Episode 4: I Gotta Get Stronger

Cornered by a steel-fanged wolf with a snapped dagger, Jinwoo notices that his reflexes have sharpened enough to slip past the creature and even knock it across the room with a single punch. Realizing brute hands are not enough, he opens the System inventory and draws the sword Kim Sangshik left behind in the Double Dungeon, cutting down the pack as they swarm him. Each victory feeds his progress, and the System begins handing him sellable loot rather than raw magic gems, which he trades for in-program currency.

Above ground, Lee Joohee answers a call from the Hunters Association: the gate has suffered a dungeon break, monsters are loose, and healers are scarce. Guilt over her earlier refusal pushes her to join. Underground, Jinwoo grasps that the colored names floating over beasts rank their threat against his own, white for weak, orange for even, red for dangerous. He descends a long stairway into a vast sewer and is ambushed by a rushing wall of water, then meets the dungeon's boss, the snake Blue Venom-Fanged Kasaka.

His blade cannot pierce the snake's scales, so Jinwoo abandons it and relies on raw strength, clamping both hands around the thrashing creature's neck and squeezing until it dies. He claims Kasaka's Venom Fang as a reward, and the corpse and dungeon dissolve back into Hapjeong Subway Station. Sensing a lingering monster through his heightened perception, Jinwoo walks out toward a stalled fight against a giant Stone Golem.

Jinwoo grinds through wave after wave inside the instance dungeon, learning that fresh levels both raise his stats and close his wounds. He fights and wins his first solo boss battle against Blue Venom-Fanged Kasaka, killing it bare-handed after his weapon fails. Outside, a band of hastily recruited E and D-rank hunters struggles to dent a D-Rank Stone Golem while onlookers jeer. Spotting Joohee faltering under trauma and recognizing the golem as weaker than the boss he just beat, Jinwoo hurls Kim Sangshik's broken sword through its eye, breaking its defenses so the hunters can finish it.

The installment adapts roughly chapters fourteen through seventeen of the webtoon and was directed by Toru Hamazaki, with A-1 Pictures animating. The Tanker among the hunters never learns who threw the killing blow, since the unknown hunter, Jinwoo, slips away before anyone can ask, while Joohee catches a fleeting glimpse of him in an alley. Adaptation changes include Jinwoo arriving armed, the Lycan name colors shifting from white to red, and added flashbacks to his reawakening and family. According to staff, Sung Jinwoo's Japanese voice actor Taito Ban coughed up blood while recording the Kasaka fight, a detail later echoed by English voice actor Aleks Le.