Chapter 50: The 24-hour Maraton

A few weeks after the Harvest Festival and one of the major events was right around the corner.

Namely the 24-Hours Endurance Road Race.

It was with the Harvest Festival and the Blossom-Viewing Festival one of the major events in the city.

Every member was required to participate and there were no exceptions, even Laxus and his group had to take part in it.

The race itself had initially a simple purpose, to make sure that the members of the guild were in good physical shape.

The rules were simple every member would run to a certain destination, acquire a certain object and bring it back to the town within 24 hours.

All magic was allowed and dropping out of the race was forbidden.

However, there was a twist which everyone wanted to avoid and that was the punishment game, the person that comes in the last place would receive a nasty punishment.

And of course, the guild master was the one that would come up with it, meaning that Makarov would let out his sadistic side when creating the punishments and many members believed that he was just in it for the punishment game.

The start and end of the race would be the South Gate Park.

Every member was getting ready for the race, although some of them had strange ways to get ready.

Like Cana who was drinking an entire barrel of alcohol right before the race.

Zeldaris, Aversia and Vulcan were also getting ready.

The two half dragons had decided that they wouldn´t take this race to serious and would race against one another.

After all there was no one in the guild that could keep up with them, or so they thought.

Because the champion of this race, who had never lost since the first time he took part in it, was Jet.

Jet´s magic allowed him to run extremely fast, to the point that no one else had even a chance against him.

But there were two little surprises this time around, first was the fact that Mirajane would not be part of this race and would moderate the race with Jason, a reporter from Sorcerer Weekly; the second one was that Ophiuchus would partake in it.

She wasn´t required to take part in it since she was a celestial spirit, but she really wanted to take part in it as well and no one was able to say no to her.

After hearing that Ophiuchus would take part, Erza grabbed the spirit and went to buy some sport clothes.

Making the two look like the only ones that were prepared for it.

As for how the whole thing was being broadcasted, multiple flying cameras would follow the participants, and some had also been placed at the place where the objects were.

It was almost time for the race, but before that would the guild master hold a little speech.

"My fellow Fairy Tail members! Wizards are lost without great intelligence and physical endurance! I ask of you to pit all that power of yours against others' today! The rules are simple! You will start here and race along a predetermined course toward Mt. Ivor! This year, I`ve left lacrimas on the summit of the mountain. You are to take these lacrimas and bring them back here within 24 hours! Forfeiting´s not an option! For Fairy Tail wizards always go that extra mile for the benefit of future work! As always you are free to use every type of magic! And, as always, whoever comes in last…"

Makarov started to smile, "… will have a horrific punishment game in store for them!"

Every member started to shiver at his words.

After words, everyone was at the starting line, waiting for the staring signal.

Ophiuchus wished literally every member of the guild good luck, she wasn´t in it to win, but to have fun with the others.

She had become joyful in the resent months and became the mood bringer of the guild.

The only complaint that she had was that Aversia and Zeldaris didn´t allow her to fight, which she was quite upset about, but for the two it just felt wrong to make her fight, they could not really describe it.

Makarov gave the signal and Jet began to run so fast that everyone else was sent flying and a giant cloud of dust was covering the park.

The only people that were able to stand standing were Laxus, Erza, Ophiuchus, Zeldaris and Aversia.

Zeldaris and Aversia could only look speechlessly at how Jet disappeared in a matter of seconds.

Not being out done by Jet of all people they also started to run, with the rest staring to get up and run as well.

Happy and Evergreen immediately used their magic to start flying.

Laxus used his lightning magic to increase his speed tremendously.

Bickslow was standing on top of two of his dolls to lift him up and fly, while Freed used his Dark Écriture to create a pair of purple magical wings.

Lisanna transformed into a bird and started to fly.

The other members were only starting to use their magic the second that they were outside the city and hell broke out.

Almost everyone was using their magic to get ahead or interfere with everyone else.

Elfman used his beast arms to attack everyone that wanted to stop him or was getting to close.

Reedus created a pig mount and started to create multiple obstacles for everyone else.

Tono used his light magic to blind the surrounding people, the reasons why the cameras didn´t really focus him.

