Fake Professor, Misunderstood As Strong - Chapter 70

A Tarnished Hero… Part-2.
Rahnan was a grade-4 mage and was one of the few disciples of Nathan.

Unlike most mages, he had a kind and compassionate personality; he was like a bright light shining in the dark.

Abella studied under Nathan, and she frequently encountered Rahnan due to his frequent visits to Nathan.

Nathan favored Abella because of her extraordinary talent for summoning magic, but she was completely preoccupied with Rahnan because she had fallen in love with him.

Nathan wanted Abella to reach great heights and provide benefits to him when she grows up to be a strong wizard in return for his tutoring, but Abella wasn’t making much progress as she was thinking about Rahnan all day long.

This was intolerable for Nathan.

Not only was Rahnan a great disappointment for Nathan, he was also stopping his other students from making progress.

Nathan took Rahnan as a disciple because he had the extremely rare ‘light magic’ aptitude.

But later, Nathan figured out that Rahnan didn’t have much talent at all; he was barely progressing at all, so Nathan sent Rahnan to travel around the nation and improve his skills.

But even after years of training, Rahnan barely reached grade 4.

Nathan’s previous disciples had reached grade 2 at the least, and Rahnan became the greatest stain on his reputation as a great teacher.

But Abella didn’t care about all that; she was a young girl with an innocent mind that was still untainted by the cruelty of the real world.

She had fallen in love with Rahnan because of his ‘personality’, and his magic skills had nothing to do with that.

Abella simply accepted him as he was and didn’t care if his magical talent was weak or not.

Nathan noticed everything, and he figured out that he would need to get rid of Rahnan if he wanted Abella to make progress.

A disciple who can’t grow up and provide benefits to him is of no use to Nathan.

This may sound harsh, but that’s how a master-disciple relationship works in this world.

Any wizard who teaches a disciple does so out of a desire to get something in return from them.

Nathan wanted an inexhaustible supply of monsters for his experiments at a cheap price, and Abella’s summoning talent was perfect for that.

But if she couldn’t meet his requirements, then it would have been a great loss.

So Nathan made an easy plan.

He took Rahnan to the secret library and explained to him the “reality” of this world.

Usually, only Grade 1 mages are supposed to know about all this, but in rare cases, a Grade 1 mage can tell his disciples about ‘it’ to his disciples through a magic contract.

Rahnan signed the magic contract and swore not to leak the secret, even if he died.

Nathan had always been good at manipulating others.

He brainwashed Rahnan into thinking that the ‘fifth seal’ of the ‘False Dome’ was about to be broken and needed immediate repair, and only ‘light magic’ could do that.

Although that was only half true, Rahnan believed Nathan without any suspicions, as he had great trust in his master.

Nathan had always helped him, and now it was his turn to return the favor.

Without any hesitation, he left after saying goodbye to Abella.

Years went by, and Rahnan never came back.

Abella urged Nathan to search for Rahnan, but Nathan refused to do so and said that if Abella became a grade 1, then he would help her out.

But that was all a façade.

Abella didn’t have the talent to reach grade 1 in this lifetime, and Nathan knew this all too well.

He knew that Abella could barely make it to grade 2, but it was impossible for her to reach grade 1 in this lifetime; in other words, he wasn’t going to lend her a hand in searching for Rahnan.

As time passed, Abella worked hard to improve, but she was never able to go past grade 2.

She had hit a wall.

Years of hard work and struggles made Abella mature, and she was no longer a naïve girl.

She figured out the truth behind Nathan’s words when she failed to ascend to grade 1, even after years of hard work.

She went to confront Nathan, but he simply denied everything without feeling even a little bit of shame.

Abella was helpless; she had already signed a mana contract to deliver the summoned beast to Nathan for five years, and there were still two more years left for that contract to end.

Nathan is a shrewd and smart person; he squeezed all of the benefits from Abella until the end date of the contract, forced her to keep summoning more and more beasts for him, and even sold some of those beasts for his own profit.

Nathan calculated everything and planned it meticulously.

He had been planning this since the day he accepted Abella as his student.

Nathan is the true embodiment of a selfish and shrewd wizard; he can go to any lengths for his own benefits.

