"What's wrong?" Seeing Mera staring at him without blinking, Lothar lowered his arm and asked with a frown.
"No, nothing." Mera shook her head, a new understanding of Lothar's power settling in.
Before this, her knowledge of Lothar was solely based on Woz's stories, which Mera suspected might be exaggerated.
After all, Woz was an AI loyal to Lothar. Who knew if it added its own biases?
"Get in the car. I'll take you to the biggest library in Kansas." Checking the time on the car, 2:30 AM, Mera urged Lothar to get in, a glimmer of anticipation in her vibrant eyes. She hadn't been to Kansas in years.
As for the monsters they just encountered, Mera didn't dwell on them. Humans on the surface often created strange monsters. "Troublemaker" had become synonymous with "human" in the eyes of the Sea Folk. The monster that killed the Kryptonian not long ago was apparently also something humans had conjured up.
"Woz, did you analyze anything?"
"I'm very sorry, Your Highness Lothar. You are too powerful. Those monsters couldn't even survive long enough for Woz to complete the scan." The robotic cat on the central console spoke earnestly, flattering Lothar.
Mera, restarting the car, couldn't help but laugh.
"What's so funny, Lady Mera?" Woz, with his bushy brows and large eyes, turned around and inquired seriously.
"Nothing, I just remembered something amusing."
"What amusing thing?"
"A mermaid living at the bottom of the sea." Mera coughed twice, trying not to be too obvious before shifting into drive and stepping on the gas.
The black-smoking pickup truck, emitting an extremely disruptive noise, sped off in the direction Mera had marked on her map...
An hour and thirty minutes later, the roaring pickup finally reached its destination.
"Who are these people?" Lothar got out of the car, his gaze immediately falling on a few homeless individuals nearby.
"I don't know." Mera, who had never seen homeless people before, was just as clueless. She exited the car without any thought of locking it. The homeless people, sleeping on the ground near the library, all stared wide-eyed. Perhaps it was the truck's bright headlights, blinding them.
"Is the door locked?" Mera, who hadn't known the operating hours of a human library before, frowned, looking at the locked main door. For a moment, she didn't know what to tell Lothar.
"Hey, move."
Lothar's voice made Mera instinctively step to the left. Immediately, the locked tempered glass door before her was shattered by Lothar's kick.
CRASH!
Tiny shards of glass, accompanied by a piercing alarm, scattered across the floor.
"This is the place."
"I've scanned a large data terminal, Your Highness Lothar."
"Woz is attempting to crack it..."
"Woz has finished cracking it, Your Highness Lothar. Books on Norse mythology are on the third bookshelf from the left in section B1 on the second floor of this building."
"Woz is reading the electronic files..."
"Woz is retrieving basic world information through this terminal..."
"Woz has encountered an obstacle. Woz is attempting to crack it..."
Inside the library's server room, all computer screens uniformly displayed a Batman symbol. And below this Batman symbol, a progress bar appeared...
"Second floor, you say?" Under Mera's stunned gaze, Lothar bent his knees slightly, then leaped, landing effortlessly on the second floor.
"No, Lothar, you—"
"Don't you know what you just did is wrong?!" Mera, recovering, covered her forehead, her thoughts instantly in a tangled mess.
In the human world, one must abide by human rules, this was an unwritten rule among the Sea Folk. After all, the powerful warriors in the human world weren't to be trifled with.
Lothar didn't respond. He simply walked to the bookshelf Woz had indicated, browsing through the written materials he found somewhat tiresome.
The Origin of Norse Mythology, The Formation of the Norse Mythological System, Norse Mythology – Ragnarök, and so on.
Overwhelmed, Lothar simply took all the books about Norse mythology. He planned to take them back, have Woz read them, and then have Woz summarize them as stories for him.
"Woz?"
Lothar called out, but Woz didn't respond.
"Woz is cracking the system..."
"Opponent's system attempting to counterattack, Woz has the upper hand..."
"Cracking progress 30%..."
"Cracking progress 70%..."
"Woz discovered it walked into the opponent's trap. Woz is counterattacking!"
"Woz found the opponent's true system. Woz is cracking it..."
"Woz fell for it again, but it's okay. Woz, with its extremely powerful data computation and processing capabilities, has turned the situation around again..."
...
Gotham, the Batcave.
The secret base, usually quiet enough to only hear the hum of machinery, was now extraordinarily lively.
Bruce Wayne, in his pajamas, stared at the flickering big-headed cat icon on the screen, his face extremely grim. This was an unfathomable opponent. Both its offensive and escape methods surpassed his own.
Clack clack clack clack clack...
His fingers rapidly pounded the keyboard. Bruce Wayne disabled the automated defense features in his system that couldn't match his opponent, opting to take control himself.
He had maintained that terrifying brainstorm, capable of overwhelming countless human elites, for a full ten minutes.
Sweat beaded on his forehead.
Alfred, the butler, silently wiped it away.
Time passed, and Bruce Wayne ultimately succumbed. As a human, he couldn't truly be like a robot and never feel fatigue, especially in a direct confrontation requiring such intense concentration.
Despite Bruce Wayne's genius, his human limitations meant he simply couldn't keep up with that terrifying computational speed.
"You lost, Master Bruce."
Alfred thoughtfully offered a glass of water. Bruce Wayne took it, his shadowed eyes fixed on the screen as the opponent, having conquered his system, ransacked his entire database.
"They've gone on the offensive, Alfred." Bruce Wayne finally spoke after staring at the screen for a long time.
"I know, and it looks like they came prepared," Alfred nodded. An opponent capable of directly defeating Bruce Wayne in the realm of data and information security...
"We must accelerate our pace, Alfred."
"Our opponent will undoubtedly target the people in my database first." Bruce Wayne got up to change.
"Shall I notify Lady Diana, Master Bruce?"
"No, I'll notify her. And arrange a plane. I need to get to Central City as quickly as possible."
"Barry Allen is in danger."
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