A tall young man in a long dark coat stands alone on the threshold of a vast, mossy, torch-lit stone temple, his shadow pooling at his feet, looking down the hall at a colossal seated stone statue.
The Cartenon Temple again, four volumes on: the man who nearly died here as the weakest hunter alive comes back alone.

Solo Leveling · Volume 5 · Yen Press, August 2022

Volume 5

From the orcs hunting humans at his sister’s school to the temple where it all began: the Architect, and the Black Heart.

Solo Leveling, Volume 5 (Yen On, August 2022; 272 pages, translated by Hye Young Im and J. Torres) is the hinge of Chugong’s novel. It opens with monsters hunting humans at Jinah Sung’s high school, turns Jinwoo Sung from Korea’s tenth S-rank into a man the law has to bend around, and then sends him back, alone, to the Cartenon Temple of Volume 1 to meet the being who built the System. The back cover asks one question, in capitals: “WHO AM I?”

Ten chapters run from “Hunting Humans” to “His Resolve”, roughly the web novel’s episodes 136 to 164 by our estimate. The telling is third person and mostly close on Jinwoo, but Chugong keeps cutting away to the people watching him: the orcs, two gossiping association staffers, an emergency-line operator, a cocky rookie, and parts of the volume seen through the eyes of Jinchul Woo and Haein Cha. It ends with Tokyo overrun and Jinwoo’s mind made up.

This page summarises the whole volume, ending included. Only Yen Press’s first chapter could be read directly; the rest rests on the publisher’s copy, readers’ reviews and one reader’s chapter outline of the novel, and the fan wiki, and where the webtoon tells it differently the page follows the novel and says so in the notes below.

Part 1

Hunting Humans

Volume 4 left Jinwoo with a guild that is barely more than himself and Jinho Yoo, and a System reward he cannot use yet: a key to the double dungeon where it all started. Until its gate opens he has time to kill. Volume 5 does not begin with him at all. It begins on the far side of a gate, with the monsters:

“Orcs were natural-born predators.”

They have been holding their breath inside for a whole week. When they come out it is into a high school in Seoul, Jinah’s school, and they push aside the bodies of the boys in their way and sniff the air. Their leader settles on the safer course: deal with the humans in this “castle”, make it their fortress, then go out and hunt. The chapter is called “Hunting Humans”, and it means exactly that.

Jinwoo is at the other end of the country. In Busan a huge gate has opened on the Knights Guild’s turf; the Busan branch of the Hunter’s Association has barricaded the area, and the crowd keeps growing. Two association employees, a jaded supervisor and an eager trainee, gossip that an S-rank hunter from Seoul is on his way; half these people came for the gate, the supervisor reckons, and half for him. A young man asks to get by. They step aside without a glance and go back to boasting about the Fame Guild hunters they once met. Chugong lets the reader work out who just walked between them.

The Knights Guild has no S-rank, is often underestimated, and needs this raid to show the public it is still a force; losing these hunters would finish it. Its president, Jongsu Park, a tank and one of the strongest A-ranks, greets Jinwoo nearly in tears, which tells Jinwoo how much is riding on the day. Jinwoo feels the gate’s extraordinary mana and grins. The strike squad’s main healer, Yerim Jung, whose idea it was to invite him, shoos her colleagues off him and introduces herself. Park will lead the raid; Jinwoo is there as insurance, for half the profits. A newly recruited A-rank rookie objects to all of it: “do the elite members of the Knights Guild seem that weak to you?”

Jinwoo answers by summoning Igris, the knight in black armour. The rookie backs straight into another shadow; Fang and a few knight-rank soldiers rise after it, and the young man’s legs give out. Jinwoo, feeling bad enough for him already, holds off on summoning Beru, waves the soldiers away and offers a hand: “Do you understand now?”

Inside, the System announces that he has entered the dungeon, the passages are vast, and the first ogre swings a club made from an uprooted tree. Park takes it on his shield, Vice President Yoontae Jung skids back from a kick, and the brute goes down without a scratch on any of them; Park hopes the guest is impressed enough to join. In Seoul, meanwhile, the association’s emergency line takes a call from a sobbing girl at her school: one victim confirmed, the caller in hiding. The staffer on duty shudders at the thought: “Could there have been a dungeon break inside a school?” And deep in the Busan dungeon, Jinwoo feels the shadow soldiers he left guarding his sister begin to stir. He leaves Beru and a squad of ant soldiers (twenty, in one reader’s outline of the audiobook) to see the Knights Guild through, and goes.

