Solo Leveling (Episode 9) – You’ve Been Hiding Your Skills
Inside the dungeon, they come to a three-way fork and decide to split up. Jinwoo can tell which way the boss is, so he goes that way with Song and Joohee. Kim and Jeongho take another route, while Taeshik takes the prisoners.
Solo Leveling (Episode 9) – You’ve Been Hiding Your Skills
What happened?
The main monsters in this dungeon appeared to be goblins and everyone was making quick work of them. Song even noticed that Jinwoo had killed a number of them and Joohee was more surprised that she hadn’t needed to heal him yet. It was all a bit too easy. Then, they came to a three-way fork and since the dungeon was this easy, they decided to split up. Jinwoo could sense the boss and said he’d like to take that path. Song and Joohee went with him. Kin and Jeongho took the middle path, leaving Taeshik and the criminals with the third path.
As they continued further into the dungeon, Kim told Jeongho that he was going to apologise to Jinwoo when they got out. He knew that he would probably never accept it, but he had to do it. They all did. Then, they emerged onto an opening on the path and found Taeshik standing over the bodies of the criminals. He had been contacted by the father of the girl that they had assaulted. She took her life and his wife was hospitalised due to the shock. He wanted those men to die for what they did, but since they were hunters, they would be released early if they helped with dungeons. Taeshik had taken the job to kill the criminals, however, he didn’t want money. He just wanted to kill people.
Jinwoo heard a scream and turned back, followed by Song and Joohee. They found the criminals and the bodies of Jeongho and Kim. Joohee tried to heal Kim, but it was too late. Kim apologised to Jinwoo, who was furious as he needed Kim to be alive so that he had someone to be mad at for abandoning him in the temple. Then, Taeshik revealed himself as the killer and told them they were next. Song tried to fight him, but he was a rank lower, missing an arm, and using a sword when he was a mage. Joohee kept healing him, but she was struggling to cope.
Then, as Taeshik closed in for the kill Jinwoo jumped in. Taeshik accused him of hiding his level, but he noticed how surprised Song and Joohee were, so maybe he’d had a second awakening. Either way, he was no match for him, at least, that’s what Taeshik thought. Jinwoo managed to cut Taeshik’s face with his dagger, poisoning him. That wasn’t enough to bring him down, however, as he then used a skill that made him invisible. He sliced one of Jinwoo’s Achilles tendons and prepared to move in for the kill. However, Jinwoo used a full heal and commented that the system had identified Taeshik as a threat and now he had to kill him. Jinwoo completely overwhelmed him. Before Taeshik died, he warned Jinwoo of the dark future before him. Once outside, Song took responsibility for killing Taeshik.
What did you think?
And the action is back! Now, that was a thrilling episode. I loved the fight between Jinwoo and Taeshik was the unashamed player-killer type. However, the fact that the person asking for people to be killed was referring to the criminals opens up another question that this episode did not answer. And that is why were all the survivors (minus one) from the temple there. It’s too much of a coincidence for it to have just happened to be that way. Taeshik definitely didn’t plan it, because he didn’t recognise Jinwoo at first. So, what is going on there?
Other than that, there’s not really that much else to talk about. The fight was amazing and I loved how it showed Song realising what Jinwoo had been through, but that’s going to sustain an entire paragraph of analysis… The most notable thing was that Jinwoo acquired Taeshik’s skill when he killed him – Stealth. Again, it was a great fight. Did I mention that the fight was entertaining? Anyhow, this series continues to get better and better, so hopefully, there will be some sort of announcement regarding its continuation soon! It had better be soon!
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 |
| 1 | The Weakest Hunter of All Mankind |
| 2 | The Lizards |
Anime
Season One
So, we were all right that something was very wrong, but we all wrong in exactly what it was. It’s possible that the gathering of double-dungeon survivors was a red herring. As a trick, it worked brilliantly.
Yeah, they got us good with that one, although I refuse to believe them all teaming up again is a coincidence. Something else is going on!
Our hero will need to create a team where every member understands how powerful he is and agrees not to tell.
Absolutely, there’s no way he can do this alone with being noticed by the Hunter’s Association and if that happens, they are going to have a lot of questions and probably look to take him down since he doesn’t follow the rules. I think we’re already seeing a nucleus of that team with Jinho, Joohee, and Song.
To think this episode is worth the wait as last one was lots of expositions though I appreciate the team adding original scenes’ important facts of Jeju Island being an unsuccessful mission & some of the survivors’ feelings in coping the aftermath of such traumatic experience. Speaking about coincidence, I speculate the author (though actual thanks to the late Jang Sung-rak for adapting this scene) wanted to showcase that a karmic death isn’t one to be celebrated especially when the victim actually felt remorseful about what awful thing he did unlike the greedy Hwang & his team raid. I like how they portray Jinwoo’s emotional state in this episode, including his reaction to Kim showing a bit of his old self’s emotions.
Once again, I would still enjoy this episode even if I’ve never read the source material at all. I like how the production staff for this episode animated the important parts of the fight between Kang Taeshik (which is well done by seiyuu Kouki Uchiyama even if it’s just a cameo role) & Jinwoo. Hopefully with the series’ spinoff being ongoing, I don’t see a reason why Solo Leveling can’t have a complete anime adaptation. I love how the writing department improved in this version even though I must not expect that the side characters, especially the female ones, be written with the same depth as Jinwoo. This is still a protagonist-centric story and a rare occasion that I don’t mind it being that way.
Yeah, the episode was a lot of fun. I loved how they showed that Kim was sorry about what he did and intended to apologise to Jinwoo whether he accepted it or not, and then, how that made his death that much more memorable. We saw Jinwoo getting angry because he needed to think that Kim was a monster who abandoned him, even if he knew he was looking out for his own family. Things like this are far more interesting that Taeshik’s apparent need to murder because he likes it. There’s room for that, because the world is like that sometimes, but there needs to be balance and I think they achieved that with Kim and Taeshik, and Hwang’s team.
I need to know more about the Jeju island incident. Presumably, they weren’t to defeat the dungeon which means monsters can just come into this world. So, what’s keeping them from spreading from the island? Don’t say anything if you know, I’m just pointing out that I’m looking forward to finding these things out.