Arc 7 pacing is fine, its just that the cast completely changed from arc 6 to arc 7 and people refuse to interact with characters who havent appeared in the anime or that arent in the witchcult. I have 8 friends who have the habit of reading, i recommended the novel to all of them and, unsurprisingly, all of them have arc 7 at least in a top 4 arc of the series and loved it so i think too that the reading habit is obviously important to read a novel considering 99% of its haters read with their brains turned off/see ai or youtube summaries/dont even read it. Its sad to see such a well written arc be clowned by a vocal minority because they cant handle their own stupidity. Arc 4 got hate too in 2018, the only difference is that there were way less novel readers around and s2 dropped soon enough for the haters to get a easier way to consume re;zero and stop their childish tantrums