User blog comment:Miskos3/Fairy Tail 514: Dragon Seed, Review/@comment-24784846-20161213010900/@comment-4829046-20161214222354

Also to add to that, if we are being technical about fatal wounds, remember that nearly all of them use attacks that destroy stone, steel and several other structures far stronger than human flesh and bones. The manga established how easy it is to break bone very early on. By that logic, every single opponent should be dead, especially the ones that were literally buried into the ground, buildings and rocks, but no. It is cartooney cliche. FT is not even anatomically correct.

People die only when Mashima explicitly confirms it. Every other time they are just KO.