Hulking tusked orcs crouch motionless in a pitch-dark stone passage at the mouth of a rift of cold blue light.
5 · 1 Natural-Born Predators The first page belongs to the monsters. Inside a dungeon whose gate has opened in a Seoul high school, Jinah’s school, a band of orcs has waited, holding its breath, for a whole week. When they step out they push aside the bodies of the boys in their way and sniff the air for more. Chugong tells it from their side, which is why the chapter’s title, “Hunting Humans”, lands so hard.
Two men in dark official windbreakers chat at a police barricade while a calm young man slips between them, a vast rift of blue light hanging over the street behind.
5 · 2 Excuse Me Busan, the same morning. A huge gate has opened on the Knights Guild’s turf, and at the Association’s barricade a jaded supervisor and an eager trainee gossip that an S-rank hunter from Seoul is on his way. A young man asks to get by; they step aside without looking and go back to boasting about the Fame Guild. The reader is left to work out who just walked between them.
A cheerful young woman in a long healer’s coat elbows a crowd of armoured hunters aside and holds out her hand to a calm young man, a broad-shouldered man in bronze armour looking on.
5 · 3 The Main Healer The Knights Guild has no S-rank and needs this raid to prove it still matters; its president, Jongsu Park, a tank among the strongest A-ranks, greets Jinwoo nearly in tears. When the elite squad swarms him with questions about Jeju, the healer whose idea it was to invite him pushes them back: “I’m Yerim Jung, the main healer of the elite strike squad of the Knights Guild.”
A cocky young hunter sits sprawled on the ground beneath a looming dark knight and a hooded orc shaman made of smoke, while a calm young man in a long coat holds out his hand to him.
5 · 4 Do You Understand Now? A newly recruited A-rank wants to know why his guild needs protecting and why the protection gets half the profits. Jinwoo answers by summoning Igris, the knight in black armour; the rookie backs into another shadow, then Fang and a few knight-rank soldiers rise, and his legs give out. Jinwoo, feeling sorry enough for him to hold off on Beru, holds out a hand: “Do you understand now?”
A tired woman in a headset sits frozen at her desk in a dark call centre, one hand pressed to her earpiece, her face lit by a screen.
5 · 5 Inside a School Seoul, while the Knights Guild fights its way into the Busan dungeon. The Association’s emergency line takes a call from a sobbing girl hiding at her school, with one victim already confirmed, and the staffer on duty shudders: “Could there have been a dungeon break inside a school?” Far away in the Busan dungeon, Jinwoo feels the shadow soldiers he left guarding his sister begin to stir.
Part 2

To the Rescue

The orcs turn the school into a killing ground; one reader of the novel says they slaughter nearly all the students, and others single it out as the volume’s most gruesome scene. They are not raiding at random. The orcs hear a command, from nowhere they can see, to kill humans, and their chief, Groctar, singles out Jinah. What stands between her and him is the shadow soldiers her brother hid in her shadow, which rise to guard her.

Jinwoo reaches the school and, in the publisher’s words, the break is “quickly taken care of”. In the doing he learns something the back cover turns into the volume’s question. Magic beasts no longer register him as a human. The orcs came out hunting humans, and whatever he is now, they do not count him among them. Jinah lives, along with the students and teachers he gets out, and readers say she is left traumatized by what she saw. In Busan, the Knights Guild clears its gate with Jinwoo’s ants.

