Solo Leveling (Volume 9) – It Was War!

The appearance of an S-ranked Gate had Japan in a panic, especially after losing so many S-ranked hunters on Jeju Island. They needed a World-ranked Hunter, but those cost a lot of money and were hard to find. Who will save them?
Solo Leveling (Volume 9) – It Was War!
What happened?
The Japanese guilds were already in a power struggle after Jeju Island and they didn’t plan on losing any more S-ranked Hunters to the S-ranked Gate, so the Japanese Hunter’s Association turned to Yuri Orlov, an S-ranked Hunter who could create powerful barriers. He offered to block the gate for as long as they needed for ten million dollars a day… With nowhere else to turn, they accepted his offer. Meanwhile, they had also sent someone to Korea in the hopes of gaining an audience with Jinwoo, and they were prepared to pay for that opportunity.
Before they had the chance, the location of the location of Cartenon’s Temple was revealed and it was at Jinah’s school. The gate had been open for three days and was already close to breaking when Jinwoo got there. He hurried inside and found the Hunters tackling the gate standing before the door to the double dungeon. He warned them about going inside and then entered alone. Inside, he found the same room where it had all begun. However, this time, he noticed that the statues were merely puppets being controlled by a single entity, the statue holding the rules.



The figure revealed itself to be the architect of the system and that is was time for Jinwoo’s final test. If he survives, the architect will reveal everything to him. If he dies, he dies. And since this was a test for Jinwoo, his shadow army was not allowed to assist him. Meanwhile, Orlov’s barrier had been erected around the S-ranked Gate in Japan. They watched as the first monsters emerged from the gate and were shocked to see giants. The lowest-ranking magical beasts in the S-ranked gate were giants. Then, another came out, bigger than anything anyone had seen before and destroyed Orlov’s barrier and then ate him.
Jinwoo continued to battle the architect’s puppets, showing just how much he had grown. However, once they were all defeated, Jinwoo discovered that he would also need to defeat the architect, or at least, this version of it. Jinwoo surpassed the architect’s expectations and was duly shown the story that brought them here. The magical beasts were in a war with an army of silver-armoured beings and were being slaughtered. However, the Shadow Monarch joined the battle and turned the tide until he was betrayed by the demon monarch, Balan. That was when Jinwoo realised that a second heart had appeared in his body – the Shadow Monarch’s heart. He had been selected to be the vessel for the Shadow Monarch’s return.



Outside of the vision Jinwoo was being shown, other S-ranked Hunters had entered Cartenon’s Temple and were struggling to handle the architect and its puppets. Luckily, Jinwoo managed to snap out of it and return in time to save the remaining Hunters. The architect was stunned to see that Jinwoo had retained his consciousness and not become the Shadow Monarch completely. Jinwoo revealed that he had devoured the system and was ready for what came next. He destroyed the architect and then emerged from the Double Dungeon unscathed. However, many S-ranked Hunters died and then Jinwoo passed out shortly after exiting.
It was three days until Jinwoo woke up and discovered the horrors that had emerged from the S-ranked Gate in Japan. After discussing the situation with Jinho, they agreed to go to Japan to fight the monsters and close the gate. It wouldn’t be easy, but the impact on their guild’s reputation would be incredible.



What did you think?
It was incredible to see Jinwoo returning to Cartenon’s Temple and facing the architect, however, I feel like we’ve reached the limit of seeing Jinwoo’s power growth and are desperately in need of some sort of other growth. Sure, he’s really strong and he can crush stuff with his hands, but that’s getting old. There’s no finesse to the battles and since we’ve seen Jinwoo overcome everything with the same fighting style there isn’t quite the same impact anymore. It was fun and exciting as he was growing. His journey from weakling to being overpowered was exciting, but now we need more. I’m worried that his trip to Japan will be more of the same where he just pounds on the magical beasts until they are no more.
That’s even more of a problem since we know that they aren’t intentionally attacking the humans. The system is making them and it would appear that the system was designed to revive the Shadow Monarch. We still need to find out how this fits into the war with the silver-armoured beings and how this impacts Earth. Has this whole thing just been a way to revive the Shadow Monarch? And how did Jinwoo devour the system? That feels like a leap in logic that needs an explanation. There are a lot of answers still floating around that we need to see and I feel like that’s where this series should be headed rather than Jinwoo doing his best impression of Hulk Smash! I am still enjoying this series, but it does need to evolve now. It grabbed our attention with the way Jinwoo’s power grew and now we need to see what that means.



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

I think Solo Leveling being able to be interesting stopped for me at this Return to Carthenon Temple arc. And yes, this should be expected as the usual power fantasy story, but like you said, the mystery writing elements could’ve been hinted clearer or maybe more in the midst of the “leveling up” visual presentation. That’s probably why I felt underwhelmed on how the last few arcs present itself later on.
As for devouring the System, I think it’s a figure of speech since the Shadow Monarch’s heart is inside Jinwoo and that is the catalyst to lock the Architect out from the admin. It’s a good read while it lasted, but for the mystery storytelling elements could’ve been presented better or go in another direction.
…which I’ve been learning to make my own future story arcs that hopefully will emphasized some logic and not get confusing though may it be a bare minimum when that happens.
I’ve always found one of the best ways to learn is to work out why something didn’t excite you in a story and make sure you don’t do the same thing, so this makes perfect sense. Keep it up.
I’m inclined to agree. This was the first time that I felt underwhelmed at the end of one of the volumes. It had done a great job of building and building, but I don’t think the pay off worked or wasn’t big enough. Previously, I’ve been very keen to grab the next volume, but now I don’t feel any sort of hurry. I’ll get to it when I do, which is not what you want from a series.