Man, what can I even say at this point? This arc is just dragging me along, and aside from a few hiccups, I'm perfectly happy to let it. Gajeel takes on an incredible underwater fight, the big bad decides to make things even worse and an unexpected character appears to share basically everything.
This is what I love out of shonen manga - huge, epic fights with creative uses of powers and over-the-top stakes. Excellent.