It sorta diverged from the WN because if you know how the last 2 arcs go in the WN, this route is implied to be one the many time loops the mc had to go through in the final arc, but who knows if the manga still going to do the time travel and looping stuff the WN did, which honestly didn't like that much, because so much character development didn't really matter, once the looping stuff was revealed at the end of the 5th arc
Lazy timeloop deus ex machina shitpost at play again.
This arc is literally the first time the story has veered away from being "generic self insert isekai trope-spam" slop. Oh nooo, ruby is a shithead! That's the point. She's awful, but more of an interesting character than generic herbivore nice-guy with no personality and bullshit OP videogame mechanics.
This is an improvement. Almost worse than being bad is being BORING, and the previous MC and cast was so generic that nothing stood out at all.
EVERY SINGLE fantasy that spams dragon quest mechanics and "the demon lord and hero" is fucking SLOP, it's lazy, no effort garbage. So the setting is trash, the characters were trash, time loop bullshit is overdone, played out trash, and following the antagonist is the first thing redeeming this whole manga. It's not a redemption arc for Ruby, it's a redemption arc for the writer himself. Fight me.