Manipulating and brainwashing children is child’s play for him.

(He may sound like a villain, but he’s literally the most beloved mentor of the protagonist of this game.)

…

Abella cut off all contact with Nathan after the contract ended and left her wand, which Nathan had gifted her at her graduation ceremony, behind in her temporary house.

She didn’t have the courage to fight Nathan one-on-one, as she also knew the difference between a grade 1 and a grade 2 mage.

If she fought him, she would have died in a single attack.

But Abella wasn’t going to sit back and sigh in sadness. Her love was immense; she followed her heart and started to look for ways to find Rahnan’s location.

Nathan refused to tell her the location, but she wasn’t going to stop.

She traveled to all the hidden places in search of clues, but aside from Nathan’s secret library, she didn’t find any other clues at all.

There was no way for her to be able to sneak into Nathan’s secret library so easily, and she was already starting to lose all hope.

But then she met the cult leader of the ‘False Dome’ cult.

She was resting near a bonfire at night in a forest outside the human empire’s borders.

The cult leader stretched out his hand and made an offer to her.

“Become a demon believer, Abella… Do so, and you will be able to reach the next realm…”

If it were usual, Abella would have rejected that offer right away, but she was already desperate at that moment.

Her year’s long search didn’t bear any fruit, and she was at the end of her patience.

And the cult leader had promised that if she accepted ‘darkness,’ she would ascend to grade 1 and be able to find the ‘truth’ of this world on her own.

Abella hesitated for a long time, but then she sighed and accepted the offer with a heavy heart.

She already had no family or relatives in the world, and her master was merely a profiteer who harbored no affection for her talents.

Even Rahnan, the only person she loved, was missing.

So, to pursue her goal of finding Rahnan, Abella accepted the ‘darkness’ and became a demon believer after joining the cult of ‘False Dome’.

Soon after accepting the darkness, she ascended to grade 1 with the blessing of the demon god and became capable of sensing the world’s laws.

{Once you are able to sense the ‘laws’ of the world, you end up finding out the truth of the world itself…}

Abella found out the horrifying truth of this world, and she figured out how worthless her existence was in the face of ‘reality’.

Despite facing existential crises, she remained committed to her goals, maintaining her sanity despite the darkness’s heavy corruption.

Miasma took over her mind bit by bit, and she became a cruel sadist who took pleasure in other people’s suffering.

With the power of the forbidden spells the demon god himself bestowed upon her, she killed many and extracted their souls.

There was now only one obstacle in her way of finding Rahnan, and that was Nathan himself.

If Abella gets rid of Nathan, she can access the secret library and find Rahnan’s location, as well as the location of all seven seals that hold the ‘False Dome’ in place.

This was also the reason Abella went to such great lengths to split a small part of her own soul in order to sneak into the secret library.

Which ultimately failed in the end because of Jareth’s interference; if he hadn’t interfered with that massive glowing mana orb, Abella would have killed Nathan that day.

Still, even though she lost, she got another chance.

Now that she has decimated an entire city, she has not only constructed an altar capable of summoning the incarnation of a demon god, but she has also repaired her magic broom and constructed a ‘death cage’ with the sole purpose of trapping and killing Nathan.

Abella’s plan is extremely thorough; even if she dies here, her soul will escape and enter a pre-prepared body that she placed in a hidden cave.

This way, not only will Nathan remain stuck in that spatial loop forever, but she will also be able to exit that place without any problems.

And once she takes over her new body, she will immediately rush to the university and find out the seal’s location via the secret library.

She isn’t going to depend on the demon god’s incarnation for that; she wants to find Rahnan with her own ability, as she doesn’t trust others with this important task.

For the sake of her love, Abella killed thousands of innocent people and murdered them without regard for the world.

Her actions are indeed wrong and punishable, but in her mind, she has already devoted her whole existence to Rahnan; there’s no point in reasoning with her anymore.

She has lost her sanity, except for one simple goal.

And that goal is to find her loved one.

{Corrupted by Miasma, Abella has become a ‘tarnished hero’ of her own ‘broken path’… She has lost her ‘humanity’ and her ‘existence’ in the pursuit of ‘Love’… That was already long gone…}