Episode 9: You've Been Hiding Your Skills

Deep in the cave dungeon, Jinwoo regroups with his former Double Dungeon party, Song Chi-Yul, Lee Joohee, Kang Jeongho, and Kim Sangshik, the latter still weighed down by guilt over abandoning him at Cartenon Temple. The convict hunters gleefully slaughter goblins under escort Kang Taeshik's watch. Song senses a deep change in Jinwoo's aura, and Joohee notes his rare lack of injuries, but he hides his true power behind talk of daily exercise. At a three-way fork, Taeshik suggests splitting up; Jinwoo uses his high perception to pick the boss's path with Song and Joohee, while Kim and Jeongho take the middle and the convicts go right.

A flashback reveals Taeshik's secret bargain: a grieving father, whose daughter was assaulted by the three prisoners and later took her own life, paid him three billion won to kill them before the justice system could free them. Taeshik decapitates the convicts and turns on Kim and Jeongho when they witness it, planning to blame a goblin swarm. Jinwoo's group hears a scream and races to find the pair cut to pieces. Joohee heals Kim just enough to speak his last apology before he dies, and Jinwoo, who had wanted Kim alive to keep blaming, is shattered.

Taeshik strikes at Joohee, but Jinwoo catches his arm. Song takes up Kim's sword and parries the fast assassin, even searing him with a hidden fire spell, but Taeshik shrugs it off and moves for the kill until Jinwoo blocks the blow outright. Realizing no E-rank could react like that, Taeshik concludes Jinwoo underwent a second awakening, then admits he simply enjoys killing people more than monsters. Their fight triggers the System's kill quest again. Taeshik vanishes with a secret Stealth skill and cripples Jinwoo's ankle, but Full Recovery mends it instantly, unnerving the assassin. Jinwoo unleashes Murderous Intent to blind him and pierces his heart, and the dying Taeshik warns of a coming darkness as the System awards Jinwoo the Stealth skill.

The D-Rank mission reunites Jinwoo with his old raid group while saddling them with three ex-convicts and an Association escort. Kang Jeongho and Kim Sangshik are killed by Kang Taeshik, who is exposed as a contract assassin. Jinwoo battles and kills Taeshik, gaining the Stealth Rune Stone. Song Chi-Yul and Lee Joohee finally grasp that Jinwoo has concealed his real strength all along, and Song shields his secret by taking credit for Taeshik's death when Woo Jinchul arrives to investigate.

Adapting chapters twenty-nine through thirty-four, the episode was written by Shingo Irie and directed by Hirotaka Tokuda at A-1 Pictures. The webtoon differs in several details: Jinwoo there senses extreme killing intent rather than hearing screams, finds the Stealth Rune Stone inside Taeshik's corpse, and afterward feeds a surviving convict to the boss room, a sequence the anime cuts. A trivia note marks Jinwoo's jumping warmup and dash as a homage to Goku from the 2018 Dragon Ball Super: Broly film, which coincided with the death of franchise creator Akira Toriyama and was read by fans as an unintended tribute.