Solo Leveling (Episode 10) – What Is This, a Picnic?

Jinho has a load of C-ranked dungeons lined up for his new team to hit. Which, of course, means the six other people sit around and wait for Jinwoo to kill everything while Jinho collects the valuable ores.
Solo Leveling (Episode 10) – What Is This, a Picnic?
What happened?
After the incident with Taeshik, Office Woo told Jinwoo that while he didn’t believe that he could have killed Taeshik, he needed to warn him that an S-ranked Hunter was after him. Just the fact that Jinwoo and Jinho survived the dungeon where Hwang Dongsuk died means that his brother will come for them and there’s very little anyone can do to stop an S-ranked Hunter. Woo’s advice was to run and hide. Of course, that’s not what Jinwoo is going to do. He’s going to get stronger and stronger until even an S-ranked Hunter isn’t a threat to him. However, Joohee has had enough. She told Jinwoo that she was retiring and moving back in with her parents.
It’s a good job that Jinho has bought out the market on C-ranked dungeons so that he and Jinwoo can clear them as quickly as possible. To do that, he’s hired six other Hunters, all of whom have injuries or other issues that make it hard for them to work. He’s paying them to wait outside the gate while he and Jinwoo go inside and clear it. There’s a certain amount of scepticism from the Hunters, but since they’ve already been paid, it’s an easy job, even if Jinwoo and Jinho don’t come back. However, they cleared the first dungeon in less than an hour, which means it’s on to the next one. They’re planning on hitting three-a-day!



Unfortunately, when Jinho purchased the rights to all the C-ranked dungeons at over-the-top rates, he left the other guilds with nothing to do. So, they started to look into why someone was paying over the odds for C-ranked dungeons. Ahn Sangmin of the White Tiger Guild recognised Jinwoo’s name on the registration sheet for each of the dungeons and assumed that Jinwoo must have had a second awakening and decided to check things out, maybe even acquire a promising new rookie! However, when he got to the gate, he was stunned to see six hunters having a picnic. It was even better than he could have imagined. Jinwoo must be in there clearing the dungeons alone.
Sangmin waited for Jinwoo to finish and then approached him hoping to hire him for the White Tiger Guild. He even offered Jinwoo twice what Jinho was paying him. However, when he found out how much that was, he had to change his tune. Jinwoo went to leave, stopping briefly to ask how he found out. Before Sangmin could answer Jinwoo vanished. Then, a tiny cut appeared on his cheek. He realised that Jinwoo had acquired the skill Stealth and explained how he figured it out. Once Sangmin had finished talking, Jinwoo reappeared and offered him the chance to buy three of the C-ranked dungeons at a fairly high price. Sangmin offered lower, but still well above the going rate. Jinwoo accepted. The next day, Sangmin found out that Jinwoo had tricked him into overpaying, although he got Jinwoo’s contact details out of it so felt it was a fair trade.



What did you think?
It was another good episode, however, I need to talk about Jinho. If Jinho hopes to become a guild master, he needs to find a way to increase his intelligence stats by a lot. Buying up all the C-ranked dungeons at an inflated price is going to be noticed by everyone. Then, once they’ve noticed that, they’ll look at your party and it won’t take long to see that there are a lot of question marks, especially if you’re clearing three-a-day. I understand that they need to hurry, but if Sangmin worked it out, I’m willing to bet that other guilds will make the same assumptions. I feel like Jinwoo is going to have a little chat with him once he’s back from his job-change quest, whatever that is! I’m already excited and I have no idea.
This episode also made a point of showing what a Hunter can do in the real world. So far, we’ve mostly seen them using their skills in the dungeon or in training. However, seeing Jinwoo use Stealth in the cafe to scare Sangmin made me realise that a Hunter could quite easily go wild. They are like superhumans wandering around among the regular people. If they wanted to be evil they could do a lot of damage before anyone stopped them, and in the case of Hwang Dongsu there isn’t anyone who realistically could. The entire world is balanced on a knife’s edge. Let’s hope Jinwoo can keep things together mentally or he could realise Taeshik’s warning about staring into the abyss. This series really is getting better and better.

Episode highlights





Other posts in the series
Series Information
English Title | Solo Leveling |
Japanese Title | Ore dake Level Up na Ken |
Genres | Action, Adventure, Fantasy |
Demographic | Seinen |
Manwha
Series | Solo Leveling | ||
Author | Chugong | ||
Artist | Dubu | ||
Volumes | Ongoing | Chapters | Webtoon Chapters |
1 | The Weakest Hunter of All Mankind | 1-3 | 1-12 |
2 | The Lizards | 3-5 | 13-26 |
3 | Job-Change Quest | 6-8 | 27-44 |
4 | Unless You’re An S-Rank! | 9-10 | 45-63 |
5 | May I Kill All of These Magic Beasts? | 11-13 | 64-81 |
6 | I’d Lost My Cool Too! | 14-17 | 82-97 |
7 | Everything Will Be Fine! | 18-21 | 98-110 |
8 | One-Man Guild! | 22-24 | 111-122 |
9 | It Was War! | 25-27 | 123-134 |
Anime
Season One

Hmmm. I’ve been so focused on Jinwoo’s behavior that I didn’t think about Jinho’s. If he wants to be a guild master, he’ll need to be able to hold his own with other guild masters, and drawing too much attention to their doings early on is not wise. I don’t think they were making *that* big of a splash in the raw number of overall dungeons, but they hogged too many of the lower ranked dungeons and at far too high of a price, especially with so little profit coming out of it just yet. There are so many things happening at every level around the dungeons and the hunters that everything hangs in precarious balance, which can never last that long but certainly isn’t helped when the new kids on the scene start making a ruckus.
Agreed. He needs to be smarter with his actions, especially given the sensitive nature of Jinwoo’s abilities. He should have taken a slower approach and kept his bids more reasonable. No one would have cared too much about another guild joining in, but there’s no way that only one guild picked up on his buying up all the C-ranked dungeons at over the going rate. I think they can expect more guilds to come see what they’re up to. Not the ideal start for the kid. Hope he does better next time.
Kind of the least exciting episode though I understand the need to show closure of Joohee realising she’s not the main heroine (which the term is already applied to the real one with obvious hints so far) of this story. Her retiring from the Hunters scene makes sense though I can understand the fans feeling disappointed whom they view her character’s portrayal is a bit more interesting than the other female characters of this series.
Also, this episode showcased that Jinwoo isn’t a pushover anymore. I admit Jinho could’ve bought those dungeon rights a bit discreetly even if he’s desperate to bring results to his dad that he’s capable of establishing his own guild. Then again with Jinho’s carelessness, we get to see Jinwoo is serious about keeping his “leveling up powers” being the ‘best kept secret ‘type.
As for the “job change” quest, it’s obviously gonna be another action-packed episode this week, seeing how Jinwoo is starting to see his task of given such quest interesting rather than the feeling of apprehensive.
I was sad to see Joohee go, but I also understand her reasons for doing so. I loved the shot when they showed her walking away. She seemed so tall and delicate unlike Jinwoo who is now build like a tank!
Jinwoo mentioned how he needed to add more of his stat points to intelligence to allow him to cast more spells, so it made sense that he would become smarter with other things too.
I’m so excited for this one because all of his lone quests have been exciting so far, and this one only became available once he reached a certain level. I hope this series continues for many more seasons.