Chapter 397: We Didn't Mean To!
Hearing Noah describe his daughter's recent adventures and her seamless integration into the guild, Jude couldn't help but smile warmly.
While Lucy often called home via Lacrima to chat, she was notorious for sugarcoating her experiences. She only ever shared the fun, exciting, and happy moments with her parents, deliberately leaving out the mortal peril.
But Jude was no fool. He knew perfectly well that the life of a professional mage wasn't all sunshine and rainbows. Hearing Noah objectively recount the events—confirming that while Lucy had faced her fair share of danger, she had come out of it entirely safe—finally put Jude's parental anxieties to rest.
Her teammates were strong, and more importantly, they fiercely protected her.
"Noah! When you come over to pick up the supplies, make sure you bring everyone along to play!" Layla's gentle, melodious voice suddenly chimed in from off-screen.
"You heard your Aunt Layla," Jude chuckled heartily. "When you come by, bring the kids. The estate has been too quiet lately anyway."
"Understood. Thank you, Uncle Jude, Aunt Layla," Noah smiled.
"No need to thank us. We'll chat more when you get here. I have some conglomerate business to attend to for now," Jude said, waving before the Lacrima projection faded.
With the call finished, Noah headed straight for his laboratory.
Summoning his Archive screens, he spent the rest of the day meticulously organizing and compiling the vast amount of magical data he had recently acquired, structuring it perfectly for future use.
He was so engrossed in his work that he completely lost track of time, only snapping out of it when Ultear knocked on the door late in the evening to drag him out for dinner.
The next morning, Jude sent a brief magical missive: everything Noah requested was ready.
Given the sheer financial and logistical might of the Heartfilia Conglomerate, fulfilling a simple order of blank books and construction materials overnight was child's play.
Receiving the message, Noah immediately headed to the guildhall. He intercepted Lucy, Natsu, and Happy right as they were about to grab a job from the request board, grabbed Erza and Gray from their respective tables, and teleported the entire group directly to the Heartfilia estate.
"Lucy! Welcome home, sweetheart!" Layla greeted them at the grand entrance, a radiant smile on her face.
"Mom! I'm back!" Lucy dropped her bags and ran forward, throwing her arms around her mother in a tight hug.
"Honestly, you haven't visited in so long. If I hadn't explicitly asked Noah to drag you here, you wouldn't have come back at all, would you?" Layla teased gently, poking her daughter's forehead.
"Hehe..." Lucy nuzzled affectionately against Layla's shoulder, offering a sheepish, guilty smile.
She really hadn't been home in quite a while, entirely caught up in the chaotic, high-speed lifestyle of Fairy Tail. Having no valid excuse, she simply opted to stay quiet and enjoy her mother's hug.
Jude stood a few steps away, watching his wife and daughter reunite with a deeply contented smile.
"Alright, alright, that's enough hugging for now. Go be a good host and entertain your friends," Layla chuckled, gently patting Lucy's back.
"Okay!" Relieved that she wasn't actually in trouble, Lucy quickly pulled away and ran back over to Erza, Natsu, and the others, excitedly welcoming them to the estate.
"Uncle Jude, where are the construction materials? I'd like to get the training ground built as soon as possible," Noah said, stepping up to the older man.
"I'll show you the way. The raw materials are already piled up next to the designated construction site, and the books you requested are stored in a crate nearby," Jude replied, gesturing for Noah to follow.
"I appreciate it," Noah nodded.
"Wait, 'built'?" Lucy blinked, abandoning her conversation with Erza and jogging over.
When Noah had ambushed her and Natsu at the request board, he had simply said her parents invited everyone over to hang out. He hadn't mentioned anything about construction.
"Yeah. Didn't I mention it before? We're building a highly reinforced magical training ground for your mother," Noah explained. "Uncle Jude finally managed to source all the ultra-rare magical metals and stones required, so I'm here to put it together."
"Wait, you're building it? Personally?" Lucy gaped in absolute shock. "I thought my dad hired professional contractors to build the facility, and you were just coming over to paint the magical arrays on the floor!"
She knew Noah was an absolute monster in combat and magical theory, but she had never once pictured him wearing a hard hat and laying bricks.
"You're overthinking it," Noah chuckled, seeing her bewildered expression. "I'm literally just erecting four walls and a door. Picture the training basement back at the guild—that's exactly what I'm building here."
Lucy quickly recalled the guild's basement—a massive, totally barren cube of indestructible stone. She let out a sigh of relief; that made much more sense.
"The structural design itself doesn't need any complex architectural features; it just needs to be virtually indestructible," Noah elaborated. "The reason I have to build it personally is that the raw magical materials require highly volatile, localized purification. Furthermore, the defensive arrays and runes have to be actively woven into the mortar and stone during the construction phase, not just painted on afterward."
"Whoa... what does that even look like?" Lucy asked, her curiosity genuinely piqued.
