"Hello, miss Leslie. I am Jax from the Fairy Tail's guild. I am the one who took your item retrieval and bandit capture job. I was wondering if you could take some time for me. I only have a few questions for you before beginning this job." Jax said with a slight smile.
"You're the one who took my job? Aren't you a little too young to be working in a wizarding guild?" She asked with doubt on her face.
"There is no need to worry about this, miss. As long as the item isn't damaged yet, I have the strength to defeat them and to retrieve your item in its best state." Jax said with a calm smile on his face. He had already expected this kind of situation.
"And how exactly are you going to stop them and bring back my object safely?" She asked with her brows frowned.
"I have myriads of ways to accomplish the task. I could blind them, burn their surroundings to make them panic, drown them, simply steal your violin back, or slash them. I'm certain that you have some apprehension about me taking this job due to my young age. However, please do understand that the master of the guild was the one who gave me the necessary permission to take jobs and also the one who registered this job to me. As such, you don't need to worry. After all, if I were to fail, it would damage Fairy Tail's reputation, and obviously, the master wouldn't dare play with this." He said calmly, as a matter of fact, while staring at her straight in her eyes.
Since he felt his speech wouldn't be very impactful if she had to look down to see him talking, he used some of his nature magic to grow a small tree that would lift him at her height to speak to her face to face. And indeed, as he demonstrated some necessary prowess of his magic, she was automatically a little more convinced. After all, for regular civilians, mages are mysterious beings and being able to grow a tree from nothing was rare even amongst the magicians.
She sighed a little bit before inviting him inside of the studio as he made the tree move to create a new decoration in front of the door of the studio. The studio was quite big and furnished, but Jax wasn't interested in this. He only felt like he had to ask the questions, complete the job and go back to the guildhall to read.
"So, what were the questions you wanted to ask me?" She asked while sitting down on the couch, leaning her head on her arm and lifting an eyebrow.
"I only have a few questions. Do you have a picture of the item to be retrieved, and can you let me see it? As for the second question, do you know how many bandits there are in their group?" Asked Jax as he sat down on the opposite couch.
"Yes, I have a picture right here, she said as she went to a drawer and picked up a picture of her and her violin. As for the number of bandits, I have no idea, from what I heard, there should be around thirty of them." Said Joanna as she handed the picture to Jax and sat down again.
Taking a close look at the picture, he could see that the violin had some distinct features, such as the jet black wood with red and blue lines on the instrument's body. He wasn't an expert on violin's, but he was confident that there wouldn't be a lot of stolen violin, it was probably the only one, but he needed to confirm its appearance in advance just in case. As such, there shouldn't be many problems.
"Alright, thank you for the information. I will go straight to it. I'll be back as soon as I retrieve your violin." Jax said as he handed the picture back to the young miss in front of him.
"Hum, alright. I'll see you out." She said as she got up.
"Thank you," Jax answered with a smile.
From the moment he left the studio, he immediately went to the closest exit to the forest. For him who had fought and trained so much with Laxus, the bandits who didn't even possess magic were undoubtedly not his opponent. As such, he directly made his way to the forests outside of Magnolia. The problem at this time was that no one knew where they were at this exact moment. So, Jax figured he would simply go into the forest and use his sound magic to create sound waves and use the echoes to locate anything within the forest.
Indeed, with Jax's improvement in sound magic, he could use the echoes to tell whether there were people, monsters or animals. He believed that with enough practice, he would detect everything and eventually make it possible to create a mental image to see everything around him.
In magnolia, on three sides of the town were forest, the east, the south and the west side, while water was on the north side. So, Jax decided to start his research from the east, which was the closest exit to the town from the studio and go around all of the city by accelerating himself with his air magic. According to his estimates, finding the bandits would be easy since they obviously didn't have magic and thus wouldn't be able to counter or even notice his search for them.
As he arrived at the forest, he used his sound magic in all the directions and finding no one, he moved further along the forest and repeated. He would do so until he found a small or large group of people together as there would be high chances of them being the bandits.
After twenty minutes, Jax managed to do the east side of the city entirely and a part of the south side. However, he wouldn't have to continue since he had already found many people residing in the forest. From what he could tell from the echolocation, the group had four magical chariots to move, and there were a few tents where they slept.
From what he could tell, there were not many possessions in the chariots, and the members of the group were currently around a fire, eating together as a group. Coming closer, he enhanced his earing to hear from afar to confirm whether or not they were the bandits, and it didn't take long to ensure it.
"So boss, we have been in this town for almost three weeks now, and we have stolen a lot. We have attracted not only the attention of the guards of the town but even a magical guild. I heard that the girl who we stole the violin from published a request in the Fairy Tail guild to get her violin back and to take care of us." One of the bandits said with a slightly worried voice.
"Don't worry about it. We managed to repel the guards once, and they can't do anything to us. As for the magical guild, I also heard about that rumour. Do you think they will bother to take care of our group? Not to mention that most mages are weak in close combat, and with our group, we can easily take care of a lone mage, can't we?" A voice which, Jax guessed, was the boss, said.
"Moreover, we have already sold most of the stuff we stole, and now we can leave this town for the next one. In the beginning, I was thinking of going to sell the violin back to the lady we stole from, saying we got it from the bandits. However, considering she sent mages after us, she won't see it ever again, hahaha." Said the boss of the bandits.
Hearing this, Jax had an eyebrow up as he was stunned by their reasoning. However, now that he had confirmed that they were indeed the bandits, it was time to take care of them.