Fairy Tail 316: Herd of Ten Thousand Dragons

Recap of Fairy Tail 316: The Future Runs Toward Despair
By Hiro Mashima

Last day of Daimatou Enbu
Saber Tooth is leading with 54 points
Fairy Tail second with 50 points
Lamia Scale third with 49 points
Mermaid Heel 43 points, but they have basically lost already.

The story continues with Erza, Millia, Minerva and Kagura. Minerva finally frees Millia, gets the points from her and Erza goes to her see how she's doing. She sees that Minerva had tortured her by slashing her back. Erza gets furious from this.

Scene changes to Gajeel and Sting, they clash some and Sting makes a remark that Gajeel is not as strong as Natsu: Gajeel doesn't like that remark.

Finally we get to see some more Laxus and Orga who aren't even clashing yet, but someone arrives at the scene. Jura of the ten saints comes and now things are looking very interesting with this matchup Laxus vs. Orga vs. Jura.

Juvia and Chelia are having a cat fight, but then Gray and Lyon arrive to the scene at the same time. It will once again be Ice vs. Ice battle.

In the castle, Natsu and his group are lost while trying to escape, they talk a little bit nonsense until Future Lucy wakes up. She tells them that se remembers them escaping and then getting captured again by the Royal Army. That doesn't seem like reasonable prediction, since they could beat up anyone opposing them. She explains that while escaping eclipse happens at the bad time and they are unable to use magic, hence getting captured. Future Lucy says that she came to change the worst future.

The princess is going through her head about the prediction that Future Lucy gave her: that despair is awaiting them as a herd of over 10 000 dragons are about to attack their country.

The Princess will make her decision based on the prediction Future Lucy left her about Daimatou Enbu, and the chapter ends there.

Will be continued in Chapter 317 "Frog".

Comments and Highlights

What a great chapter. Even if we didn't have much action this time, there was huge buildups towards the chapters to come. Couple of points:

Why are the dragons attacking the country?

Of course at this point we cannot say anything but speculation about why such thing is happening. It is obviously linked to the dragons disappearing in 7th July of x777. I think that the disappearance is linked to someone higher up that ordered the dragons to withdraw and now come back to destroy humanity. It also obviously links to the previous war between men and dragons. I wouldn't be surprised that some kind of the appearance of Acnologia is the reason for this to happen.

What is the prediction of Daimatou Enbu?
 
 We have three possible results that can happen: Either Saber Tooth wins, Fairy Tail wins of Lamia Scale wins. Prediction of Saber Tooth winning in my opinion is really not a prediction at all, but sure it's possible. I'd like to focus on Fairy Tail and Lamia Scale at this point, since that would be more believable since the princess is actually doubting the outcome. Fairy Tail winning would of course be suitable thinking the general flow of the story, but Lamia Scale winning would be one heck of  a surprise element even though they got very strong people fighting. I think that it could go either FT or LS way.

The other possible prediction may not even be about who's going to win, but even more detailed analysis of what's going to happen: if someone does (or did in the future) something so unpredictable that Lucy could prove her point in this way then I think this is a very convincing way for her to do that since I think that the fights between these three could go basically in any way.