A schoolgirl stands pressed against the back wall of a wrecked classroom while soldiers of black smoke rise from her shadow between her and the huge dark shape of an orc in the doorway.
5 · 6 The Shadows in Her Shadow Jinah’s school. The orcs have turned it into a killing ground, driven, readers say, by a command they hear from nowhere, and their chief, Groctar, has picked her out. What stands in his way is the shadow soldiers her brother hid in her shadow, rising to guard her. The precaution Jinwoo took is now the only thing keeping her alive.
A calm young man in a long dark coat stands in a dim school corridor, his shadow spreading like ink, as a huge orc stops short in front of him, staring.
5 · 7 Who Am I? Jinwoo reaches the school and deals with the break quickly, and in the doing learns something unsettling: magic beasts no longer register him as a human. The orcs came out hunting humans and do not count him among them. Jinah lives, though readers say she is left traumatized. The back cover makes the discovery the volume’s question, in capitals: “WHO AM I?”
Part 3

The One-Man Law

After the school, Gunhee Go, President of the Hunter’s Association, sits down with Jinwoo. Other countries want Korea’s tenth S-rank. What Jinwoo asks for, in exchange for staying, is the right to raid dungeons alone, legally, and readers of the novel report that the new law follows: a country rewrites its rules for one man rather than watch him leave. His guild, by now official, has a name, Ahjin, his sister’s name turned around. It has three members, Jinwoo, Jinho as vice president and Jinho’s cousin Suhyun, an actress, and no staff at all, not even a receptionist, a thinness readers of the novel were quick to notice.

The third chapter is “Jinchul Woo’s Point of View”. Jinchul, chief of the Association’s surveillance team, has known Jinwoo since the E-rank days, and the chapter puts him alongside Ahjin’s first official raid, on an A-rank gate: a naga nest. What he watches is less a guild clearing a dungeon than an army on the move. The boss, a naga, dies and rises again as Jima, one more of Jinwoo’s soldiers. Jinwoo, already at level 100 since Jeju, reaches 101 here, and his job-exclusive skills level up with him; one reader calls it a major upgrade.

An upright white-haired old man in a dark suit leans across a broad desk toward a calm young man sitting back in a leather chair, late sun slanting through the window.
5 · 8 The New Law After the school, Gunhee Go, President of the Hunter’s Association, sits down with Korea’s tenth S-rank while other countries court him. Jinwoo’s price for staying is the right to raid dungeons alone, legally, and readers of the novel report that the new law follows. A country rewrites its rules for one man because the alternative is watching him leave.
A broad man in sunglasses and a black suit watches from a cave mouth as a river of smoky soldiers pours past him into the dark, a lone figure in a long coat at their head.
5 · 9 Through Jinchul’s Sunglasses The chapter is “Jinchul Woo’s Point of View”, and it puts the Association’s surveillance chief alongside the newly named Ahjin Guild’s first official raid, on an A-rank gate. Jinchul has known Jinwoo since the E-rank days, when he was the weakest hunter on the books. What he watches now is less a guild clearing a dungeon than an army on the move.
In a dark flooded cavern a young man in a long coat stands over the coils of a dead serpent-man while its smoky black double rises from the water with glowing violet eyes.
5 · 10 The Naga Rises Ahjin’s first gate is a naga nest, and its boss is a naga. It dies, and Jinwoo raises it as Jima, one more soldier in his army, who will be fighting giants in the next volume. Jinwoo reaches level 101 here and his job-exclusive skills level up with him, a major upgrade, says one reader of the novel. The Association’s watcher has now seen what it is dealing with.
Part 4

Omens

A warning arrives from the dead. Byunggu Min, the healer the Ant King killed on Jeju, whose shadow Jinwoo raised just long enough to heal Haein Cha before letting him go, has a message for Jinwoo, and the back cover sums it up:

“Jinwoo’s powers are more frightening than he knows.”

It reaches him through Haein, the Hunters Guild’s S-rank swordswoman, who can smell other hunters’ mana and has never smelled it on him, and part of the volume is told from inside her head. The warning lands on a man who already has, in the publisher’s phrase, “too many questions and very few answers”. Jinwoo is determined to find out who, or what, he has become, and his last hope of an answer is the key.

Meanwhile an S-rank gate opens in Tokyo, in Shinjuku. Japan lost its strongest hunters on Jeju and has to look abroad, and with magic beasts stirring everywhere only one foreign S-rank answers: Russia’s Yuri Orlov, a barrier specialist, who comes to hold the gate with a barrier when it breaks.

