Honestly, considering he's taken a whole month off and still wrote some stuff up for an update anyway, I'm not really mad about the size of the update. And apparently some of the WIP scenes will be updated later in the month anyway.
And the lizard story line is one of the main storylines that had been teased a long while back, so I'm fine with focusing on it for now. That seems to be the trend with the updates, to focus on one story for a while and then shifting gears and working on a different one. It makes the game a bit unfocused, but it's probably more efficient than working on all of the plotlines at the same time.
I do have a theory though that Hyao may be reluctant to continue some of the main storylines without the main artist, ZoroJ, on board. There has been approximately nothing added to the Orc plot ever since ZoroJ left, for example. Even though officially Hyao had said that it didn't affect the course of the development, I think it did interfere with some of the plans. Though I guess at this rate Narram will eventually take over as the artist for the major Orc characters as he has now for the Lizards.
BTW, concerning the new update, are Barrel interactions only available for a sub/bottom MC? The interactions I do have as a Top player, from what I've seen, do not raise affection with him nor add him to the relation log.