Minus points for a cliffhanger ending. Not just 'to be continued' but a real 'we're stopping the action right here suckers' cliffhanger. I hate that. I'm tempted to dock a star entirely just for that. Oh well.
In volume 17 the author says that he loaded it with 'angsty emotion' instead of action. He said he was joking and I disagreed. Now I've seen what happens when he's being serious, and I take back what I said. There's a Mother's Basement YouTube video about surviving being the MC in a harem anime, and the characters in this book could really learn from many of the lessons made there even if this isn't really a harem story. Talk to each other for God's sake! Admittedly, Tatsuya does try only to be conversation-blocked by a video call, but he lets things slide after... Well, conflict drives plot, even if it's contrived conflict.
Oh, and poor Pixie seems to have been relegated to a picture in the character list section at the front. Said section is now growing so much that I suspect it will exceed the length of the novel by the time this series finally comes to an end.
The actual conflict here is pretty good this time. There are some fairly good fight scenes in this volume. There's also a new character, a psychometry specialist, that I'd love to hear more about. Like why does she dress like 'The Invisible Man' all the time (minus the bandages)? Does she get heatstroke a lot in Japanese summers? If you stripped the book down to the hunt for the bad guy, you'd have a very short book, however. There's a lot here that involves social interactions which have become a bit irritating to watch.
Overall, a fairly solid volume. My rapid consumption may have a little to do with cold weather and the clocks changing. I didn't really want to do anything else today. However, good pacing and an interesting story did nothing to harm me swallowing the thing whole. (And now I can't read the next part for over a month!)