User blog comment:IamJakuhoRaikoben/Chapter 439: Albareth Empire, Review./@comment-1153699-20150608231059/@comment-1776824-20150609083222

The idea that Laxus should be there is indeed a good one, but where I draw the line is them soloing or wrecking this giant empire that just as easily has people of Gildarts-tier or higher strength in their ranks. This is 730 legal and dark guilds we're talking about, here. You have to honestly think, Mashima will get canceled if Fairy Tail just curb stomps this giant empire. Will there be some fodder guilds? Of course. No one is denying this. But the way you are putting it is that by the time Fairy Tail and whoever else comes in, Laxus and the Raijins will have defeated like 726 of the guilds by themselves and be like "Ohey guyz wrap up the other 4, glhf thanks for coming," which is not how it would work at all. Laxus is not the fucking end-all, tell-all of Fairy Tail. You are making so many assumptions, like they aren't really a threat at all because that was Tartaros or w/e Fairy Tail Makarov was referring to. Okay, but Avatar, which was defeated by 6 people and 2 anthropomorphic cats, was composed of like 2,000+ Vijeeter Ecors. They were literally just kooks who were picked up off the street and tried to fill in a role. Had this been Tartaros Fairy Tail, then Arlock and them would've posed a challenge. It has been hinted at over the years that despite Hiro not really wanting to, he is going to take the series overseas, and it has been done by referencing people who are stronger than the 4 Gods of Ishgar lying in other continents, and through Mashima planning Mest to be a Fairy Tail member since before Volume 24. Yes, since well before Mest's debut, he was a member of Fairy Tail in Hiro's mind, and he mentioned this in a later afterword, that it was for a reason all this time and it wasn't out of nowhere. That means Albareth was indeed thought of long since before all this. Laxus will not fucking make this fight any easier, and neither will Natsu, or Gray, or Erza or anyone else. This is a country that has more unity than Fiore could ever dream of on acid. They are a threat. They were only stopped by Etherion. They are only at bay now because of Lumen Histoire. They need to be threatened with super-powered, extremely dangerous weapons. As much as we may think, fists are not necessarily the best weapons. If Makarov had any feeling that FT could just go in with the likes of Laxus, Gildarts, Natsu, Erza and himself, he would've done so at this point. They are a danger. A year of training? Okay, these people have been preparing for war. They haven't been off running around on mountaintops aimlessly and doing pushups. They have been doing training that is rigorous. So please, for the love of pepperoni, please stop saying that this will be an easy, quick arc and battle just because of the terribly power-scaled Natsu and Laxus.