"It's super flashy!" Happy cheered from his spot on Natsu's head.
"Aye!" Natsu and Gray nodded in unison, completely agreeing with the blue cat.
"Well, if you're curious, why don't we all head over and watch him work?" Erza suggested.
"That sounds wonderful. I'd love to see Noah's magic in action as well," Layla smiled warmly.
"Then let's all head over," Jude laughed, clapping his hands together.
"Yay!" Lucy cheered.
Following Jude's lead, the massive group trekked across the expansive estate grounds, eventually arriving at a large, flat clearing near the edge of a private forest.
"This is the spot I selected. It's far enough away from the main manor and the servant quarters that any... collateral damage from the magical training won't affect the rest of the estate," Jude explained, gesturing to the open field. He then pointed to a veritable mountain of incredibly rare ores, glowing crystals, and magical cement bags nearby. "And there are the materials you requested."
"You bought way more than I asked for. With this much excess, I can weave a secondary, wide-area defensive ward over this entire section of the estate," Noah noted, impressed by Jude's sheer financial flex.
"Then I leave it entirely in your capable hands!" Jude beamed brightly.
While the Heartfilia estate already possessed robust magical defenses—some of which Noah had previously upgraded—a man in Jude's incredibly powerful political and economic position could never have too much security. Knowing Noah was going to personally lay down an extra layer of defense made the exorbitant cost of the excess materials entirely worth it.
After using his Spatial Magic to quickly absorb the crates of blank books and textbooks Jude had prepared, Noah rolled his shoulders and turned toward the mountain of raw materials.
"He's starting," Happy whispered.
Noah clapped his hands together.
BOOOOOOM!
An absolutely catastrophic pillar of pure, golden magical energy violently erupted from Noah's body, piercing straight into the sky. The sheer density of his magic caused the very earth to violently tremble, and the surrounding air practically solidified.
The resulting shockwave of displaced air violently blasted outward. Erza, Natsu, and Gray immediately dug their heels in, but Lucy and the others were violently pushed back several yards, forced to throw their arms up to shield their faces from the gale-force winds.
"Holy crap! Does he really need to go this hard just to build a room?!" Lucy screamed over the roaring wind.
"The training ground has to be capable of passively absorbing and containing Super Magic!" Erza yelled back, her hair whipping wildly in the wind. "The magical ores required to build it are incredibly dense! Forcibly melting and purifying them requires an astronomical amount of power!"
"Oh, that makes sense!" Lucy realized.
She had actually read about some of the glowing ores in that pile. According to the textbooks, purifying even a handful of that specific metal required massive, industrial-grade magical furnaces and days of careful tempering.
And Noah was about to process a literal mountain of it by hand.
Suddenly, the suffocating magical pressure vanished entirely. The wind died down, and the clearing became dead silent.
Dozens of massively complex, multi-layered magical arrays materialized directly above the different piles of raw materials. Even from a distance, Lucy could feel the terrifying heat and concentrated magical energy radiating from the glyphs.
Under the intense light of the arrays, the rare ores and crystals rapidly began to melt. Thick plumes of black smoke hissed into the air as the impurities were violently burned away, leaving behind perfectly pure, liquid magical essence.
Summoning his Archive, Noah rapidly typed on the holographic keyboards, continuously shifting and adjusting the frequency of the arrays in real-time to perfectly match the melting point and magical resonance of each specific material.
Under his flawless control, the liquid essences became incredibly vibrant, glowing with a brilliant, highly active magical light.
"He's purifying it all in the open air... The books said you needed a million-Jewel facility to process that stuff!" Lucy gaped in sheer disbelief.
"Because it's Noah. He's just built different," Erza stated simply, her chest puffing out with absolute pride.
"Damn it... I'm definitely gonna beat him someday!" Natsu growled, his fists igniting with flames as he stared at Noah's back, completely fired up by the display of overwhelming power.
"Hah? You? Don't make me laugh," Gray scoffed mockingly from the side.
"You wanna go, Popsicle?!" Natsu roared, whirling around.
"Bring it on, Ash-Brain!" Gray snarled back.
The two idiots immediately lunged forward, pressing their foreheads together and glaring daggers at each other, instantly ready to throw hands.
"Enough. Both of you, behave and watch," Erza sighed, grabbing them both by the collars and effortlessly prying them apart, forcing them to look back at the construction site.
By this point, Noah had successfully liquefied and purified all the rare materials. Several massive orbs of vibrant, glowing liquid floated in the air before him.
With a wave of his hands, he began systematically merging the different liquids, continuously injecting his own pure magic into the mixture to stabilize the volatile reactions.
After several minutes of intense focus, the materials completely fused, forming a massive, incredibly dense, grayish-silver sphere of liquid alloy.
