It's a little delayed, but chapter 398 is now available. The village story line is finally progressing into the second half. With the disappearance of Yuki, things will start moving fairly rapidly. Most of the building blocks are all in place now. So I'm going to be starting to focus on more of the main plot of the sub arc now.

The changes and ways that Yumi is carrying herself now is important. She's undergoing quick and harsh changes. While I'm fairly on the head about certain things at times, given that the story is in general not about careful analysis of everything to understand motivations and the deeper elements of the story and characters, I try to include that when I can for things that will eventually be explained more explicitly. Since I will be pointing them out later, it's sort of a reward to those that are digging in deeper. I try to limit how excessive I get with the telling, which has a bad tendency at times to show up.

Aside from that, Yumi's gaining more of her confidence in fighting and its starting to become a little more like how Saki approaches fighting. The fast takedown. Yumi is not like Seiji and somewhat like Yuki that enjoy testing their limits and seeing what they can do. Yuki had a part of him like that, it's part of that buried element of him in his past that sometimes surfaces. Though, he's generally not run across people that really allow for that sort of attitude. Ironically, though also intentionally, the only one that really has is Saki. Something I did on purpose because Saki is the opposite, not one to flaunt powers or waste time. Yumi is still more moldable than Saki in how she approaches fighting. Her character arc will naturally define that though.

Enjoy!