Chapter 101: This is Our Guild's Training Ground
"First, we're going to buy some daily necessities for you and Wendy, and then we're all going to train together."
"Train? What kind of training?" Natsu asked, a little confused.
Noah turned his head and asked in a tempting tone, "Do you want to get stronger? Stronger than Gray—that guy you were just fighting, the one who took his shirt off? Do you want to be stronger than him?"
Without a second thought, Natsu replied, "Of course I do!"
"Then it's settled. Gray and the others train with me all the time. That's why they're so strong."
"I want to train too!" Natsu was instantly fired up. Even though this was their first meeting, he didn't want to lose to Gray; he wanted to surpass him.
Noah, who was walking in front, couldn't help but smile when he heard Natsu's answer. Sure enough, just mentioning Gray was enough to get him excited. Was this what they called fate?
Noah walked to the edge of the crowd, pulled apart the guild members who were still swarming Wendy and the others, and rescued them. Ultear, Erza, and the others let out a sigh of relief as they escaped. Noah saw that Wendy's eyes were spinning and that tears were welling up. For the shy girl, that experience had clearly not been easy.
"They're so intense," Ultear remarked, "way more excited than when we first arrived."
Noah laughed. "Of course. They're just a little worked up because Wendy is so young and cute. They'll calm down after a while. Wendy will be living at my house from now on. For now, can you guys take her and Natsu to buy some daily necessities? I'll leave what to buy up to you. I'm going to go to the training ground and get things set up. After you're done shopping, just drop the stuff at the house and come on over."
Hearing this, Erza's expression immediately became excited. She nodded eagerly. "Leave it to us! I'll make sure to get Wendy the prettiest clothes!"
Ultear just looked at Erza helplessly, then said to Noah, "Just leave it to us. You go on ahead."
"Mhm. I'm leaving, then."
After entrusting Natsu to their care, Noah went ahead to the training ground near his house. He found that Laxus and several other guild members were already there training. After greeting them, Noah began to make various preparations in an empty area next to where Laxus was.
Just as he was finishing, he sensed Ultear and the others arriving outside the training ground.
"So big! Is this whole place for training?" Natsu followed behind Erza, staring in awe at the wall in front of them. It was three meters high and stretched so wide he couldn't see the end of it. The Fairy Tail guild emblem was clearly displayed on it.
"Of course. Noah bought all the land here, flattened the original mountain, and rebuilt it as a training ground," Erza explained.
Natsu was visibly shocked. "He... bought it?! And flattened a mountain?!"
"Of course. Noah is an S-Class wizard. The rewards from S-Class requests are very high, so he could afford to buy it."
"S-Class wizard? What's that?"
"An S-Class wizard is someone whose strength is powerful enough to earn the Master's recognition. Once you become an S-Class wizard, you can take on more dangerous and higher-paying S-Class requests. Those missions are extremely dangerous, and a single mistake can cost you your life, so you have to be incredibly strong to even take them."
"S-Class wizard? I'm gonna be one too!"
"You? You've got a long way to go. For now, let's just train. This training ground is very special. You could say it's unique to our guild. I've never heard of any other guild having one like it."
Erza stopped, her face full of pride as she pointed at the field. Ultear, Sorano, and the others also smiled as they looked at Natsu and Wendy.
Natsu and Wendy looked curiously at the wall, in the middle of which was a gate two meters high and two meters wide. It was closed. Through the gate was the training ground. Natsu, being the most impatient, was the first to ask, "What's so special about it?"
"You and Wendy will know once you go in. Just push the door and enter," Ultear said with a smile.
Natsu and Wendy, full of curiosity, walked over. Natsu put his hand on the gate to push, and the guild mark on his hand flashed for a moment. He pushed the gate open easily. Wendy followed him in, and her guild mark also flashed.
The moment they stepped inside, both of them froze. Wendy couldn't help but say, "The air in here is so fresh!"
"To be precise, the concentration of magic particles is very high," Erza explained. "Noah used magic formulas and all sorts of other magic to gather the surrounding particles and concentrate them inside the training ground, keeping the density at a relatively high level. When wizards are in a high-density magic particle environment, not only do we recover our magic faster, but the quality of our magic power slowly improves. It's a huge benefit to our daily training. This training ground can only be entered by guild members with a Fairy Tail mark. Anyone else will be blocked. And it has many other functions too. You'll learn about them slowly."
"That's amazing!"
"Of course! This is Noah, after all!" Erza said proudly, and Ultear and the others nodded in agreement. They had watched this place being built, piece by piece. The magic Noah had used at the beginning they could still recognize as formulas, but the spells he used later, they had no idea what they were. But that didn't stop them from feeling proud of it.
"Alright, let's go. Noah is calling us over," Ultear said, seeing Noah waving at them.
They all started walking toward him. Natsu noticed that the training ground was divided into many square grids marked with different colored lines, all the same size. Many guild members were training inside them. There were also some large, completely sealed black cubes that you couldn't see inside of. "What are those squares with the different colored lines?" he asked Erza.
"You'll find out in a bit," Erza said, deciding to keep him in suspense.
"What—" Natsu grumbled but continued to follow them.
They walked over to Noah. Natsu saw that there were two squares on the ground here as well, one outlined in red and one in blue. Nearby was another yellow square, where Laxus was currently training. Laxus saw them arrive, gave them a nod, and then continued his own workout.
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