Teaching Manners.

After the classes had ended, it was time to go back to the mansion. He had taken care of everything regarding his selection of classes, so it was time to go back to the mansion. Funnily enough, he still had to go back to the mansion with Claudia, who had been trembling the entire time since the slap. When she saw Alex, her head immediately dropped, and you could literally hear her panting. The main thing to note about this was that she couldn't muster up enough courage to even sit beside him. She had been beaten up before, but nobody had questioned her existence in their life. She was a pampered child, who could just not accept that anyone else could treat her differently.

Fortunately, Alex wasn't interested in her at all. He got into the car and started reading from one of the books that he had picked up in the library. It was based on the difficulties people face while coding and programming, which had piqued his interest.

Seeing that he wasn't paying attention to him, She had calmed down a bit. She still was apprehensive about getting into a car with him, seeing that he had told her to stay away from him, but she still had to go home, and her mother had specifically stated that to get over this setback, she needed to improve her mentality, and observing Alex and learning from him might be helpful in that.

And so, they reached the mansion. This time, however, the silence that had ensued during the journey was completely different than before.

Alex got out of the car and advanced towards the mansion. Claudia followed while keeping her head down. Jane, who had been waiting to receive them, could clearly sense her fear. She frowned, and then looked towards Alex. He was carrying a book, walking as if nothing had changed.

Jane went straight towards her sister, allowing Alex to continue to advance into the mansion. In that short interaction, She understood that Alex couldn't be underestimated. Seeing that her haughty sister had been turned into a lamb up for slaughter, she was surprised, but somehow when she looked back at Alex, she felt that this was normal for him.

Inside the mansion, Alex went straight to the training ground. There, he changed into some comfortable clothes in one of the changing rooms and waited for Lucius, who was supposed to train him today.

When he was warming up his body, His brain felt some sort of danger, and it was really close. He sensed that it was aimed at his neck, and he tried to dodge, but his head got hit. He didn't feel pain, but due to the impact, his head did jerk ahead a bit. When he turned to look around for the object that had hit him, he found a knife which was made up of rubber. He picked the knife up but failed because Lucius had already picked it up before him.

"If that would have been a real knife, you would have been dead. You did manage to respond, which is a good sign, but your body couldn't respond in time, because it didn't know what the threat was."

Alex looked at the knife. He had trained so hard to make his muscles in sync with his mind, but he still wasn't able to respond in time. He felt that an assassin was always going to hit out of nowhere, and his entire basis of training had been based on how to attack, with little to no training to counter hidden attacks. All his fights up to this point had been confrontations, which showed how weak he was in an actual confrontation.

"From today onwards, we will build up your defenses. The first training is going to be using this."

On his cue, Steven brought a machine that looked like a ball launcher with 7 barrels. He understood that he was going to do reflex training, but he still didn't know how that would help.

"The purpose of this training is for you to dodge, rather than block. Every 3 seconds, 7 balls will be launched towards you, and you shouldn't move an inch outside of this box."

He pointed towards the box that steven had just taped on the ground. It was around 3 meters in width and length.

"Also, randomly I will be throwing a real knife now and then, which would be slower than the balls. You need to be ready because you will not be able to see all of them coming immediately. Your back will be facing the machine, and as soon as 3 seconds pass, you have to dodge, return to the original spot with your back towards the machine again. We will do this exercise 3 times in sets of seven every day to increase your overall awareness. A time goes on, I will keep increasing the difficulty bit by bit so that you can never truly get used to this exercise until you maximize your awareness."

Without any further delay, Alex went straight into the box. He was not confident, as he couldn't even calculate the trajectory of the balls without actually seeing them.

"3...2...1...Start!"

The machine threw a barrage of balls, and Alex tried to bank on the fact that the balls might only be aimed at his body, so he decided to shift his position in a way that minimized his body exposure towards the machine, but he underestimated the test. Out of 7, 2 balls hit him on his hands, and to his dismay, the balls were bouncing balls, which were launched at him at a relatively high speed. He was tuck in the spot, with his arms numb. The machine was 6 meters away from him, and the balls felt like bullets.

He didn't have time to mope around. returning to his spot almost immediately, he got ready for the second round. He tried to get his mind away from his arm and decided to jump sideways, trying to do anything to get out of the way, but it was a bad decision. This time, He got hit on his leg, and that too on his calf. He fell to the ground, releasing a loud moan of pain, but he remembered that he had to get up. He hopped on his good leg, trying to keep himself stable.

The third round happened just as he regained balance, and this time, he didn't even have the time to react. Rotating on one leg was hard, and he wasn't even able to see one of the balls before it hit him. He fell and fainted. His body couldn't take it anymore.

"This will teach you to think twice before hurting someone from my family."

Lucius looked at him and smiled, just as he lost consciousness

A knife then came out of his hand, and just missed Alex's head by a millimeter.