Upon reaching Sector-4, it did not take long, and soon Lothur found his sister-in-law.
"Lothur?" Annaliese said in shock, looking in the young man's direction, who walked toward her.
She had heard in her family about the event of the previous day. That way, seeing Lothur walking in that area as if nothing had happened, she could not help but cry out in surprise, getting up from where she was and running towards him.
"You..."
"I heard that you were beaten up the night before."
"How can you be here? Can you truly be here instead of resting at home?" She asked with a noticeably nervous tone as she touched Lothur's shoulders carefully.
"Thank you for your concern, Anna."
"I don't know what happened, but I was feeling better by the time I woke up this morning. So, I just came to the academy as I should have." He said this as he looked into her worried eyes, pleased to see this reaction in Annaliese.
'Sigh...'
'Annaliese cares about me far more than Viktoria...'
'Maybe 'I' married the wrong sister.' He smiled internally while Annaliese still looked at him with concern.
She then asked in a guilty tone. "Lothur, what happened yesterday? I didn't wait for you because you took too long and then... And then... All that happened."
Lothur's eyes then opened as he realized what was on that woman's mind, and he then placed one of his hands on one of her shoulders. "Anna, what happened has nothing to do with you."
"Yesterday, I was reading some books in my sector library and got carried away with some discoveries that made me miss my schedule."
"After that..." He then recounted every detail of what had happened the night before, when three masked men had ambushed him in one of the alleys in this city.
"What? How does someone have the nerve to ambush a member of the Frost family?" Annaliese said in a tone charged with anger and humiliation, outraged by what had happened.
Lothur might only be a son-in-law of the Frost family, but that did not change the fact that he was part of that organization.
As a member of this family, even if he were a pet, the people in the family would not accept outsiders doing such an absurd thing!
That was a demonstration that these individuals were not intimidated by the power of House Frost!
How could Annaliese accept this without getting angry?
With that mentality, she felt offended that her family was despised by the people who attacked Lothur.
"Damn bastards!"
"Lothur, let's talk to Mom and Dad when we get back! We can't let this incident go unnoticed!" She took one of his hands and said that firmly.
But Lothur did not see things from the same angle as Annaliese. "And what am I going to tell your parents? That I was attacked by three strangers that I have no clue about?"
"Your mother will just lecture me, saying that this was probably my fault. That I am a useless person unable to recognize an enemy." He said with a cold smile on his face.
"No. I prefer to solve my problems on my own."
Annaliese frowned and looked at him strangely. "What? How are you going to do that? You are a mere mortal with no cultivation or training!"
"That's what I've come all this way to talk to you about..."
"Anna, I want you to help me find combat techniques that can help me protect myself."
"Combat techniques? And what do you want that for? Even if you manage to learn something like that, it will still be useless!"
"With only the strength of a mortal, even a 1st Transformation cultivator without techniques will be able to beat you with a single punch!"
"Besides, cultivator weapons are weighty. So, if your strength is not great, even if you learn a technique, you will still be unable to fight."
"Oh?" Lothur's mouth dropped open in surprise. "Why? I know there are weapons for mortals."
"Sigh..."
Annaliese then sighed due to Lothur's lack of common sense. "Listen to this: physical strength naturally greatly increases when cultivation increases. Because of this, if cultivators' items are not tough enough, even the user's own attack could destroy their weapon."
"Imagine a sword breaking simply because its user put all his strength into the attack..."
"That's what would happen if a cultivator used mundane items. And as you can imagine, such artifacts cannot withstand cultivator attacks."
"I see..." Lothur muttered as he remembered that he had unintentionally dented his bathroom sink just after his recovery.
'Cultivator items must be dense to withstand the forces applied to them...' He imagined this as he remembered that the said artifacts Annaliese talked about were not oversized.
"Anyway, I still want to learn how to defend myself, Anna. Can you help me with that?"
"Sigh... It's okay." She said in defeat. "I don't think this will be of any use, but since you insist, look for the Innumerable Scrolls store in our city."
"You'll be able to buy techniques there with ease. "
Annaliese naturally already knew about Lothur's situation at this academy. And since her family would not give their high-level techniques to someone who could not even cultivate, that place seemed the best suggestion, in her opinion.
The Innumerable Scrolls store was a place that sold techniques of all kinds, which had a considerable amount of options to the point that anyone could find what they needed.
As long as such an individual had the necessary resources, even some high-level techniques could be acquired in such a place!
"Innumerable Scrolls, eh?" Lothur smiled in satisfaction.
"All right, Anna. Thanks for the information." He waved to her as he said goodbye. "I'll look for that place later. Then we'll talk on the way home. Okay?"
"Okay."
...
After saying goodbye to Annaliese, Lothur quickly reached the place of his next class, the amphitheater where he had met Elke.
But as he entered that place, Lothur suddenly heard a questioning laden with disbelief.
"What? How can you be here?" The black-haired young man said this aloud as he rose from his seat.
At the same time, as the people in that area began to watch the situation unfold, the two associates of the black-haired young man also stood up with incredulous looks on their faces.
"What is going on here? How can this person be here?" One of them said in a low voice, feeling bad for seeing their target so well.
"That..."
And realizing that, Lothur's eyes sharpened in realization since, besides those three, no one else seemed surprised by his presence in this place. 'Hmm.'
'You guys probably have some relation to what happened the night before...' He imagined this, considering that no matter how much information spread everywhere, the reaction of those people seemed somewhat out of the ordinary.
He then smiled coldly and ignored them, promptly heading towards where Elke was already watching him, with a smile on her beautiful face.
'I will talk to you once I learn how to protect myself... Until then, enjoy it while you can!'
'I may not be of this world, but I know how to handle situations like this!'
Lothur came from Earth, a relatively peaceful place despite all the problems. But even in a world where one could leave home without much worry of not returning, bullying and violence happened everywhere.
And as only a 19-year-old, Lothur remembered very well things that had happened in his school when he was younger.
He himself had never suffered from such a problem, but he had seen and heard several cases of classmates suffering from it.
However, despite society's attempt to resolve such situations peacefully, with dialogue and awareness-raising, Lothur had never seen such a thing work.
On the contrary, whenever a bullying problem in his school was resolved, it was usually due to the victim taking action rather than the bully realizing his error.
And knowing that he could not allow himself to be bullied, he already had a good idea of how to act against the people who had ambushed him the night before!
...