I guess this series has always grappled with people really not liking when it spends time on other characters, like the students here or on the heroes before. I never really minded that too much, like in Overlord my favorite volumes are 7 or 12. Think it helps keep things fresh seeing from another perspective as long as the characters are relatively important, though I guess we haven't really seen any reason to care too much about the students besides the sisters so far.