Fairy Tail now has 3 active S-Class Mages. Gildarts, Laxus, and the newly promoted S-Class, Alexander Sterling. Alex has successfully cleared the S-Class exam and Makarov officially promoted him to S-Class.
With this, Alex becomes the youngest S-Class in Fairy Tail history. He becomes an S-Class at the age of 14 because he is recorded to be born at X764 and it's X778 now. He somehow gets the record that will be taken by Erza when she becomes an S-Class at 15 y.o.
Well, his promotion is not really a surprise for Makarov or anyone else in the Guild. After all, Alex already has the abilities of an S-Class. The only reason he wasn't promoted earlier was because he wasn't so active in the Guild in the previous years.
Whatever people think about him, everyone agrees that he is a genius Mage. He is still very young, but he has already reached his current level. It shows how talented he is, but sometimes people also forget how hard he worked to achieve this.
Still, it's true that his achievement is not just a result of hard work. He has talents and also has 9 cheats inside his body. Only 4 of those cheats have been unlocked for now, but they are still very powerful cheats either way.
Actually, Makarov could make an exception about Alex's participation in the previous year's S-Class exam. The rule that stated members need to be active the whole year to be eligible for the S-Class exam has been removed long ago.
It was not beneficial for the Guild because many potential S-Classes couldn't join the exam even though they have sufficient abilities, so they changed it. That's why Juvia can join X784's S-Class exam even though she has just joined.
So Alex could already join the exam last year even though he wasn't active for half a year. But Alex himself didn't want to be selected as a candidate when Makarov explained the new rule to him.
No one would complain even if he was selected, but he felt like he didn't deserve to be an S-Class yet when he didn't work as hard as everyone else who was working for a full year while he only worked for half a year in the Guild in X777.
It doesn't really matter now though because Alex has finally become an S-Class. He succeeds on his 1st exam, just like Laxus last year. Makarov says he passes it easier than Laxus, but obviously Alex himself can't compare them because he doesn't know the trials used last year.
As usual, the Guild holds a big party to celebrate Alex's promotion when the S-Classes return. Having another S-Class means a lot for their Guild, after all. It increases their prestige, fame, and power, which results in more job quests being posted in their Guild.
People's trust in them will increase significantly when they have more S-Class Mages. It will increase even more when more S-Class jobs are being cleared because it proves their power and abilities.
After being an S-Class, Alex has more access to not just job quests, but also information. He can look into more secretive things that aren't known by public and general Mages like about forbidden magic, spells, locations, magic items, dangerous individuals, etc.
But knowing more things also means he has more responsibilities. As an S-Class, Alex doesn't just become his Guild's main force, but also Ishgar's main force. When there's war, he will surely be deployed as one of the main fighters.
It's not a problem now though because there's no war yet. Alvarez will try to attack Ishgar multiple times, but it won't lead to a full scale war until year x992. There's still a long time to go and there are more things to be taken care of until then.
Anyway, Alex doesn't wait for too long to take an S-Class job. He has been wanting to do S-Class jobs for a long time, so he doesn't want to wait even longer now.
"A Dark Guild subjugation. Finally, something to do with other Mages. I'm getting bored of hunting magical beasts."
"The Magic Council prefers if you keep them alive so we can get more information from them. Those people are suspected as Zeref worshippers. They might know things about Zeref and other worshipper groups."
"I won't kill them then."
Alex takes the Dark Guild subjugation job as his 1st S-Class job quest. He takes Meteor Destroyer and Cana with him because they are a team. Natsu and Gray want to join, but Alex refuses them because their abilities are not on sufficient levels yet.
Cana has been trained by Gildarts when Alex was not in the Guild for a year. So she has grown a lot since then and might be eligible to join an S-Class exam soon. Also, her abilities are very good to support Alex and she can fight by herself as her magic is very versatile.
The Dark Guild's location is in a mountain far on the north side of Magnolia. But the Magic Council doesn't know the Dark Guild's exact location, only the mountain range where they are predicted to be.
"What is this incompetent intel? Predicted? What if the Dark Guild isn't located there?" Alex is very disappointed with the Magic Council information gathering ability.
"That most likely won't happen. Although it's not that detailed, we can be sure that their information has a very high accuracy. Maybe it was too risky to try finding the Dark Guild's exact location, so they stopped after getting the general location."
"Hmm, makes sense. But now we need to investigate the whole mountain range just to find their base. Well, at least the pay is good."
10 million Jewel, that's the reward for this job. It's a normal reward for an S-Class job because they are difficult. The highest reward Alex has ever got from a normal class job was 3 million Jewel, so this reward is more than 3 times higher, and it's more dangerous as well.
There are some easier S-Class jobs actually, but they also pay less. Alex wants something challenging, so he takes this job. Also, he can use those easier jobs to tease Laxus who can only take them because Laxus isn't allowed to take more dangerous jobs without a proper team.
After preparing things they might need and teasing Laxus who isn't allowed to take this kind of job yet by Makarov, Team Alex goes to do their 1st S-Class job. Of course, they are walking because there's no public transportation to that mountain.
On the way there, they check the information about their target. It's a Dark Guild named Red Petals. They are suspected of doing experiments on wild magical creatures, making those creatures very aggressive and releasing them in nearby villages and towns.
"Hmm, so there will be aggressive magical creatures in their base. We should be wary of those creatures too, not just the Dark Mages."
"But how will we find their base? Don't tell me we need to check the whole mountain range." Cana asks while looking at the big and tall mountains in front of them.
"It might be the only way. I'm sure their base is hidden very well too, probably a hidden cave. Or else, the Magic Council would have found it."
"If they're in a cave and the cave is hidden, then how will we find it?" Cana can't think of a way to find the base if it really is a hidden cave.
"I can use Shukaku's ability to sense the earth to find the hidden cave. It can also detect activities that happen on the ground. If there are people in a cave, then I would be able to sense their footsteps."
"Oh, that's a good idea. And if you transform into Shukaku, they won't suspect you if they see you. They might even get interested in you because they are capturing magical creatures, right? They might even come at us by themselves."
"..... I didn't even think about that." Alex only thought of using Shukaku's earth detection ability to find the enemies, but Cana finds another advantage of this idea.
So Alex transforms into the mini Shukaku form to fully look like a beast. Meanwhile, Cana puts herself and Meteor inside a Magic Card to avoid being detected by the enemies because if they see a human girl, they might be suspicious that the beast is a transformed Mage.
The Magic Card is sticking on Alex's chest and Cana camouflages it to match Shukaku's skin color. Then Alex starts exploring the mountain while sensing the earth around him. His sensing radius is quite wide now, so it should help reduce the time to find the enemies.
But even with such an ability, they still need more than a day to find the enemy's base. It really is a cave and the entrance is camouflaged with magic, so it can't be found with bare eyes. No one comes to capture Alex who looks like a rare beast though, so it was quite disappointing.
"Well, doesn't matter. Let's just start working."
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Ch. 121: Earthland vs Edolas