Noah then separated a large portion of the liquid alloy and seamlessly merged it with the standard magical cement and stone blocks Jude had provided. Using telekinesis, he rapidly manipulated the reinforced stone, stacking the blocks with machine-like precision.
In a matter of minutes, four towering, incredibly thick walls and a reinforced ceiling locked into place, forming a massive, featureless cubic building. He slammed a heavy blast door into the front entrance, paved the floor with reinforced tiles, and violently buried several massive Lacrima deep underground to act as the facility's magical core.
With the physical structure built, the tedious part began. Noah summoned a stylus of pure magic and began rapidly writing thousands of microscopic runes across every square inch of the walls, floor, and ceiling, directly weaving the defensive wards into the stone.
Since watching a guy write tiny words on a wall was incredibly boring, the group's attention quickly wandered.
Inevitably, Natsu and Gray started throwing insults, which instantly escalated into a full-blown brawl. This time, Erza didn't bother stopping them, simply crossing her arms and watching. Layla and Jude also watched the two boys fight, finding their chaotic energy highly entertaining.
However, as the fight escalated, they got a little too carried away.
Natsu threw a massive Fire Dragon's Roar at the exact same moment Gray unleashed an Ice-Make: Lance. The two spells collided mid-air, violently deflected off each other, and shot diagonally across the clearing—
Directly toward the newly built wall of the training ground.
"CRAP!" Natsu and Gray screamed in unison, all the blood draining from their faces.
Erza and the others gasped in horror.
BOOOOOOM!
The fire and ice violently detonated against the side of the training ground, kicking up a massive cloud of smoke and debris.
Natsu and Gray instantly grabbed onto each other, shivering in sheer, unadulterated terror. The thought of Noah's wrath was infinitely more terrifying than any dark guild they had ever faced.
"NATSU! GRAY!"
Noah's voice roared from behind the smoke curtain, dripping with absolute, murderous fury.
Natsu and Gray whimpered, their knees knocking together.
The smoke violently violently parted as Noah slowly floated into the air. His eyes were glowing a piercing, blinding gold, and a terrifying, oppressive aura of pure rage radiated from his body, literally crushing the grass beneath him flat.
"Wow, Lucy, you're leaking a lot of juice," Happy snickered from a safe distance.
"IT'S SWEAT!" Lucy shrieked, her own legs trembling from the sheer, suffocating pressure of Noah's aura.
"We... didn't... mean... to..." Natsu and Gray stuttered pathetically, hugging each other for dear life.
"Wait a second... the building is completely fine," Lucy suddenly blinked, noticing the wall through the clearing smoke.
Despite taking a direct, explosive hit from two highly destructive mages, there wasn't a single scratch, scorch mark, or crack on the grayish-silver stone.
"You couldn't have pointed that out like, five seconds later? I was just getting to the good part of terrifying them," Noah's voice suddenly returned to normal, sounding profoundly disappointed.
Instantly, the suffocating, murderous aura vanished, and his eyes returned to their normal color. He gently floated back down to the ground and walked over to the shivering duo.
"It really is fine!" Hearing Lucy's observation, Natsu and Gray cautiously peeked open their eyes, saw the pristine wall, and instantly threw their hands in the air, cheering in pure relief.
BONK! BONK!
Noah ruthlessly slammed his fists down onto the top of their heads, sending both boys crashing to the dirt, clutching their skulls in agony.
"Idiots. If your stray attacks had hit that wall exactly three minutes ago, before I finished linking the kinetic-absorption runes, it actually would have been a problem," Noah sighed, shaking his head. "If you had ruined it, I wouldn't have just scared you; I would have beaten you into the ground."
Seeing that the situation was resolved, Jude, Layla, and Erza casually strolled over. Jude was laughing heartily; he hadn't been worried for a second.
"I'm sorry, I completely ruined your prank," Lucy bowed slightly, feeling a bit guilty for spoiling Noah's fun.
"Don't worry about it. I just wanted to mess with them for fighting near an active construction zone," Noah smirked, shooting a glare at Natsu and Gray, who instantly avoided eye contact and stared intensely at the grass.
Noah then turned his attention to Layla and Jude.
"It's completely finished and fully operational," Noah explained, gesturing to the massive cube. "The facility passively absorbs ambient magic from the atmosphere to maintain its internal wards, and it will automatically harvest any excess magical fallout generated by the user during training."
"In its current state, the walls can completely absorb and nullify up to three direct, consecutive impacts from Super Magic before the runes temporarily overload. If it maxes out, it will automatically shut down and slowly self-repair using the underground Lacrima reserves."
"Furthermore, I installed a specialized kinetic-absorption dummy in the center of the room. Based on the magical output data I recorded from Aunt Layla's previous spell, the dummy can withstand five direct hits before shattering, and it will magically rebuild itself afterward. There are magical gauges on the dummy and the walls that clearly display the current structural integrity, so you'll always know your limits."
~~~
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