make houses now.

‘This feeling of ominousness and decay… It’s Miasma, tch…’

Unlike in the game, where Miasma was confined to only the areas that were related to the quest, things are different now.

This world is real now, so the miasma keeps on spreading, and it has already started to corrupt the ground, the trees, and everything.

The situation is so bad now that the elves don’t even have trees to make their homes anymore, and they are starving for food.

“Uh, I am ashamed to show you this situation, but… I still welcome you to the Elven Capital, ‘Junay U’Islasera’… We usually call it ‘Islasera’ for short most of the time…”

Although Sylvia did say that it’s the elven capital, it didn’t look like that at all; there was just depression and decay everywhere.

There was no towering world tree in the middle—just a broken and decaying peace of dead wood standing in the middle of the city.

‘City? This place looks more like a slum, actually… The living conditions are too bad; they don’t even have food!’

Although Jareth knew all this, he didn’t say it out loud, as insulting someone’s home in their face is not a good thing; that’s very rude.

Mark and the other two, who were eager to see the elven capital for the first time in their lives, were, in fact, the most disappointed.

All along the way, they were fantasizing in their heads that the elven capital would be beautiful, and there would be lush trees there; there would be beautiful and happy elves everywhere.

But the reality slapped them in the face.

Islasera is a decaying and dying place, corrupted with miasma, and it’s becoming increasingly unfit for anyone to live.

Some weak elves have even started to lose their sanity nowadays to miasma.

Following Sylvia, the group passed by the non-existent entrance gate of the city and met an even more depressing environment.

There were elves sitting outside their houses with looks of despair on their faces.

Some were staring at their empty baskets that once used to be full of fruits with empty eyes.

Some were clutching their children tightly in their arms with looks of helplessness; they were trying to hold back their tears and not show weakness to the children.

While walking on that main path to the palace, Sylvia lowered her head and hid her eyes under the shade of that large hat of hers.

She gritted her teeth, and it took her entire might to ignore the state of her fellow comrades.

Elves are inherently kind; Sylvia had a hard time passing through the place as she wanted to help but she was also helpless.

This is the reason why she doesn’t come out of the palace nowadays; she’s afraid that she will not be able to see the dying state of her kin and will end up losing her sanity.

She only came out now to bring Jareth over.

Mark tightly held Risa’s hand and kept her from straying away.

He has seen a similar sad scene in Bastille; now he isn’t as immature as before, and right now they can’t help these people by giving them empty words of consoling.

The state of Islasera was so shocking that the group remained silent for the entire journey till they reached the palace.

No one talked anything, and they just watched the depressed atmosphere silently.

If it were normal, the elves would have come forward to greet these new visitors and would have given gifts and stuff to show kindness, but right now they themselves have nothing to eat, let alone give gifts.

“300… T-this year alone… 300 children died from starvation… and I couldn’t do anything…”

Walking at the forefront, Sylvia murmured to herself and sighed at her own uselessness.

All this power, all this strength, everything was for naught against the horror of Miasma.

Elves have a long lifespan, so very few children are born every year, and nearly 98% of them all died this year due to starvation.

And this is just the casualties of the newborns; the casualties are just increasing over time.

The biggest problem is that elves live in this capital that is located in the middle of the forest of illusory flowers; there’s no edible plant or fruit in the entire illusory forest.

Everything is either an illusion or has a dangerous poison in it thus making it inedible.

Miasma has caused all of their fruit trees and crops to die; they have no food to eat now, and they are only surviving on the emergency rations that the palace had saved up as supplies for troops in case of war.

Looking at the situation, Jareth concluded in his mind,

‘No wonder their entire nation got destroyed by a single demon and monster tide in the game lore… They are already on the end of their wits; a small push and they are as good as dead…’