Time went by quick when one became focused, and that was the same for Noah and his group, frequently they would workout right after their concealment practice, only stopoing to eat and then go into bed out of exhaustion. The whines were frequent, but the one that would always whine the most would always be the goofy Ralph who apparently hated working hard on anything, the ones who often lost themselves into their training would be Noah, his sister Sophy and Anna, the rest would do as told and even sometimes try to pretend to be doing more than they actually were doing.
On a room full of machines trying to pickup any signal around them as they could a group of kids would be stoping concentrating and then resuming their walk, everytime they would get feedback from the machines that signaled by a red light they would repeat the process of focusing on imagining the heat in front of them dispersing, the waves going past them without being ricocheted back to the device or on trying to feel the frequencies by which those waves came by to be able to atune to it. It was a grueling process of trial and error that would exhaust not only their mana but also their energy because of the effort of concentrating and walking at the same time was quite dificult.
Their progress was surprising for Joseph and Stephen as it seemed that even with some being more lazy thab others they all were quick learners and quite motivated when they stoped with their lazyness shennanigans, it was even too good to be natural in Joseph's opinion.
Noah was by far the most outstanding of them all when ir came to magic, he would pickup on things very quick and soon be using it with proficiency at the point where he could even start thinking on how to improve on what he learned, he would learn to become a detector instead of just concealing himself, if you taught him how to walk he was someone who would be trying to run and parkour, his parents must have been quite busy with him at that point taught Joseph of the image of a toddler trying to parkour around the kitchen.
Ralph had the highest results after Noah even with his lazyness and complaining, it was clear to see that he would adapt quickly whenever what was being taught changed the subject or training, he was like a sponge that would get all the content into itself and then lazy around after proving he knew it, in short he was a lazy sponge...
Anna and Sophy were right after the two, being able to train hard and efficiently to get the job done quickly.
Laura and Brian would usually be right after, with Brian being very inconsistent, sometimes even beating Ralph's performance while Laura was very persistent once she found something she couldnt understand.
Poor Alex meanwhile would always lag behind the others, which made him develop a bit of a inferiority complex and a bit envious of everyone, his onlt respite was when he would learn how to mess around with machinery and technological gaudgets with Stephen, one could even see glimmers like if there was a star shining with his eyes.
Overall things were well for the kids, but for the mentors things would be more and more worrying, they would have to monitor who got close to their base, while preparing food and water, train and equip 7 children with only the two of them... they felt as if they were a parent with a large family, at the same time that they were engineers, reasearchers and teachers at day time and guards and watchers at night.
Joseph and Stephen came to be very tired of all the constant exhaustion they were feeling and decided to find ways to take some of the weight of their shoulder.
"Stephen, you are genius when it comes to machines right? can't you go and automize the watering and planting things? or atleast do something to make it easier for us to sleep at night without having to look at those monitors for hours? I feel a couple older already." said a very tired eyed and disheveled Joseph
"Hmm actually I think there is a way for that... will take some time but i can work on it if you take my place with some of the training duty." said Stephen with a teasing grin at the tought of having more time to tinker around and relax instead of being stuck teaching some brats, because even if he liked being like a military officer he disliked being a nanny and caretaker.
Imagining that he was shoving his responsabilities unto him to go around and play building things he could not help but sigh and give in to his only hope of being able to sleep once again "Fine! But please, be finished before I die out of overexhaustion!" said Joseph while imagining also the suffering of never ending things to do.
Knowing that even the children were as much exhausted after training as they were atleast made nights very calm with everyone going into deep slumbers everytime they touched their heads on a bed and he couldnt ask them to help out as ir was too demanding for them to also help at this moment.
For around two weeks Joseph looked older everday while Stephen would look like he was rejuvenating and getting younger, so much so that some of the more kids suspected that Stephen was stealing Josephs life with some sort of magic, of course that was only refered as a joke.
In these two weeks Alex would go and help out Stephen on his new project to help automize things so they could have the leadt bit of confort.
And so on the 15th day on the 'I will hold the fort while you tinker around' event everyone was called to see what kind of invention those two made to save them time in getting food, water, clean clothes, repair equipment and monitor their base.
"Huhuhuhu.... We are quite proud of this one Joseph, Alex is a good brat when it comes o this things, he helped out quite a bit! Now for the suspense for the sake of showing off!" Stephen signaled for Alex to make drumming sounds in from of a curtain
*Ttutututututtutu*
"And here are the-..."