A dark-haired woman in a slate-blue jacket speaks earnestly to a still young man in a bare room at dusk, while a faint figure of smoke and light hangs behind her shoulder.
5 · 11 A Message from the Dead Byunggu Min, the healer the Ant King killed on Jeju, whose shadow Jinwoo raised just long enough to heal Haein Cha, sends a warning from beyond the grave, and it reaches Jinwoo through her. The back cover puts it plainly: “Jinwoo’s powers are more frightening than he knows.” It lands on a man with “too many questions and very few answers”, determined now to find out who, or what, he has become.
A heavy-set man in a grey greatcoat stands on a rooftop at night with both hands raised toward a vast dome of pale light enclosing a towering rift of blue light among office towers.
5 · 12 The Gate over Shinjuku An S-rank gate opens in Tokyo, in Shinjuku. Japan lost its strongest hunters on Jeju, and with magic beasts stirring everywhere only one foreign S-rank answers the call: Russia’s Yuri Orlov, a barrier specialist, who comes to hold the gate with a barrier when the break comes. In the novel it comes during the temple chapters.
Part 5

Where It All Began

Then the key’s gate opens, and Jinwoo goes back alone to where it all began: the Cartenon Temple, the double dungeon where he nearly died as the weakest hunter alive and became the Player. The fifth chapter’s title pairs “the one trying to enter” with “the ones trying to leave”. Jinwoo is the one entering. The ones leaving are most likely the giants behind the gate in Shinjuku, for the novel breaks that gate in the middle of the temple chapters (in web-novel episode 155, five before the Rulers first appear, by the fan wiki’s citations): Orlov’s barrier is cut apart, a giant kills him, and giants walk out into the city.

The hall is as he left it: the vast dome, the torches, the ring of stone statues with their weapons, books and instruments, and the colossal seated statue of God. Last time the statues slaughtered the weak. This time they come for a man past level 100, and the fight goes the other way; in the middle of it his telekinetic skill reaches a new form. Then the one statue with wings, the one that held the stone slate of the temple’s laws in Volume 1, shows what it is: the Architect, the being who designed the System, and Jinwoo’s final test. One reader calls the fight the best thing in the volume. Jinwoo wins it.

In a vast mossy torch-lit temple a colossal seated stone statue leans forward with glowing red eyes while a lone young man in a long coat braces on the floor below.
5 · 13 Where It All Began The key’s gate opens and Jinwoo walks back alone into the Cartenon Temple, the double dungeon where he nearly died as the weakest hunter alive and became the Player. The dome, the torches, the ring of statues and the colossal seated statue of God are all as he left them. Last time the statues slaughtered the weak; this time they come for a man past level 100.
A towering winged angel of grey stone holding a blank slate rises from a broken plinth in a dusty temple hall while a young man with two daggers looks up at it.
5 · 14 The Architect In the middle of the fight Jinwoo’s telekinetic skill reaches a new form, and then the one winged statue, which in Volume 1 held the stone slate of the temple’s laws, shows what it is: the Architect, the being who designed the System, and Jinwoo’s final test in this place. One reader of the novel calls what follows the best fight in the volume.
A young man in a long coat is flung backwards across a temple hall by the sweep of a vast stone wing, stone fragments spraying around him.
5 · 15 Maker and Player The being who built the System fights the man it was built around, in the hall where the System first chose him. Jinwoo wins. The Architect, beaten, is delighted all the same, and one reader says why: he expects Jinwoo now to fall to the power he carries.
Part 6

Uninvited Guests

Beaten, the Architect is pleased all the same, because he expects Jinwoo to fall to the power he carries. He puts Jinwoo into a trance and waits for the Shadow Monarch to arrive in his body: the System, it turns out, was built to grow a vessel.

A party of hunters follows Jinwoo into the temple: Jinchul Woo; Jongin Choi, the fire mage who leads the Hunters Guild; and Haein. They were not invited, and the Architect makes them pay for it. Many die in the hall. Haein reaches Jinwoo where he stands, there in body and nowhere else, and tries to wake him. Asked why she came, she says it was to save him.

