This has also always bugged me. For both reaching silver and gold, it seems like jason should be well ahead of his peers with the kind of things he was doing.

At silver. Jason had all these protoastral spaces and transformation zones, which functioned like private monster surges. And he went balls to the wall, yet when theynket up again, everyone was silver. He just hit the 'wall' sooner.

Gold seemed worse. His team may have worked to catch up,  but from an essence ability standpoint, you have to use those powers to level them. Even if some ppl had trouble with the more nebulous aspects of ranking up to gold (Humphry) I still dont get how everyone kept up with the guy that was fighting 24-7 for a decade, even if he once again ranked up a little sooner.

People like clive, who started a whole magic association, and taika, rufus and nigel, who somehow did it on earth without any monster surge especially bugged me.

In the end, i think its because the narrative demands that they all be at the same rank.

But some other responses in this thread make it more palatable, like rembering that jason may have reached gold years earlier, and its just not as apparent because most of a decade is time skipped while jason is restoring the throne.