[Shinji103]

Originally Posted by Ice Block

Which is? You are familiar with the events in the World War 3 arc, right? The only cliffhangers there that aren't addressed in the new book's spoilers are Fiamma's fate with Ollerus and Sylvia (who I hope would get the screentime that's usually for Touma while he's gone ) and Laura Stuart's plan to take down AC. Everything regarding Touma's character was pretty much resolved (even the memory loss). He broke Accelerator's illusions on Heroes and Villains and Fiamma's illusions on "saving the world", and his importance to Aleister Crowley's plan was even given a little focus. Of course, because of this importance, his return is pretty much guaranteed. New Testament is a new beginning of sorts, kinda like the world rebuilding after the world war, and Kamachi did mention in Volume 22's epilogue that the next book will be about "the world that has been saved".

No cliffhanger? Then where is he? Disappearing with no idea as to what happened to him sounds like a cliffhanger to me.
You yourself also just stated that his role in Aleister's plan was given a "little" focus; what about the rest of his role?

And you are familiar with Volume 15 and 19, right? Touma is not even mentioned in 15, and is only mentioned in passing in 19. And you do know that Touma is not the only main character, right? There are three main characters (see the Three_Heroes MAD I posted in the video thread, and Volume 22 afterword). Not one of them holds importance over the other, and you cannot single one out as being more "main" than the rest, as they all follow different paths that sometimes intertwine. The story can stand on its own without Touma for a while. This universe is massive, and there are lots of characters and plot threads that are influenced by the loss of this one trump card of sorts. I bet Kamachi would want to capitalize on this first before reintroducing him physically to the plot.

-10 points for missing everything that I said in my previous posts.
Yes Touma isn't the only main character, as I specifically said myself in my immediately previous post, but he's the main character, not a main character. There's a reason Accelerator and Shiage have less main character focus than Touma overall. That would be because Toaru Index is mainly about Touma. Plenty of other anime/manga/light novels have shifted focus to another character as the main for an arc, but the main main character doesn't change.

He also stopped Mikoto in Volume 16. And he also stopped her from saving him in 22. Touma also stopped Index from getting involved in the Daihaseisai and Volume 16, and he also tried to stop Itsuwa from going against Acqua.

Um, there's a couple things you're doing wrong here. First, in volume 16 he didn't stop her; she just didn't follow him of her own accord. (one of the dumb-ly executed moments where Mikoto should have been involved but didn't) The most he said was for her to go home; he didn't make any effort at all to stop her from coming with him besides that one single, short line. She just chose not to go after him. (again, I found this incredibly dumb)
Second, in volume 22, how does stopping her from saving him = stopping her from getting involved at all? Those were different circumstances.
On the Index part, I suppose that's true, but then again that's a whole different thing from Mikoto because Index doesn't (consciously) have the high attack power Mikoto has. (i.e. she can't blow stuff up with a railgun) So naturally he'd worry about her getting hurt in the fight.
Itsuwa is always getting in on the action.
But all of that is beside my point; even if Touma was actively trying to stop them, there' really nothing he could do to succeed in stopping them if they want to help him fight. He's not going to knock them unconscious or anything; if they didn't keep choosing for themselves not to fight (which, again, is stupid), then there would be nothing he could do to stop them. So Touma's not the reason Mikoto and Index don't get more action; the author keeps shafting them on that. Again, I refer to volume 16 where Mikoto goes completely out of character and doesn't follow him to the fight. This is Mikoto we're talking about; she sees someone in trouble, she helps them. All the more so there, where she first acknowledged that she was in love with him. Not only did Touma give little to no resistance against her trying to help him fight, but the novel gave no reason for why she didn't go after him. The novel only pointed out why she didn't stop him.