Gray froze the ground and scatted past them, only to be punched by Natsu.

This would go on until evening when everyone decided that they should concentrate on the race.

As for those that were flying, they didn´t care about what was going on bellow them and they were usually left alone, since no one wanted to get on the bad side of Evergreen, Bickslow and Freed.

Happy was not considered a threat and left alone, same was true with Lisanna.

Another reason was that they were soon able to leave the rest behind them.

The current top ten ranking looked like this:

1st place, with a massive head start, was Jet.

2nd place was Laxus who was trying to catch up to Jet, but the distance slowly increased.

3rd and 4th place were Zeldaris and Aversia, respectively. This was a close battle with Zeldaris being only a few centimeters ahead and the two were getting closer to Laxus.

5th place was surprisingly Ophiuchus. She was close behind the two half dragons and was slightly faster then the two and would soon overtake them.

6th place was Freed, who started to make traps for everyone behind him.

7th place was Erza, who was getting annoyed by Freed´s traps.

8th place was Vulcan wo had used enchantment magic to increase his speed and endurance.

9th place was Lisanna.

And finally, 10th place was Happy.

Following were Evergreen and Natsu.

Bickslow had decided that the situation was not interesting enough for his taste and used his puppets to attack the others.

But his puppets, even those on which he was standing on were shot down by Bisca and Alzack, making him fall and he had to start running like the rest.

Shortly before evening, Jet arrived at the peek of Mt. Ivor and grabbed one of the lacrimas, before running back toward the town.

And this marked the most dangerous part of the race for him, because a good part of the members would be trying to stop him, including Laxus.

Ophiuchus had successfully managed to get past Zeldaris and Aversia, who were too busy fighting against each other to notice that the spirit was over passing them by.

When they finally noticed, could they only look speechlessly at the back of Ophiuchus who slowly increasing the distance between herself and the two half dragons.

Erza was able to get past Freed, who in turn tried to attack Erza from behind.

Only to be feel a sword flying right passed his cheek, frightening Freed, who then decided to leave Erza alone.

But Vulcan was even worse as a target since he could cancel all of Freed´s spells and enclosed him in a cage made of stone when he got to much on the nerves of the blacksmith.

When Freed was finally able to free himself, was he on last place.

Learning not to screw with Vulcan.

When Laxus finally arrived at the peak, had the sun just settled and the distance between himself, Ophiuchus, Zeldaris and Aversia had become relatively small, and he could already see them.

He could accept losing to Jet, since he was by far the fastest mage in the guild and Laxus had lost against him every other year, but he would never accept losing against those three.

For the next few hours, nothing really changed, and Jet was almost back at the town.

But Ophiuchus was getting really close to Laxus.

At this point everyone had collected a lacrima and were now on the way back.

Not long after and Jet arrived back at the town.

Ophiuchus had also finally overtaken Laxus, to his complete disbelieve and he started to attack Zeldaris and Aversia, since Aversia was the master of the spirit.

Aversia and Zeldaris started to fight back and the three slowed down quite a bit.

Which allowed Erza and Vulcan to pass them.

After which the three came back to their senses and started to run again.

In the end the top ten ended like this.

1st place was of course Jet.

2nd place was an overjoyed Ophiuchus, who got more applause from everyone than Jet and even from Jet himself.

3rd place was Erza.

4th place was Vulcan.

5th place were Laxus, Zeldaris and Aversia.

8th place was Lisanna.

9th place was Happy.

And 10th place was Evergreen.

As for last place, funnily enough that was a tie between Bickslow and Freed, who had started to bicker and the two had repeatedly fallen into Freed´s own traps, although it didn´t take long to get out of them but it still costed time.

And then to be targeted by literally everyone because they were all mad about the traps.

Makarov could now finally reveal the punishment game, he had been anticipating this moment the entire time.

The punishment was to dance in the city center for a whole day, while wearing costumes.

Everyone thought that it was a bit underwhelming, that was until they knew which dance, the music that would be playing at the same time and the costumes.

Needles to say, but everyone thought that the old man was a devil.

Freed and Bickslow refused to leave their home for an entire week after this.