I really enjoyed this volume; it was a lot of fun. I was fully engaged in Ernie's fight with the Behemoth; urging him on to win, and loving how much enjoyment he got out of piloting the Silhouette Knight. I did feel a bit sorry for D though!
The artwork is really well drawn, at no point did the battle get confusing which can often be a problem with this type of story.
I'm enjoying this manga far more than I expected when I first picked it up and am fully committed to reading more of the series.
The book starts slow with the MC developing a new knight model, but takes up a bit at the end when foreign parties take an interest in the technological developments of the kingdom. While in v1 I did not overly mind the extensive exposition it did became a bit boring by v2. I will see were the story is going.
I was hoping this would pick up compared to the first volume, but it doesn't. It's the same dry, repetitive style that is extremely "written as a serialized web novel" in delivery.