I'm at a computer now, so I'll chime in with a bit more analysis of why I didn't really like the chapter.
I think it all boils down to no longer being able to suspend my disbelief, and that happened at the first Oni lee fight. Essentially it didn't make sense or seem particularly plausible to me that Oni Lee could possibly be fighting and not getting pulped against Joe. This is a guy who got shot in canon by one of Coil's (normal human) mercenaries, and here he's going against a guy who can move fast enough that high framerate cameras struggle to keep up who also has divinely crafted lasers and who has pre-determined that he needs to kill Oni Lee. Joe isn't holding back. And yet somehow Oni Lee is faster than before, faster than he ever was in canon, because... reasons? You might say he's a teleporter, but he needs line of sight and you have to take into account the amount of time it takes people to actually perceive stuff. Normal people's reaction speeds are around 200-300 ms, that's the neurons detecting the input, the brain processing the input, and then outputting a response. Even if we're generous and assume Oni Lee's reactions are being boosted by his Shard, it is still implausible that he would even have time to perceive Joe's actions in time to actually decide to teleport away, and even if he did he doesn't have enough time to pick his spot to make sure the next location he can't be sniped with a laser, which are literally moving at the speed of light. And March isn't mentally controlling him, any instructions regarding timing from her need to be transmitted via speech, which takes more time than the instructions would be valid for. Oni Lee should be a rapidly expanding smear of blood.
Because of that break in my suspension of my disbelief, I essentially gave into what I've been suspecting for a while, which is that Lord is weighting the scales so much he's essentially sitting on them, and he appears to hold to the whole "Give Frodo a lightsaber, Sauron must have a Death Star" trope to levels unhealthy for the story. Also because of that break in my SOD, getting hit by multiple clones with March's striker power felt less like an organic extension of the story and more like the Author going "I need to hit him with March's power or it's not interesting, I need Oni Lee to do that, so it doesn't matter how disparate the match up Oni Lee will definitely survive until that moment." Except in that case, why have the prior Oni Lee battle at all? It would make far more sense to alpha strike Apeiron with the Oni Lee Striker attack than to risk Oni Lee getting killed before he could do it. Given that I felt Oni Lee realistically should already be chunky salsa on the floor by this point, the entire attack also then felt contrived.
Essentially I spent the entire chapter feeling like there was no tension and no real point reading, because I felt Lord was obviously committed to never actually killing his villains or letting Joe get any major victories even when it makes little sense for him not to win fairly handily. And indeed, even though Lung is probably dead, March, Oni Lee and Bakuda aren't, and they're the real threats Joe's been fighting for the past 400k words. It just drags.
On that note, the point I rolled my eyes at was the point where Joe talked about going after the person who hurt Garment and was a major threat and then decided to go after Lung, the person who wasn't directly responsible for any of the damage he and Garment had just received. March was the one who fucked Garment up, not Lung, and he knows how big a threat she is because he literally just thought about it. The moment was just too stupid for me to give it any respect.
Now you may say, like Image and I imagine Sterlyn, that I should just give up reading and stop bothering Lord with criticism. I'm sure Sterlyn will probably cross post this to discord like he does every post with criticism and then engage in chat about why my opinion is garbage, but I'm writing this because I really like the story and want it to be better. I do this because I love the story, which is why it hits so hard when it disappoints. I rarely post tbh, I certainly didn't post anything when I dropped Kill Them All because I felt it had jumped the shark, so this post does not come from a place of anger or disdain. It comes from a place of frustration that a story I think is absolutely great is becoming, in my opinion, less great.
My 2 cents anyway.
