Rating - ⭐⭐⭐⭐1/2
"While waiting on his S-Rank license, Jinwoo joins a mining team under the Hunters Guild to experience A-Rank dungeon raids for himself."
The Hunters Guild Gate Arc is the 11th arc in Solo Leveling, a webtoon adapted from the web novel by Chugong, with art by DUBU (REDICE STUDIO) and story by h-goon. This arc collects chapters 65-75 of the webtoon.
This was an arc where the plot was the least important takeaway, for me at least. We learned more about the world and characters in this one.
Let's get into the details.
PLOT
After a rather long spiel about equipment, we follow Jinwoo as he joins a mining team (as his rank hasn't been confirmed yet), in order to experience what a non-instant upper-rank dungeon is like.
I have the last to talk about in this section, but I did want to mention that we do end up getting an answer regarding the beast's motives. This really shows that the story is starting to pick up in that area.
WORLD-BUILDING
We learn a bit more about the format of dungeons, as well as how higher ranking dungeons are tackled. Since they are larger and more dangerous, the task of closing one is split into three groups: the strike squad, the mining team, and the hauling team. A pretty efficient system should nothing unexpected happen.
While revealing this information at this stage of the game makes sense since it wasn't particularly relevant when Jinwoo was still only entering lower-ranked dungeons, there was some information given about dungeons that I would have liked at the beginning of the story.
For some reason, I wasn't expecting the masters of the guilds to participate in the raids. In my mind, the leader ends up taking care of all the administrative stuff, but they are the guilds ace and a hunter, so it does make sense for them to go in.
CHARACTERS
To the excitement of a lot of readers, we are finally introduced to Hae-In, an S-Rank hunter and vice guild master of the Hunters Guild, as well as one of the few female side characters. We don't really get to know her much here, besides learning that she is very sensitive to smells. In all honesty, I don't really get why she was made to be that way. Maybe it goes into more depth in the book, but it is a bit of an odd character detail for the webtoon.
We are also introduced to Lee Minsung, a famous actor who was recently awakened. His character I don't really get the point of since he doesn't amount to much in the story.
Moving onto Jinwoo, what I like about him is that he is still cautious. Even though he has faced strong foes in the instant dungeons, and is the strongest character in this world, he isn't overconfident in his abilities since he doesn't know what he is going to face.
On the other hand, though, he has his moments of lapsed logic. So far, every single time he has entered a dungeon, something terrible went wrong. So when he goes into this one, he ignored the foreboding feeling he has which was...not smart. As one commenter said, he has 100+ sense skills points, but completely ignores his gut instance for some reason. Aside from that being a trope I hate, I guess it was the author's way to show that even Jinwoo isn't perfect.
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
So we got a lot of good fighting in this arc, as well as some more answers in terms of what is going on behind the scenes.
Time for some spoiler thoughts though, so if you don’t want to be spiked you can stop reading here.
WARNING - SPOILERS AHEAD - PROCEED WITH CAUTION
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
It rarely happens for the boss to come running out while the miners are working but, this is Solo Leveling we are talking about...when do things ever go according to plan?
We've got Jinho, and we've got some samgyeopsal, what a winning combination.
This dude kinda looks like Jinwoo...
I wonder how awakening works.
It's not like quirks from BNHA where you get yours as a kid, since you can be well into your life and then suddenly baam, you've got powers
Hmm, not sure how I feel about there possibly being romance in this.
Jinwoo's face though 😂
Oh darn, some blood splattered on me...how inconvenient
I will give it to the squad leader.
He was not greedy enough to risk his team so that he could get a promotion
Hae-In is a lot more timid than I was expecting.
That poor guy though, he thought he was making the right decision for his squad but all he gets is his face bashed repeatedly into the floor.
Exactly how many times has the association miscalculated a gates mana levels…cause it seems to be a bit is a reoccurring theme here?
Aww the big guy, Iron, got made because his shout didn’t provoke the enemy.
The interaction between Iron and Tank was so cute, with Tank waving and Iron giving him a thumbs up back.
Karlagan - I am the almighty Karlagan, do I look like an easy opponent to you? Jinwoo - Yep.
Commentaires