I actually agree 100% with everything you mentioned. You worded all my issues much better than I could have! After catching up with the current build in one sitting like you did, I walked away with the same feeling of "I want more, but conflicted."
There was just one other thing that I felt should be brought up. The MC reaction to beastmen. He admits he has like zero experience of how the "real world" reacts to things. Its the whole point of him going out of his home town. However he has this deep rooted fear that all beastmen, except for the ones in his town, are completely hostile to humans. He admits nothing really happens to his town because it was so isolated. Yet somehow he has this impression beastmen just continue to raid and pillage human settlements. If his own personal experience with beastmen were those that were non-violent and even likeable in his hometown, when he first meets a beastmen that is of the same mindset (Val)... why is he so distrustful and really an ass to him? Yes the bandit scene happens before hand and thus roots the fear in, but I feel like that shouldn't have been enough to overwrite his own personal experience when meeting his only second person outside of his town. First one is the bandit, second Val. Val being the good guy that aligned with his own experiences... I feel like he wouldn't be so distrustful to have run away? I mean carried him away by basically bridal style run through the forests, hunts him dinner, takes first watch, and listened to and accepted any requests from the MC. That is like soap opera material that would have been flooded with a bunch of meme's saying "I'd ship that".
Something like both interactions with the bandit happens in 1 sitting. before Val takes the MC too far he struggles with being held gets let go and runs away from Val only to run into the bandit who's still chasing them. After that then the campfire scene happens. Granted the MC would be very injured at this point, it would give the story a location on when Val patched up his injuries. It was glossed over with the interaction in the inn, but its mentioned Val did a lot of the patching up and the innkeeper took over from there. The concussion could explain the lack of memories and possible distrust still of Val. But like you said the first 3 chapters were almost rushed.
Now excuse my wall of text as I tried to explain my thinking. I ended up loving the story so I stayed to the end and eagerly wait for more. Such an interesting take of the "human lost in a world of beastmen" genre. What started that fear? It sounded like the MC expected the world to be most human civilization with his deep fear of interacting with beastmen? Since why would he leave the town if he expects all beastmen outside of a few to be so aggressive? He must have expected all major cities etc to be mostly human?