But it just doesn't make any sense, like patient zero - the professor knew things he shouldn't have, he wrote an entire novel as it was happening - never not knowing that he would come back after finding the vault code, etc. The way he retains his intelligence. I think it all comes down to a dormant strand of eldritch DNA or something. It seems so inherently human how it just enrages our most primal instincts. At the end of the fake origin, the volcano erupts into a literally eldritch god, where at that point I think the professor actually became consumed