Pretty good side-story volume covering the more prominent side characters that haven't gotten much development in the previous volumes thus far. It's a good break from the hectic past 4 volumes of continuous warring and surprisingly avoids a lot of the generic tropes that plague side-story volumes for a lot of light novel series (such as bathscenes, beach trips etc etc)
The volume also slowly sets up the new arc in the form of interludes between side-story chapters, something which i really like, and keeps the main story going without being stealing too much thunder from the characters given focus in this volume.
Had pretty low expectations of this series, given the initial setting and genre, but it's turning out to be quite a competently written story overall.