Loner Life in Another World (Light Novel), Vol. 4

This volume finally made me drop the series, which is a shame because I enjoyed v1-v3 for the most part. v3 ended on a dramatic note, and set the stage for a larger plot with our lead “Loner” MC (who isn't actually a loner, and hasn't been one since midway through v1 when he acquired a harem consisting of damn near the entire female class body) basically becoming the benefactor of a large fortified duchy. So what does v4 follow with?

Dungeon grinding. And boy, is there a lot of it. As I turned the page, only to find another god damn chapter where our MC takes the gaggle of useless female classmates down to the dungeon, I found myself asking "how long has this filler been going on for?" When I checked the e-reader's progress %, I was already halfway through the book. Half the book gone, and not a single thing of consequence has happened. Oh, our MC got a new mascot party member in the form of a cute slime, but the rest of what I read is the same situations playing out over and over again. The harem that follows him around berates and demands things of him (in a humorous tone of course), MC is a complete doormat who can't say no to anyone, the classmates are apparently lvl 90 and are still useless in combat, the same jokes as usual being beaten to death, and the MC works late into the night basically inventing civilization for the small remote duchy he occupies. Is it finally over?Nope, gotta go to the dungeon again to do some more filler combat. You can skip over half of this book and not miss a single thing (probably even more than that), and that tells me that the author has pacing issues. Most likely, he hit this roadblock and didn't know how to continue the story, so he just wrote whatever until he was able to cobble together whatever half-assed plot comes after 200+ pages of filler grinding. I no longer care to find out. This kind of fluff should've been left in the WN where it belongs, not taking up over 50% of a book.