Three hunters, a broad man in sunglasses, a lanky man with fire kindling in his hand and a woman with a drawn sword, step through a temple’s great doorway as stone statues turn toward them.
5 · 16 Uninvited Guests The Architect puts the beaten Jinwoo into a trance and waits for the Shadow Monarch to arrive in his body. Meanwhile a party of hunters comes into the temple after him: Jinchul Woo; Jongin Choi, the fire mage who leads the Hunters Guild; and Haein. They were not invited, and the Architect makes them pay; many of them die in the hall.
A woman with a lowered sword grips the arm of a young man who stands motionless and empty-eyed in a dim temple, his shadow churning at his feet.
5 · 17 Why She Came Haein reaches Jinwoo where he stands, there in body and nowhere else, and tries to wake him. Asked why she came into the temple at all, she says it was to save him. In Volume 4 she admitted she liked him and he let it pass; this answer is harder to miss.
Part 7

The Black Heart

All the while, in the trance, Jinwoo has been seeing a war beyond Earth, winged soldiers against hordes of monsters, through the memories of the Shadow Monarch, and with them what the next volume’s back cover calls “the staggering power of the Shadow Monarch”. Then the Monarch does not do what the Architect planned. Instead of taking the body, he gives Jinwoo his heart: a second heart, black and beating, the chapter’s title. The Architect finds himself locked out of the System he designed.

Jinwoo wakes and destroys the stone angel. Crumbling, the Architect leaves him a prophecy: when the Monarchs come, Jinwoo will die at their hands. Jinwoo accepts it.

The aftermath is the novel at its quietest. Jinwoo saves everyone he still can. The surviving hunters step back, leave the rest to him, and smoke, eyes streaming, blaming the smoke. Jinwoo learns how many hunters died trying to get him out, and the book, one reader notes, stays with that count longer than the webtoon does.

Under a strange dark sky, ranks of winged silver soldiers sweep down out of the clouds onto a dark tide of monsters surging across a barren plain.
5 · 18 The War Beyond In the trance Jinwoo sees a war far from Earth, winged soldiers against hordes of monsters, through the memories of the Shadow Monarch, whose power he has been using all along. Readers single out the lore here: the fights of five volumes turn out to sit at the edge of a much larger plot, a war bigger than any gate.
A young man stands with his eyes closed and a hand pressed to his chest, where a dark heart glows violet, as a vast shadowy king bends over him out of the dark.
5 · 19 The Black Heart The Architect built the System to grow a vessel and expected its true owner to take it. Instead the Shadow Monarch gives Jinwoo his own heart, a second heart, black and beating, and the Architect finds himself locked out of the System he designed. The chapter is called “The Black Heart”; from here on Jinwoo carries two.
A towering stone angel, its face split and one wing broken off, sinks to its knees in rubble while a young man with a dagger looks down at it.
5 · 20 The Architect Falls Jinwoo wakes and destroys the stone angel. Crumbling, the Architect leaves him a prophecy: when the Monarchs come, Jinwoo will die at their hands. Jinwoo accepts it and turns back to the work. It is not an idle curse; Volume 7 will come to collect.
Two weary men sit on fallen masonry against a broken pillar, smoking, eyes wet, while far behind them a lone figure walks among toppled statues.
5 · 21 The Smoke Break The survivors step back, leave Jinwoo to sort out the rest, and smoke, eyes streaming, blaming the smoke; one reviewer of the novel singles the moment out. Jinwoo learns how many hunters died trying to get him out of the temple, and a reader who knows both versions says the novel stays with that loss longer than the webtoon does.
Part 8

Two Requests

By the time Jinwoo walks out of the temple, Tokyo has fallen. Giants roam Shinjuku and Japan’s government can do nothing; a reader who knows both versions says the novel’s Tokyo is harsher than the webtoon’s. Japan, still bleeding from Jeju, is on its own.

Two requests now come to Jinwoo. The first is from Chairman Myunghan Yoo of Yoojin Construction, Jinho’s father, sick with Eternal Slumber, the illness that kept Jinwoo’s mother asleep for years. In the chapter titled “Blank Check” he invites Jinwoo over and, by one reader’s outline, offers exactly that for the cure. Jinwoo has the Elixir of Life. Weighing how rare its ingredients are, he says no, and one reader of the novel faults him for leaving Jinho, his best friend, out of it entirely. It is a cold decision, and this volume lets it stand.

