The people who keep complaining about 'pacing' I think frequently aren't quite aware of what they really are complaining about. The story's pacing is just what they focus on while saying that 'nothing important happens'. More often then not, what they are actually complaining about is that the story doesn't match the genre they had envisioned it as. I remember when I went to see Unbreakable in the theater. After the movie there were people complaining that the movie was horrible and barely anything happened. But they had gone in expecting a Superhero action movie, and Unbreakable was a character drama. The 'important' events they were expecting were fight scenes of Good vs Evil, not introspection and slowly coming to terms with who you are.
if you go into a murder mystery expecting non-stop car chases, gun battles, explosions, and diving out of planes after the parachute, then you'll be disappointed and think the story is too slow paced. While you are watching for those action packed sequences, you miss the neuanced character interplay and detailed world building. If you go to a Michal Bay movie expecting detailed world building, intricate plots, and deep characterization... You'll again consider the movie to be paced poorly. In this case you might consider it too fast paced because it skips over all the things you thought you were going to experience.
Consider Worm's canon sequence of events. You get a chapter of world building, then MULTI CHAPTER LUNG FIGHT! A chapter or two of world building, then MULTI CHAPTER BANK HEIST! A chapter or two of world building, then BAKUDA BOMBING SPREE! The story from what I can tell focuses most of it's energy on the cape fights. So someone who comes to a story like this, Mauling Snarks, or Taylor Varga after devouring Worm expects the same sort of format. Minor world building bracketing major cape battles which take multiple chapters to resolve. And if there isn't going to be such a major cape battle for a while, time skip until then next major battle. What they get instead is a story which focuses on the people rather then the powers. Instead of the major plot points being battles against overwhelming odds, the major plot points are making friends and dealing with hurdles which crop up. Most of which are not combat related. Thus the person expecting the major plot points to be COMBAT and ACTION conclude that the story is too slow paced due to the things they consider the major plot points being minor plot points which don't crop up regularly.
From the perspective of someone expecting Hybrid Hive to follow the same format as Worm it's self, what are the major events? So far it would be the locker and Taylor getting shot. What does the story it's self consider major events? Taylor meeting Hive, Taylor and Hive's struggle to recreate and/or modify spells, and Coil's ongoing meltdown due to Taylor and Hive existing. While that meltdown has hints shown in each chapter, most of his meltdown is done in his 'split timeline' simulations. Thus until the interlude we didn't get to see what all he was trying to do. Or what Lisa had been up to since she didn't run up to Taylor and introduce herself.
As such, it's not that the story is slow paced, fast paced, or even aardvark paced. It's that it doesn't follow the expected formula of what constitutes a major event.
