A Year of Focused Training

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Not far from the Fairy Tail guild, at the edge of Magnolia Town, lay many hills and wooded areas.

These hills and forests were no ordinary places. To ordinary people, they were truly perilous territory.

Many herbs and medicinal ingredients with unusual effects grew in these hills and forests. If an ordinary person obtained just one or two plants, they might become wealthy for life. Yet not a single ordinary person dared enter these places freely to gather herbs and medicinal ingredients.

The reason was simple. Besides all manner of herbs and medicinal ingredients with remarkable effects, there were also fierce Magical Beasts here.

They were not wild animals, but genuine Magical Beasts. The terrifying giant wolves Noah had encountered a year ago, each at least two meters tall, belonged to this category. They were beasts ordinary people could never handle, and only wizards who possessed magic could come and go here as they pleased.

As Fairy Tail was one of the foremost wizard guilds in the entire Kingdom of Fiore, and had been established so close to such dangerous territory, many guild members naturally ventured deep inside on a regular basis. Some gathered herbs and medicinal ingredients, while others hunted Magical Beasts that ordinary people could not defeat to complete missions.

Though Noah was still young, ever since Makarov had adopted him and he had joined Fairy Tail, he had entered these dangerous lands no fewer than ten times over the past year under Makarov's guidance or that of other guild wizards. He could not claim to know the area like the back of his hand, but as long as he did not go too deep, he would not wander around like a headless fly.

In the past, he had only entered these dangerous lands under Makarov's or other guild wizards' guidance. Now that he was alone and had yet to learn magic, Noah naturally did not dare venture too far in. He stopped when he reached a small river at the edge of a forest and went no farther.

"Phew..." Noah gently exhaled a puff of white breath, then reached into his pocket and pulled out bead after thumb-sized bead.

A closer look would reveal that every one of those thumb-sized beads carried a faint glow invisible to the naked eye.

After taking a large number of beads from his pocket, Noah did not hesitate in the slightest and tossed them all into the sky.

"Whoosh, whoosh—!"

A moment later, the countless beads filling Noah's field of vision fell from the sky like a torrential downpour.

As he watched the beads pour down like rain, Noah reflexively took a step back. Then, with a thought, an incomparably powerful force surged from his small body in the form of tangible light, billowing out like a storm.

"Buzz—!"

The powerful force, like a raging gale, rippled out in a flash and swept toward the falling beads. Like gentle palms, it lightly held up the descending beads.

However, when the first thumb-sized bead was held aloft, Noah felt a trace of strain, as though a sack of sand had suddenly been placed on his shoulders. His heart trembled.

Still, Noah had experienced this burden countless times during his year in Fairy Tail. Naturally, he did not panic because of it. Instead, he grew calmer. Magic power surged endlessly from within him, accompanied by deep tremors in the air, lifting the falling beads with pure magic power and making them float lightly around him.

One... two... three... four...

As the number of suspended beads increased, Noah's expression gradually became heavier. His brows furrowed slightly, and even the muscles throughout his body tightened. The magic power continuously surging from within him churned more and more violently, terrifying as a tempest.

If a wizard had been present and sensed the magic power erupting from Noah's body, they would have been utterly shocked.

The magic power pouring out of Noah was already dozens of times stronger than that of an ordinary wizard!

Magic power of this level could probably rank among the top three even within Fairy Tail, a guild filled with outstanding wizards!

And even under such circumstances, Noah continued releasing magic power, making it grow stronger and stronger!

Judging by the fact that Noah merely looked a little strained, without flushing or gasping for breath, this level of magic power was clearly nowhere near his limit. It was likely not even a tenth of it!

With this level of magic power, lifting thumb-sized beads was nothing. Even lifting a massive boulder as tall as a person would be effortless!

Yet when Noah used his magic power to lift the one hundred and eleventh bead, it only paused in midair for an instant before piercing through the magic power supporting it and falling to the ground without losing momentum.

That bead's fall seemed to trigger a chain reaction. More and more beads pierced through the magic power holding them up, while some were flung away the instant they touched the magic power, scattering in every direction.

"Thud, thud, thud, thud..."

One bead after another struck the ground, producing a series of impacts that only subsided after a long while.

"Phew..." Noah exhaled once more. Looking at the beads floating around him, he counted them, and his furrowed brow immediately relaxed. He clenched his fist excitedly.

"One hundred and thirty-three! Twenty-five more than yesterday! I'm getting better and better at controlling my magic power!"

Yes, everything Noah had done was simply to train his control over magic power!

These thumb-sized beads were no ordinary beads. They were Magic Items that were extremely sensitive to the strength of magic power.

Every bead possessed a different degree of resistance to magic power. If magic power equal to that resistance was applied to a bead, it could float in the air. If the magic power applied exceeded the bead's resistance, the bead would be blasted away. Conversely, if the magic power applied was weaker than the bead's resistance, the resistance inside the bead would directly disperse the magic power, causing it to fall.

In other words, if Noah wanted the beads he had thrown into the sky to float, then not only did he need to judge the degree of resistance each bead had toward magic power the instant his magic touched it, but he also had to make the strength of the magic power released onto it exactly equal to the bead's resistance within that brief instant. Only then could the beads float.

Through this method of training, Noah had raised his control over magic power to an astonishing level over the course of an entire year. Such control would be masterful even when used to command magic power over ten times stronger than that of an ordinary wizard. Yet when it came to controlling the magic power within Noah's body, which even Makarov found shocking, it was merely enough.

At the very least, it had only been recently that Noah's control over his own magic power had reached a passing level, preventing the magic power in his body from breaking free and running wild.

Over the past year, Noah had experienced more than a few occasions where his emotions became too intense, causing the magic power in his body to go berserk and nearly destroying the entire Fairy Tail guild!

Or rather, if Makarov had not been there, the Fairy Tail guild would indeed have needed rebuilding several times already.

Thinking of this, Noah's excitement over improving his magic power control by another step diminished somewhat. He picked up the beads from the ground and continued training his control over magic power.

Noah was looking forward to it.

He looked forward to the day when he could control his own magic power freely and completely.

Then, Noah would be able to begin learning magic and set foot on the path to becoming a wizard.

What Noah did not notice was that as he tirelessly trained his control over magic power, a short old man had been watching him from not far away.