North apparently doesn't have much power at present so to keep herself safe she locks herself in her room and influences things through her servants. I wouldn't say she's just observing since she does have a part in things though indirectly. I do reeeeally wish her scenes won't mostly just her goin' fufufufufu 200 IQ u nu know what I is thinking I is mysterious it was me, Dio! It's fine to an e x t e n t but it's like gimmie more than that man. How many years has it been? I'm genuinely curious about her character but we're getting nothing when she doesn't really appear much to begin with. I want more chs with her like in the one where it showed the past. We already know her plan but no major details. Killing off all humans as seemingly the end goal and completely reviving West (I assume) to accomplish that? Seeing as North seemed particularly upset that West wouldn't help her as opposed to South or East that makes me think she needs West's help to accomplish her goals.

The Xing storyline didn't feel super out of place for me. Since although the MC wasn't there the story's plot is about the war with witches as a whole and not just one portion of it so it still progressed the main story in that sense. imo the politics like on the main female lead's side are an important part of the main story too since the story's about the state of their world. Tasha's the main character but not involving him doesn't = not part of the main point of what the story's about so because of that I can't agree that the entire plot sits on Tasha when the whole plot is on what everyone in the war is doing with him as the focus, mostly.

I do wish Rose would just cease after this. I wouldn't say she appears a lot but compared to other witches Tasha's fought she's the only one who fought him repeatedly. Well, besides East but she doesn't really count. On one hand she had a big role on Tasha, at the start, so appearing once more to show how far Tasha's come is good but with three times it's she can sit over there more new witches plez. I get it, she didn't have closure with being captured yet and only three times in retrospect isn't a lot but even if it's technically fine story wise since he hasn't fought much lately I reeeeally wanna see him fight someone else so it feels more fresh but that's a personal thing.

I think the pacing is actually a lil' on the fast side recently. Sure as heck doesn't feel like it since it updates bi-monthly and what we get is less pages than a typical weekly series but rereading it it feels like the author had to cut lots of stuff out to keep progressing at a pace that although feels slow isn't dreadful to sit through. Besides fights where the characters are being developed while fighting the fights don't really last all that long for a shounen. Honestly I prefer info chs to fighting chs in pretty much all manga so any fighting chs I'm biased against. That being said my impatience aside this current fight far from the worst I've seen in a shounen. I'm not a huge fan of this particular fight's pacing but with the chs being so short the author can only fit so much in each ch and has to end it on a "high note" so the readers look forward to the next release. At the very least the power ups aren't pulled from nothing. It's logical that a witch can use more mana than what their body can typically handle like Tasha and that she might pull that given how much she wants him dead and that after Tasha's training he can control and release his mana much better. I assume he didn't do it at the start because he didn't think he'd need it to defeat her.