The second is from Japan, abandoned by everyone else and begging for help, with President Matsumoto of its hunters’ association making the case. Jinwoo says yes, and not out of pity. The argument readers have about this volume is mostly about this: he goes, one of them says, less for Japan’s dead than for the levels and the soldiers, and the next volume’s back cover has him itching to level up and sending his army against a whole S-rank dungeon of giants. The last chapter is “His Resolve”. The volume ends with his decision to go to Japan, on a cliffhanger.

Two colossal bearded giants in rough bronze armour wade down a broad avenue between glass towers, heads level with the upper floors, fires burning in the windows.
5 · 22 Giants in Shinjuku By the time Jinwoo walks out of the temple, Tokyo has fallen. Orlov’s barrier has been cut apart, a giant has killed him, and giants walk through Shinjuku while Japan’s government can do nothing. A reader who knows both versions says the novel’s Tokyo is harsher than the webtoon’s. Japan, still bleeding from Jeju, is on its own.
A gaunt grey-faced older man in a loose dark suit holds out a slip of paper from his armchair toward a young man who stands across the lamplit room, not answering.
5 · 23 Blank Check Chairman Myunghan Yoo of Yoojin Construction, Jinho’s father, is sick with Eternal Slumber, the illness that kept Jinwoo’s mother asleep for years. In the chapter named for it he offers Jinwoo a blank check for the cure. Jinwoo has the Elixir of Life. Weighing how rare its ingredients are, he says no, and a reader of the novel faults him for leaving Jinho out of it entirely.
A stiff grey-haired man in a grey suit bows his head before a desk where a stern old man sits upright, while a young man stands apart at the window.
5 · 24 Japan Asks Japan, abandoned by the rest of the world, comes begging, and President Matsumoto of its hunters’ association makes the case for hiring Jinwoo. Nobody else will go. Jinwoo, for his part, hardly needs persuading, and not for Japan’s sake: a whole S-rank dungeon’s worth of giants is a great many levels, and a great many soldiers.
A young man in a long coat stands at a rooftop parapet at night looking east across a dark city, ranks of smoky soldiers with violet eyes rising from his shadow behind him.
5 · 25 His Resolve The volume ends with Jinwoo’s decision made: he will go to Japan. Readers argue about why. Less for Tokyo’s dead, one says, than for the levels and the soldiers, and the next volume’s back cover agrees, with Jinwoo itching to level up and sending his army against an S-rank dungeon’s worth of giants. The last chapter is “His Resolve”, and it ends on a cliffhanger.

What the anime and webtoon took from this volume

  • The anime has not reached this volume. Season 2, Arise from the Shadow (January–March 2025), stops at the end of Jeju and the first recruiting offers that follow it, Volume 4 material, and no third season has been announced. A film, Solo Leveling: Beyond the System, was announced at Anime Expo in July 2026; which arc it adapts has not been stated.
  • The webtoon covers this volume in roughly chapters 116–133 by the fan wiki’s citations (the Busan gate at 116, the Double Dungeon arc to 131, Japan from 132); a novel reader puts it at about 118 to 135.
  • It reorders Tokyo. By the fan wiki’s chapter citations the novel breaks the Tokyo gate and kills Orlov in the middle of the temple chapters (web-novel episode 155, before the Rulers appear at 160); the webtoon holds Orlov’s death until just after the Architect’s (chapters 130–131). The webtoon also shows Haein’s dream of Byunggu early, around her guild test; where the novel first tells it, our sources do not say.
  • It compresses. Readers who know both say the webtoon hurries what the novel lingers on: the hunters who die in the temple, Jinwoo learning what his rescue cost, the giants in Shinjuku.
  • At the school and in Busan, both versions leave Beru and the ants with the Knights Guild, but only the webtoon, as far as our sources show, has Beru kill the boss, an Arch Lich, in one blow and out-heal Yerim, and has Jinwoo crash through a classroom wall on the wyvern Kaisel (the novel’s chapter 2 mentions Kaisel and Shadow Exchange, but the preview hides how he gets there). In the webtoon Groctar hears voices from the stone inside him and Jinah clings to her brother unafraid, where novel readers report a command from nowhere and a traumatized Jinah; later the webtoon’s Beru, guarding her, picks up the speech of the period dramas he watches, which our sources do not confirm for the novel.
  • In the temple, the webtoon names Jinwoo’s evolved skill Ruler’s Authority and has it pin every statue at once; draws the Architect as a hooded angel with six wings that become arms; sets a ten-minute quest that Jinwoo wins with about two minutes left; has the Architect spare Haein because a shadow of Jinwoo’s is hidden on her; and names the Shadow Monarch, Ashborn, showing his war against the traitor Monarchs Rakan and Baran (the novel’s Balan).
  • In Japan, the webtoon has Goto’s successor Reiji Sugimoto hire Orlov for ten million dollars a day and a giant split his barrier with one stroke (five, in the novel, the fan wiki notes); Matsumoto offer Japan’s share of the Jeju stones; and President Go, who knows of Matsumoto’s plot with Goto against Korea’s S-ranks on Jeju, crush a receiver recovered from Goto’s body in front of him. The novel’s chapter 9 blank check is Chairman Yoo’s, by a reader’s outline; the webtoon’s Myunghan asks only for the truth about the cure, and Jinwoo refuses out of distrust.
  • It adds an interlude of the Frost Monarch and another Monarch on the hunt, and Jinwoo’s father fighting the Frost Monarch in America. The novel’s Frost Monarch does not appear until Volume 6 (episode 200, by the fan wiki), so these are, at least here, the webtoon’s.
  • Names on screen and in the webtoon: Tusk for Fang; Park Jongsoo, Jung Yoontae, Jung Yerim, Yoo Soohyun (brown-haired in the webtoon, black-haired in the novel), Yuri Orloff; the fan wiki calls the Architect Kandiaru. Jima is the novel’s name too (Volume 6 uses it).

