You can tell it was coming a mile away, but this and the last chapter is where it went full mushoku tensei. I don't mean that in a good way.
Harems when not done in a lighthearted tone and is instead portrayed to be the law of the land can be pretty scummy, but that's just my opinion. This arc had no idea if it wanted to be some gritty drama or a battle harem, and had choice tropes such as slavemaster uses magic slave suggestion but it's done for the greater good so it's okay, an "I couldn't save anyone" breakdown, and a contrived but just barely foreshadowed deus ex machina after the author writes his fight into a dead end cause he shat on the MC too hard. The fight is won by someone else entirely not part of the main cast despite all the shit the main characters went through, but at least they got to show off how brave they were on the battlefield am I right?
Even better when he fucks some nun and his neet lifestyle and ptsd is miraculously cured and the arc ends and all the built up drama vanishes like smoke, as if all the problems in his life could be attributed to his lack of getting some before he became an LN lead. Like his sole value in life is determined by the amount of sex he got and now that he's done it he can finally graduate being a virgin neet. At least in mushoku you get to see how obsessed with sex the MC there was, so it had proper foreshadowing and it wasn't out of character.
