Chapter 156: The Rescue
Seeing their expressions, Noah knew what they were thinking and comforted them. "It's not that you're too weak; it's that the opponent was too strong. I think that person was probably the Master of Grimoire Heart. As the master of a dark guild that stands at the pinnacle of so many others, his strength is unimaginable. He's definitely not weak. I feel he might even be stronger than Gramps, though I don't know by how much. If I were to fight him, I could get the three of us out safely, but we wouldn't be able to save the people here. So, for the sake of the rescue, I decided to let them go. Let's focus on saving people now!"
Hearing his explanation, the two of them relaxed considerably. They were confident in their own abilities but not so arrogant as to think they could take on the master of a top-tier dark guild right now.
"So they were Grimoire Heart. They really are strong," Erza said, finally realizing. She had thought the emblem on the blonde man's chest looked familiar, and only now did she remember it was their guild mark.
The three of them then began to search the ruined city. At the same time, Noah notified the Council to come and handle the situation. When the Council learned that Grimoire Heart had attacked a city, turned it into a ruin, and massacred a large number of its residents, they panicked and immediately dispatched a large number of personnel for the search and rescue and the subsequent cleanup.
Before the Council members arrived, Noah, through his search, had already rescued the people with the weakest life signs. When the Council arrived, the three of them helped to rescue the remaining trapped survivors. Thanks to their help, the search and rescue efficiency increased dramatically.
After the search was over, the Council official in charge of the operation thanked them profusely, but Noah quickly stopped him. The situation this time was extremely grim. A town had been destroyed, and thousands had been killed. After learning the specifics, the Council quickly sent more manpower to help.
Erza, looking at the devastation, was filled with rage. "Are all dark guilds like this?"
"You encounter fewer dark guilds on normal requests. Now that you're an S-Class wizard and taking on S-Class missions, you'll run into them more often. Most dark guilds are just petty criminals. A situation like this is very rare," Ultear explained. Most "dark guilds" were just labeled as such for violating Council regulations; their activities were usually just minor thefts. But murder, especially mass murder, was extremely rare.
"Usually, only the very famous dark guilds commit such atrocities, like Grimoire Heart," Noah added. "But these guilds are very secretive, and the Council can't find them. In the past, because of you, Sorano, and other reasons, I went and wiped out a number of dark guilds. Although I found many of the subordinate guilds of the famous ones, none of them knew where the headquarters were."
Noah had inadvertently revealed something that Ultear and Erza hadn't known before. They immediately understood his reasons: one was because of the former Magic Development Bureau, and the other was because of the dark magic cult. The former had been disbanded because of his actions, and the latter had been crushed into hiding by him and the Council.
The dark guilds were all involved in shady business. At that time, if Noah had wanted to learn more about the dark side of the world, of course he would have gone to them. As a result, many dark guilds had been destroyed by him. After being brought back to the guild, both of them had heard the members talking about how an unknown person had been on a rampage, wiping out numerous dark guilds. It turned out it had been Noah.
"Were you hurt back then?" Erza and Ultear asked in unison, their voices tense, their worry written all over their faces as they stared at him. They were not only worried but also deeply moved. To think he would do such a thing for them... who wouldn't be moved? Erza was on the verge of checking him for injuries herself, but Noah stopped her.
They could easily calculate that at the time he had done this, he had only been ten years old. A ten-year-old boy wiping out dark guilds... it was hard to even imagine. Although Ultear knew that Noah had defeated Deliora after rescuing her, the magic used by dark guild members was incredibly varied, and it was very possible that he could have been caught off guard and injured. Erza thought the same. Even though he had been able to defeat a large number of dark magic cultists, if he had run into someone from a top-tier dark guild like Grimoire Heart, he could have been hurt. After all, Zancrow and Kain were both very strong.
"Of course not. I had teleportation magic even back then. If I couldn't win, I could still run. And I made preparations beforehand to block the transmission of information, so no one knew it was me. But I also never ran into anyone from the top-tier dark guilds. Maybe I was just lucky," Noah said with a smile.
However, he knew that to the top-tier dark guilds, the lesser ones were disposable. They didn't care if they were destroyed, because new ones would always pop up to replace them. So it was normal that he hadn't run into any of them. But he didn't say this. It was a good thing for them to remain vigilant. He himself had been very cautious back then; after all, you shouldn't joke with your own life.
"That's good," Erza and Ultear said, relieved. If he had been injured because of them, they would have been overcome with guilt. They both looked at him with eyes full of gratitude. Noah looked back, but he couldn't quite decipher the complex emotions in their gazes.
"Then why did you stop hiding your actions later? I remember you went on to wipe out a number of other dark guilds," Ultear suddenly remembered and asked.
"One time was for money, the other was to save Sorano. I stopped hiding because it allowed me to build a good relationship with the people in the Council, which would cause less trouble for our guild and give us someone to speak up for us."
Erza and the others nodded, understanding his intentions. They had heard from the older guild members that the Council had always had issues with some of Fairy Tail's actions. But in recent years, those criticisms seemed to have lessened. It turned out that Noah had been working behind the scenes all this time.
"Then what about this girl?" Erza asked, looking at the pink-haired girl who was clutching the hem of her clothes. The child had been clinging to them ever since they had rescued her. When the Council members had tried to ask her what happened, she had refused to answer, only speaking when Erza and Ultear asked.
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