Six months flew by like a breeze. Since Jax and Laxus took a job request at the same time six months prior, the guild seemed more active as the older members stopped loitering around after completing a job and instead of spending a month doing nothing, they reduced this time in half. This action not only significantly increased the revenue of the guild but also their strength and the reputation of Fairy Tail on the continent.
However, the two who changed the most were Laxus and Jax as while the older members took a break longer and longer after each job, the two of them simply entered the guildhall, asked how many requests the other had completed while choosing another employment and left within five minutes of their entry in the guild.
While the master was slightly worried that they would tire themselves out at first, the two of them were always full of energy when they came back to the guild, and while Laxus failed two jobs in the over seventy jobs he took in the six months, Jax had a 100% completion rate.
With their rivalry going, citizens spread their exploits in Fiore, and the two were known wizards of Fairy Tail. So much that there were even job requests specifically for the two of them. After the third month of their competition started, they started to verify whether there was a request in their name and took them whenever there was one. The reason? They usually paid more since they asked for them specifically.
At the beginning of the six months, Laxus turned ten. Knowing the date of his birthday, Jax stopped on his way back to buy him magical headphones that would not only allow him to listen to music but also to concentrate his lightning power to fire more vigorous bursts of lightning. Along with the headphones, Jax left a birthday card with three sentences written on it: 'Happy birthday. Go on, enjoy your birthday. I'll use this time to make the gap between the two of us wider.'
When Jax returned two days later, he learned that Laxus took the headphones, kept the birthday card in his pocket and rushed out of the guildhall after selecting a job. He didn't even bother to open the presents from the other members. As he heard this, he laughed while taking another job and left to complete more. At this point, there was a board with the number of assignments completed since the beginning of their challenge.
Later on, the year changed to X772. However, Laxus and Jax didn't bother celebrating as they had a competition going on, and they both didn't care very much for the new year. As such, they stayed a few minutes longer before leaving to complete their new jobs.
In those six months, Jax completed over eighty jobs for almost one every two days. The master had allowed both of them to take A rank jobs since the lower-ranked ones were starting to be too easy for them. However, no matter what kind of jobs there were, Jax and Laxus mostly took monster subjugation, bandit capture and dark mage capture jobs.
And finally, after six months, they both stopped. While the two boys hadn't said their deadlines, the two of them stopped. They had already taken jobs non-stop for over six months, running all across the continent and completing employment everywhere.
Laxus now had the strength of a real A-rank mage, taking care of most jobs under the S-ranks, while Jax could take any jobs below S-rank and have no problem completing them. Together, they were already amongst the top of the mages in the guild, even when compared to the older ones.
In his travels, Jax had managed to find quite a high amount of pearls scattered over the continent. He found two air pearls, three water pearls, two fire pearls, one earth pearl, one lightning pearl, three sound pearls, three fairy pearls, two nature pearls, one light pearl and two darkness pearls. However, even if Jax found them, the boy couldn't use them. He had learned that it became harder and harder to improve his magic and fill the groove. All of his magics only had a single pearl inserted in them, and Jax hadn't filled the grooves yet.
For the grooves, his air magic was 93% completed, 97% for water magic, 57% for fire magic, 47% for earth magic, 54% for lightning, 87% for sound, 88% for his fairy magic, 90% for nature, 68% for light and 80% for darkness. While a few of his magics were close to reaching the limit, there was still a small distance to complete. Currently, by reaching almost the boundary of the second groove, Jax confirmed that his magic had the strength of an average A rank mage. However, due to his various magics, he could easily take care of anyone in the A rank class.
Moreover, in those six months, Jax did quite a bit. He bought a few magical items, such as a light pen and ice cutting pen. Amongst the loot of the dark mages the silver-haired boy defeated, he found 17 different magical weapons, 21 sets of magical armours, 36 silver celestial gate keys, and he even found a judgement field that stopped anyone from lying when inside of the area. Unfortunately, he also got a lot of duplicates in the silver celestial gate keys. However, the biggest gain this time except for his increase in magic, the pearls and the gate keys was the amount of money he made.
After all, he collected money from dark mages, weak dark guilds he destroyed, bandits, bounties of the magic councils and the reward from completing a job. All in all, he made a total profit of 24,540,568 Jewels. This amount would allow an average family to live for about ten years if they didn't have big spendings. In other words, what he made in six months was what ordinary citizens made in almost a decade. If thrown into his account in the guild, he had a total of 27,027,788 Jewels, which he could spend freely without a care in the world.
With all of this money, Jax had thought about buying some land near the guild to build his own house with his nature magic. However, it wasn't for now as he didn't know whether he would leave again for jobs soon.
As soon as he and Laxus met in the guildhall, they immediately started another brawl, only for Laxus to be beaten entirely over. Jax simply pointed at the board, which showed the number of jobs completed for Laxus to accept his loss as Jax was 12 jobs ahead of him. With this finished, the competition of six months and the job requests started piling up again on the job request board. It is worth noticing that Fairy Tail had become more popular due to the two who challenged each other, and now they received more job requests.
This was the way the two rivals spent half of the year. However, no matter how much work they did, they didn't regret it as they both saw an incredible increase in their powers. The day they finished the six months, they both slept for three days straight, which showed how tired they were of all those jobs.
As such, after a week of relaxation, Laxus once again left the guild. However, this time, he didn't go to a job but merely decided to go to the beach to relax. Jax, on the other hand, stayed in the guild and only relaxed, talked with the master and did his basic physical training while practising his magic nonstop. While it didn't increase as much as it did on jobs, he needed to stop doing jobs for a while and instead asked the master about magic to see if he could discover new uses of his magic.
A week after Laxus left, Jax decided that he bought land and made his house. He had money, he had the time, and it felt like a waste to simply live in an apartment if he could have his own home. The moment the boy had this idea, he got excited about having a house, something he never had before, and he decided to go through with it. As such, he started to look around the guild for free land.
Finally, after two days of searching, he found some land a kilometre behind the guild. The land was on a small mountain and had access to the water. From the hill, it was possible to see the guildhall and the ocean. Furthermore, having access to the water should give an incredible view in the morning. Moreover, looking at the land, it was possible to create a huge house, even slightly more significant than M.Rais' villa. However, the most important was that there wasn't anyone else on the mountain, and he could buy the mountain itself if he ever so wanted. He decided this was it.
So, with the land chosen, Jax went back to the guild to find the master. He wanted to buy land. However, due to his age, no one would take him seriously, and the boy would need an adult to verify everything was fine. The next day, the master came with Jax to the landowner, and he managed to buy the land for a total of 8 million Jewels.
When Jax paid the money directly and signed to become the landowner, the previous landowner was shocked and immediately asked himself what he had been doing with his life. As such, with a new land deed, money and time, Jax decided to build his dream house entirely out of his powers.