Continuity notes

  • Jinwoo goes from level 100 to 101 and beyond, wins the legal right to raid alone, runs his guild officially as Ahjin, adds the naga shadow Jima, and comes out of the temple with a second, black heart in his chest. He ends resolved to go to Japan.
  • Jinah survives the break at her school, traumatized; many of her schoolmates do not. Their mother, cured in Volume 4, is unchanged.
  • Jinho is Ahjin’s vice president; his father Myunghan Yoo stays ill with Eternal Slumber, his blank check refused. Their story picks up in Volume 6.
  • Haein delivers Byunggu Min’s warning, follows Jinwoo into the temple and comes out alive, having told him why she came.
  • Gunhee Go is alive at the end of the volume; Volume 6 ends his story. Jinchul Woo and Jongin Choi survive the temple; many of the hunters with them do not.
  • The Architect loses his statue body and leaves a prophecy that Volume 7 pays off.
  • Groctar and his orcs die at the school. Yuri Orlov dies in Tokyo, and the giants overrun the city.
  • Dongsoo Hwang, the S-rank brother of the Dongsuk killed early in the series, stays in America and does not act in this volume; he returns in Volume 6.

Notes

  • The ten chapters (Yen Press): Hunting Humans · To the Rescue · Jinchul Woo’s Point of View · Omen of Destruction · The One Trying to Enter and the Ones Trying to Leave · The Architect · Uninvited Guests · The Black Heart · Blank Check · His Resolve. Only the first can be read in a preview. A reader’s chapter-by-chapter outline of the audiobook places Byunggu’s warning and the Shinjuku gate in chapter 4, the Hunters Guild’s rescue party in 7 and Chairman Yoo’s blank check in 9; the rest is our reading of the titles, so this page gives few chapter numbers.
  • Whose blank check? Chairman Yoo’s, for the cure, by that reader’s outline, which also puts the plea after the temple, as another reader’s order of events does.
  • What readers argue about: Jinwoo’s coldness toward Japan’s dead and toward his best friend’s father; a guild of three with no staff; the violence at the school and in Tokyo. What they love: the return to the temple, the Architect fight, what the volume reveals about the System, and the smoke break.
  • Chugong on the coldness: in an interview for the Korean art book The Art of Solo Leveling, reported by CBR in September 2026, he said he meant Jinwoo’s chill to come from a war machine’s mind, the Shadow Monarch’s, merging with an ordinary man’s, and admitted he failed to make that convincing.
  • Translators: Hye Young Im and J. Torres; the audiobook is read by Ki Hong Lee (Yen Audio, October 2022).
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