Erza and the other two were actually progressing quite quickly. With the assistance of the potions and the magic from their guild marks, their improvement was visible to the naked eye.

With a room full of equipment provided by Noah, Erza had no shortage of gear for the time being. Aside from her basic physical and magical training, her main focus was now on increasing her Requip speed. She also had to practice using various weapons and familiarize herself with the performance of different armors. Among all weapons, Erza's favorite was the sword, and she spent time practicing her swordsmanship every day. Kagura also loved swords and practiced daily. After their individual training, the two would often spar together, clashing with unsharpened wooden swords.

Simon, on the other hand, preferred fists and feet. He believed that the body was the best weapon and spent his days practicing on a wooden dummy.

After they had all completed their basic training, they would have sparring sessions. Usually, it was Erza versus Kagura and Noah versus Simon, and then Noah versus the other three. In terms of pure physical ability, Noah was so much stronger than them that even if they went all out, they couldn't land a single hit. However, to train his own combat skills, Noah would compress the range of his Gravity Magic to the surface of his own skin, so that only he was affected by it, thereby restricting his own power. In this state, he could have a proper back-and-forth fight with the three of them, and everyone's combat experience increased rapidly.

After a few days, Ur's family returned from their training on the snowy mountain. Seeing that Noah was home, Ur promptly left Ultear and the other two in his care and went out to do a mission.

With everyone gathered for training, Noah began to consider better training methods. Seeing so many people training together in the clearing, he suddenly had a good idea. When everyone was about done with their current session, Noah clapped his hands and called them all over.

"Big Brother Noah, did you need us for something?" Erza asked, walking over while wiping the sweat from her brow.

"Are you going out on another request?" Gray asked, walking over. Unconsciously, his shirt had vanished, and he was down to his underwear.

Noah shook his head at Gray. "I won't be going out for a while. I'm going to focus on training at home."

"Don't tell me you've thought of another new training method?" Ultear asked, wiping her sweat and looking at Noah with a quizzical expression.

After more than half a year of treatment, Ultear had now completely recovered. She had been learning Ice-Make magic from Ur, training on the snowy mountain with Gray and Lyon. Ur had wanted Ultear to strip down to her underwear like them, but Ultear had firmly refused. In turn, Ultear tried to persuade Ur that she didn't need to strip so much and that a T-shirt and shorts would be fine, but Ur had disagreed. Neither could convince the other, so they had to drop it. However, when she saw Gray, under Ur's bad influence, try to take off his underwear as well, she would beat him up every time she saw it. It took a long time, but she finally managed to forcibly correct his worst habit. His tendency to strip off his other clothes anytime, anywhere, however, was incurable, and Ultear had to give up. So, seeing Gray had unconsciously stripped again, she just pointed at him, and he hastily got dressed.

"I've noticed that everyone usually trains in one-on-one spars," Noah said. "So I think we should all get used to multi-person combat, or rather, one-versus-many combat. When you're out on a request, you often won't have the luxury of a one-on-one fight with an enemy, so it's better to get used to it now."

"So how do we do that?" Erza asked, looking at the people around them. "Do we all just gang up on one person?"

"No, I've found a better way." As Noah spoke, he released his magic.

Several more Noahs appeared beside him. Erza was confused. "Aren't those Thought Projections? But don't they require a lot of magic power? We can't use that yet, can we?" She was puzzled, as their current magic levels were not enough to support that spell.

"No, this is something I learned from an old man. They are phantoms with a personality. They can touch physical objects, but they aren't very strong. However, they're perfect for training combat skills right now."

First, Noah created enough "Personality Phantoms" for each person to have two. Then, he took out some magic paint from his pocket. The color from this paint would last for twelve hours. He coated the palms and backs of each phantom's hands with the paint.

"We're going to train our blocking and dodging skills. In a one-on-many situation, protecting yourself is the most important thing. You have to dodge or parry the enemy's attacks to reduce damage. We have to avoid being touched by these phantoms. At the end, we'll count, and whoever has been touched the most has to wash the dishes tonight."

"These phantoms don't have your speed, do they? How could we possibly dodge that? You're not just trying to get out of washing the dishes tonight, are you?" Lyon asked.

After over half a year in the guild, Lyon had seen a wider world, and influenced by the atmosphere of Fairy Tail, his personality had improved a lot. Although he was still intensely interested in getting stronger, he was no longer as paranoid as before. He currently had a strong suspicion that Noah was trying to pass off his dishwashing duty to someone else, because tonight was his turn.

"Tch. Fine, then whoever gets touched the most has to wash the dishes tomorrow night. Everyone else's turn gets pushed back," Noah said, changing the rules after his plan was exposed. Lyon nodded, satisfied, but he was still suspicious. "But you won't cheat, right? Since they're your phantoms?"

"Of course not. Even without cheating, my combat experience is far greater than yours. There's no way I'll be the one at the bottom in this kind of training. The phantoms' strength is about the same as yours when you're not using magic. You are not allowed to use magic or fight back, but you can block. Right now, we're training dodging and blocking. If you use magic, the phantoms will be destroyed instantly. After we're done today, I'll teach you this magic, but with your current magic power, you won't be able to use it yet. You'll have to wait until you're stronger. For now, I'll provide the phantoms for our training."

With that, Noah had everyone spread out, assigning two phantoms to each person, and they began their training at a safe distance from each other.

In the evening, they stopped. When they gathered together and counted the marks, they found that Gray and Lyon had been hit the most. Noah thought this was strange. It turned out that the two of them had been training too close to each other, and as they fought, they had run into each other and started to take cheap shots, getting paint all over each other. As a result, they were the two most covered in paint.

"So how do we score this?" Ultear asked, not caring about Gray and Lyon, only about their punishment. "Does this mean they wash the dishes together tomorrow night?"

"No," Noah declared. "Of course, they each get one night. It's not our fault we can't tell who got hit more."

~~~

Get early access to 20+ advanced chapters on Patreon!

https://www.pat-reon.co-m/c/Hollowborn