Laxus looked down at Natsu disdainfully 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 that he was looking down on her.
"Hey, Erza, calm down!"
Marcus quickly tried to persuade her, seeing the situation. If Erza and Laxus started fighting in the guild, the guild would truly be destroyed.
Laxus spread his arms and arrogantly shouted, "It means I'm the strongest."
"You bastard, get down here!"
Natsu was very annoyed to see Laxus's arrogant and condescending behavior.
"You come up here."
Laxus provoked Natsu with a challenging look.
Natsu, impulsive by nature, fell for it and ran angrily towards the stairs to the second floor: "You just wait!"
Whoosh!
Makarov's arm quickly grew larger and longer.
Bang!!
"Aah—!!"
As Natsu approached the staircase, he was directly slammed to the floor by Makarov's fist.
Makarov said indifferently, "You can't go up there. You're not ready yet."
Laxus immediately leaned over the railing, looked at Natsu, and gloated, "Oh oh, you've made the old man angry."
"Hmph!!" This made Natsu furious.
Makarov glanced at Laxus: "Laxus, that's enough from you too."
Laxus stood up, looked at everyone in the guild, and finally paused on Qi Yan, saying, "The throne of the strongest in Fairy Tail, I won't give it to any of you, whether it's Erza, Mystogan, that uncle, or Qi Yan, I am the strongest!! Hahahahaha!!"
Laxus spread his arms, finished speaking, laughed loudly, and turned to enter the room.
This arrogant and domineering attitude made many people feel very displeased.
Qi Yan, 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 unpopular. He had joined the guild for more than half a year, and he had seen Laxus only a handful of times. The two had no interaction, just as he had no interaction with Mystogan.
Elfman looked at Qi Yan and said, "Qi Yan, are you just going to let Laxus be so arrogant?"
He admitted that Laxus was a powerful monster, and both his sister and Erza were weaker than Laxus, but he believed that Qi Yan's strength was definitely above Laxus's.
Qi Yan blinked: "Why?! 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 quell his arrogance, to see if he'll still be arrogant in the future."
"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 of losing?"
"Winning or losing doesn't matter, it's just unnecessary. Instead of wasting time, I'd rather do more quests."
Unknowingly, he had been idle for almost half a month. Not doing quests for half a month made him feel somewhat uneasy.
What can relieve worries? Only ten consecutive draws.
Qi Yan made up his mind to go on an S-Class quest tomorrow.
His hands were already itching for action.
In the evening, the guild closed, and everyone returned to their homes.
Lucy hummed a song as she walked along the river towards her rented house.
"Mystogan and Laxus are both famous figures! Plus Erza and Qi Yan, it truly lives up to its name, Fairy Tail is so powerful!"
"I've now roughly figured out the power structure within the guild. At the top is the Master, followed by that mysterious uncle, then Qi Yan, Erza, Laxus, and Mystogan. The next level down would be 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..."
"Eek ah ah ah ah!!"
As soon as she opened the door, she saw a shirtless Natsu and Happy sweating profusely as they exercised in her living room.
Lucy shooed them away with a look of disgust: "You stink!! 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 also Qi Yan, I need even greater strength."
"Ah!"
Seeing Natsu continue to exercise, Lucy cried out, "It has nothing to do with me, hurry home!! Help!"
Suddenly!
Natsu stopped: "I've decided! I'm going to do an S-Class quest!"
Happy also unfolded an S-Class quest request for Lucy to see.
Looking at the red 'S' that represented an S-Class quest, Lucy was instantly startled and stammered, "Wh-wh-what's going on?! Aren't you not allowed to go up to the second floor casually?!"
Mira had told her that only S-Class Mages could go up to the second floor, and Natsu had been stopped by the Master today when he tried to go upstairs.
Happy said, "I just grabbed it."
Lucy's eyes widened: "Thief cat!"
Natsu put on his clothes and said with a grin, "For our first S-Class quest, we took the cheapest one. Even so, the reward is 7 million J. If we succeed this time, the old man will acknowledge my strength."
"Wait... Could this quest be the one Qi Yan was going to do that day?"
Lucy suddenly remembered that day when Erza invited Qi Yan, Qi Yan went upstairs to get a quest. She had secretly glanced at it then, and it seemed to be this very quest.
"Yes! There's only one S-Class quest on the second floor!"
Happy had discovered today when he went to steal a quest that there was only one S-Class request on the second floor, so it must have been the S-Class quest Qi Yan was going to do that day.
"No! If you go and do this quest, and Qi Yan finds out that you stole the S-Class quest..."
Natsu nodded and smiled, "He'll definitely kill me, right!"
"Ah!"
Happy also agreed. Having been with Qi Yan for half a year, they all knew how obsessed Qi Yan was with S-Class quests. As long as there was an S-Class quest, Qi Yan would absolutely not do ordinary quests.
He almost treated S-Class quests as his exclusive property. If Qi Yan found out that he had stolen an S-Class quest, even if he wasn't really killed, he would definitely be beaten to a pulp.