what the actual FUCK is going on here? why did he suddenly become the stupidest asshole to ever live? I ranted about this in my comment on the last chapter as well, sorry for being a broken record n all but, MC has mountains of evidence & experience that he was in serious danger & could've handled the situation in any number of ways that wouldn't compromise him in the process, but for some reason he just... didn't?! regardless of the obvious incoming asspull (which turned out to be "oh new power i got right before nullified it ha ha", big surprise) & even though he's suddenly claiming he "needs" the leaf for whatever fuckin' reason, he still could've handled shit way more intelligently like he has for 90% of other situations in the past, so why didn't he? and he's suddenly leaving his niece nigh unprotected (aside from Ariel luckily showing some due diligence), even though her life was being targeted VERY recently, & they're only discussing the fact that he's gonna have to leave her alone & they might need to move her or something so she's safe now, over the phone, after they're separated & she's unprotected, instead of any time beforehand??? this series, like so many others, makes it obvious that nothing truly bad is gonna happen in the long run because of the usual OPMCBS™, but the reason this series was interesting was in the way he predicted & prevented situations or found workarounds & him becoming more and more overpowered was fine because he was earning it through his effort and knowledge. yet, suddenly, he's (at least acting like) an absolute dumbass who just assumes he can make shit work after things go wrong instead of working his ass off to make sure things are never too far out of control in the first place, and it's REALLY fucking frustrating! Even if all of this works into some kind of grand plan that'll pay dividends later, the reader needs to know that beforehand (and with more detail than "i think i need this for my plan", we need to have some fuckin clue what the plan is, dude) in order for any of it to be satisfying to read... the worst part is actually that the series used to be smarter than this, so this sudden drop in narrative quality is like 2x more frustrating than it would've been otherwise if the story had always had this tone, you know? please, author, just go back to doing things how you did before, dude!