Laxus looked down at Natsu scornfully and said, "You can't even beat Erza, and you want to fight me?"
Erza's face darkened when she heard this, and she looked at Laxus. "What do you mean by that?"
She admitted that her strength might not be as good as Laxus's, but Laxus's words clearly showed he was looking down on her.
"Hey, Erza, calm down!"
Wakaba quickly advised, if Erza and Laxus started fighting in the guild, the guild would really be destroyed.
Laxus spread his arms and shouted arrogantly, "It means, I'm the strongest!"
"You bastard, get down here!"
Seeing Laxus's arrogant and condescending manner, Natsu was very annoyed.
"You come up." Laxus provoked Natsu with a challenging look.
The impulsive Natsu fell for it, angrily running towards the stairs to the second floor. "You just wait for me!"
Whoosh!
Makarov's arm quickly grew larger and longer.
Bang!
"Ah—!!"
As Natsu approached the stairwell, he was
slammed onto the floor by Makarov's fist.
Makarov said indifferently, "You can't go up, you're not ready yet."
Laxus immediately leaned over the railing and looked at Natsu, saying gleefully, "Oh, you made the old man angry."
"Hmph!"
This made Natsu extremely frustrated.
Makarov glanced at Laxus. "Laxus, that's enough from you too."
Laxus stood up and looked at everyone in the guild, finally pausing on Takeshi and saying, "I won't give the throne of the strongest in Fairy Tail to any of you, whether it's Erza, Mystogan, that uncle, or Takeshi, I am the strongest. Hahahahaha!"
Laxus spread his arms, finished speaking, laughed, and turned to enter the room.
This arrogant and domineering attitude made many people feel very annoyed.
Takeshi, however, felt nothing. To be honest, having watched Fairy Tail, he had a good impression of Laxus after his redemption.
A man, strong, tough on the outside but soft on the inside, always stepping up when needed.
However, the current Laxus was indeed unlikeable. He had been in the guild for more than half a year, and he had only seen Laxus a handful of times. The two had no interaction, just like he had no interaction with Mystogan.
Elfman looked at Takeshi and asked, "Takeshi, are you just going to watch Laxus be arrogant?"
He admitted that Laxus was a powerful monster, and both his sister and Erza were weaker than him, but he believed that Takeshi's strength was definitely above Laxus's.
Takeshi blinked. "What? If he's arrogant, let him be. I can't just beat him up because he's arrogant, can I?"
Gray said, "You can have a showdown with him. Then defeat him, and thoroughly extinguish his arrogance, so he won't be so arrogant anymore."
"No fighting."
Laxus was, after all, Makarov's grandson. If it were in his previous life, he wouldn't even be able to curry favor with him, let alone beat him up.
"Are you afraid to lose?"
"Winning or losing doesn't matter, it's just unnecessary. I'd rather do more quests with that free time."
Unconsciously, he had been idle for almost half a month. Not doing quests for half a month made him feel somewhat anxious.
What can relieve worries? Only ten consecutive spins.
Takeshi made up his mind to go on an S-Class Quest tomorrow. His hands were already itching.
In the evening, the guild closed, and everyone returned to their homes.
Lucy hummed a song along the river as she walked to her rented house.
"Mystogan and Laxus are both famous figures, plus Erza and Takeshi, it truly lives up to its name, Fairy Tail is so powerful."
"I now have a rough understanding of the power structure within the guild. At the top is Master, followed by that mysterious uncle, then Takeshi, Erza, Laxus, and Mystogan. The next level down is me and Natsu."
"Joining Fairy Tail was indeed the right choice. Starting tomorrow, I'll work hard."
Creak!
Lucy opened her door.
"You're back."
"You're back..."
"Eeeek!!"
As soon as she opened the door, she saw Natsu and Happy, shirtless and sweating profusely, exercising in her living room.
Lucy shooed them away with a look of disgust. "It stinks. If you want to build muscles, go back to your own house, okay?"
Natsu grinned and handed Lucy a pink dumbbell. "What are you talking about? Aren't we a team? Here, this is for you. You like pink, right?"
Lucy bared her teeth and retorted, "I'm not interested in dumbbells at all."
Natsu immediately started doing push-ups. "To defeat Erza, Laxus, and Takeshi, I need even stronger power."
"Aye."
Seeing Natsu continue to exercise, Lucy cried out, "It has nothing to do with me, hurry home! Help me!"
Suddenly—
Natsu stopped. "I've decided! I'm going to take an S-Class Quest."
Happy unfolded an S-Class Quest request form for Lucy to see.
Looking at the red 'S' representing an S-Class Quest, Lucy was startled and stammered, "Wh-wh-what's going on?! Isn't the second floor off-limits?"
Mirajane had told her that only S-Class Mages could go to the second floor, and Natsu had been stopped by Master today when he tried to go up.
Happy said, "I just grabbed it."
Lucy's eyes widened. "Thieving cat!"
Natsu put on his clothes and said with a grin, "This is our first S-Class Quest, and we took the cheapest one. Even so, the reward is 7 million. If we succeed this time, the old man will recognize my strength."
Lucy asked, "Wait... This quest wouldn't happen to be the one Takeshi was going to do that day, would it?"
That day when Erza had invited Takeshi, Takeshi had gone to the second floor to pick up a quest, and she had secretly glimpsed it then, it seemed to be this very quest.
"Yes. There's only one S-Class Quest on the second floor."
Happy found out today when he went to steal the quest that there was only one S-Class Quest on the second floor, so it must be the S-Class Quest Takeshi was going to do that day.
"No! If you go and do this quest, and Takeshi finds out that you stole the S-Class Quest..."
Natsu nodded and smiled. "He'll definitely kill me, right?"
"Aye!" Happy agreed.
Having spent half a year with Takeshi, they both knew how obsessed Takeshi was with S-Class Quests. As long as there was an S-Class Quest, he would absolutely not do ordinary quests.
He almost treated S-Class Quests as his exclusive property. If he found out that they had stolen an S-Class Quest, even if they weren't really killed, they would definitely be beaten to a pulp.