Fake Professor, Misunderstood As Strong-Chapter 269: The Forest of Hatred. Part-1.

As their name suggests, ’Memory Eaters’ are cursed beings who can eat the memories of others.

Not only do they look horrible and ugly enough to make your stomach churn, but also their voice can interfere with your sea of consciousness.

Those below grade-2 would collapse almost instantly from its deadly mental attacks, and even grade-1 individuals might suffer serious mental damage from these beings.

Most mages have a natural resistance to mental attacks, as all of them have powerful minds capable of controlling mana with precision.

It’s easy to defend against mental attacks if you are a mage; you just need to use your mana to shield your sea of consciousness and mind from the mental attacks.

The main problem with these ’Memory Eaters’ is that they are able to bypass your mental shield almost like a virus capable of bypassing a computer’s firewall without getting detected at all.

People who don’t know about the abilities of these beings and might not be able to react fast enough can easily get affected by their powers.

Once this being’s cursed powers start affecting your sea of consciousness, it eats your memory and makes you forget that you were about to attack it.

This way you get even more helpless as time passes and might end up falling in a vicious cycle.

Eventually you will run out of memories, your sea of consciousness will be completely destroyed, and you will end up ’brain dead.’

Your corpse will then slowly be swallowed by the giant maggot, and your soul will then become part of its massive body.

A new head resembling you will grow on its rotting body, and your soul will suffer the same agony as every other creature is suffering in this horrible place.

Jareth already knew that he might encounter such a situation, and he was ready to attack at any moment.

The main reason why he was so vigilant was because he couldn’t keep his mana detection open at all times in this place and had to rely on his own senses alone.

That’s why his senses were in a state of constant vigilance at all times, and he was immediately able to react to the sudden appearance of that massive maggot.

’They hide under the poison of this poison swamp and ambush their prey with incredible speed... I need to be careful of encountering them...’

The monsters in the game spawned at random places; they had no fixed place, which was a big headache for players when challenging the ’Wailing Hills’ area.

Sometimes, you might not encounter a single monster in your entire challenge, and things would go smoothly, and other times, you might end up encountering massive monster tides, causing your challenge to fail.

This randomness was one of the main reasons why this place was so unpredictable and so much more difficult to conquer.

Fortunately for Jareth, there was no monster tide happening right now, and he didn’t have to worry about that.

The poison swamp was spread across a few dozen kilometers of area; Jareth had to cross all of that while avoiding most of the monsters present in the area.

Aside from that one large maggot, Jareth ended up encountering two more, but those two were much weaker than the previous one, and Jareth destroyed them without wasting a single second.

He walked for nearly three hours at a fast yet steady pace while trying to avoid most of the monsters that were in his way.

He only killed those that tried to attack him first; as for those massive maggots, they were killed on sight.

...

’Phew, Finally I am out of that smelly place...’

The poisonous gases in the area were not only extremely toxic; the smell was also horrible enough to cause a person to faint.

Thankfully, Jareth’s mana shield was able to block everything, including the smell, and he was able to make it past the miasmic poison swamp.

’Even the crystal rain has finally stopped...’

The miasmic crystal rain only happens in that small poisonous swamp area, and once you are out of that place, it won’t affect you anymore.

In the game, Jareth thought that this mechanism was definitely a loophole, as if it rained, it would rain in a much wider area, and there’s no way other nearby areas will not be affected by that poison rain.

But now that he has seen things in reality, he understands the real reason behind all this.

’It’s all just the doing of miasma...’

Everything in this place is heavily affected by miasma, and that is the main reason why things are working in such a weird manner in this place.

The influence of the ’Law’ of ’Miasma’ is so powerful in this place that even the other ’laws’ of reality are being forcefully bent to its will.

Jareth won’t be surprised if pigs start flying in this bizarre place simply because anything weird and bizarre is possible here as long as the ’law’ of ’Miasma and Corruption’ wants to make it happen.

’Challenge three completed...’

Looking back at the poison swamp, Jareth sighed and was relieved that he managed to complete the third major challenge in this journey.

’On to the next one we go...’

Jareth took a deep breath and then looked at the narrow road made up of sand and uneven stones in front of him with his usual cold look.

There was a massive mountain range in front of him and a barely existing path leading forward.

This narrow road once used to be the main path that visitors used to take to reach the nation of fairies.

Many pilgrims in the past used to go through this same path in hope of reaching the miracle city ’Levina.’

The path was surrounded by rotting and dried trees, which didn’t have a single leaf on them.

All those trees were flailing and wriggling around as if they were all alive.

Jareth could even see shadowy figures wandering all around in the dark forest of rotting trees.

Aside from this narrow path, which was leading forward, every other place was either covered with those rotting trees or had miasmic soil spread everywhere else.

Only that one path alone seemed safer, but Jareth knew the reality.

That path was just a trap; it was a massive-scale trap that had claimed the lives of many.

In the game, the moment you start walking on this ’safe’-looking path, you will activate a massive wide-area curse, which will make all those creepy wriggling trees come alive and start attacking you.

They will stand up from the ground, pull their roots out, and attack you with their massive branches, and even if you kill them, their body will ooze miasmic pus and poisonous gases.

Eventually you will be facing a massive monster tide as hundreds of thousands of rotting trees will be attacking you endlessly.

According to the lore that some gamers found in the game, these trees have actually been here since the time this land got affected by miasma.

Miasma seems to hate every single living creature, no matter if it’s intelligent or not.

It didn’t spare the trees in this place either; all these trees are actually in a continuous rotting state, neither able to die nor live properly.

’How much hatred must something have to even curse trees and plants... sigh...’

Thinking about this matter, Jareth could only shake his head.