The Entire Story of Solo Leveling - Why We Love Power Fantasy

Solo leveling is one of the best performing Mana of all time and now the anime has taken the World by storm it is pure power fantasy and every part of me wanted to talk about the flaws and weird choices and lack of development in its characters but like if there are so many problems with the series why wasn't I able to drop it and why was I having so much fun when reading it I think a lot of power fans he's get a bad rap in General but when they're done right they can easily be

some of the most fun and exciting pieces of media out there and so today I want to cover the entire story of solo leveling and talk about what made this series so special in the world of solo leveling mystical Gates have opened all around the world that lead to dungeons filled with monsters and rare gems and at the same time a portion of humanity has become awakened gaining special powers that allow them To enter the gates and fend off invading monsters it's a pretty simple basis for the story and it really fits into that role-playing

video video game vibe that it's working towards and I think this Simplicity is one of the greatest strengths of solo leveling it has this weird feeling of nostalgia while not feeling too crazy at the same time it's easy to understand and more importantly it's easy to imagine yourself in plenty of other series especially in anime and Manga have had that video game inspiration in the past with some of the big ones being do hack in the early 2000s and swort Art Online in the 2010s but by now it's so common to see a series series

like this that one comes out every year if not every season shout out to both for you if you haven't seen it by the way and a lot of these video game inspired series tend to fall into the isekai genre like yeah Kito and maple are just in virtual reality or Whatever but the entire story takes place in that other world and while that is cool as hell it also comes with this innate level of disconnection to it we can imagine playing a game like this but by like episode 5 we barely feel like it's

a game at all it's just another isekai however the vast majority of solo leveling happens in the real world in fact the only time that things stand out is when we're in a dungeon you wouldn't think it makes a difference but it Definitely helps the story feel more grounded you don't need to suspend your disbelief to make up an entire world you just need to say dungeons exist and then you're just ready to enjoy the show but that all brings us to the main character and our insert s Jin Wu awakened people called Hunters come

in many shapes and forms regardless of their rank they are all stronger than normal people but the higher their rank the bigger the gap an e- rank for example might be considered Peak human condition for a normal person while an s-rank might be able to cast a fireball that incinerates an entire building so where does that leave sun Jin wo well our boy has the powerful nickname of the world's weakest Hunter it's to the point where Jin Wu being on a raid is actually a liability because the rest of the group has to babysit him

the whole time quite literally every time that he enters a dungeon he is either injured or nearly killed however Because his dad is out of the picture and his mom is in the hospital Jin Wu forces himself to enter the dungeon knowing the risk that he is putting himself in just to be able to pay for his mom's medicine and take care of his little sister I think a big part of what makes Jin Wu a sympathetic character is that he doesn't like going into dungeons he does it because he has to and no matter

how much danger he finds himself in he has always able to make it home And take care of his family he is the definition of powerless and when we're talking about power fantasies that's actually a very good starting point if Jin Wu is the weakest e- rank in the world that basically just makes him a normal dude there's nothing special about him other than his willingness to put himself in danger for the sake of his loved ones and it's something that any reader can understand and see themselves in specifically because Jin Wu is as normal

as possible now luckily he isn't totally alone in Dungeon raids as he's often paired with a bank healer named juhi we find out in the epilog but she was often assigned to work with Jin Wu specifically because he was always getting hurt the story proper begins as Jin Wu and ji enter a dungeon under the C rank Hunter song chiu after defeating the dungeon boss The Raid group would find a second entrance a rare case where a dungeon was found inside another Dungeon Mr song doesn't want to force anyone to press on against their will

so he puts it up to a vote and Jin Wu would be the tiebreaker making the decision to enter as a chance to make a little bit more money for his family inside this second dungeon they find a room adorned with statues leading to one giant Stone figure on a throne as well as a winged statue holding a list of Commandments these explain that they need to Worship the Lord praise the Lord and then prove Their faith after reading these the giant statue shifts his eyes and here is where Jin Wu stands out as he

has always risked his life he had built up a sensitivity to sensing danger he had almost died so many times and he felt that feeling creeping in again because of this he calls for everyone to duck and those who don't listen are instantly killed by lasers that shoot from the statue's eyes it's here that Jin Wu begins to understand that the Commandment were rules for this chamber and tells everyone that they must bow to Worship the Lord when they do this the lasers stop but the Lord begins coming to life and starts walking towards them

everyone runs away but as they pass other statues those start to move as well with this in mind jinu directs everyone to stand before the statues holding instruments and they too spring to life and begin playing music praising the Lord however despite being the one To solve this puzzle jinu actually loses one of his legs in this test so that he's able to ensure his friend's safety finally an altar opens up in the center of the room and as each Hunter steps onto it a red flame is lit around them once everyone is there a

blue ring of fire appears and the door to the dungeon opens offering them their escape to Freedom the test here is to stay on the altar with each person that escapes the Flames Begin to extinguish faster and Faster and eventually those left behind on the altar will be killed by the statues in the room proving your faith is choosing to stay on the Altar and not abandon the others it is a test of Courage but things don't go that way the hunters see the open door and one after another they start running for the exit

some even have the nerve to say that they need to escape for their family's sake which completely ignores that everyone else here also has a family Eventually it comes down to just Jin Wu ji and Mr song on The Altar and the door is barely staying open there is no longer enough time for for all of them to survive and so Mr song offers to remain behind because he's the leader of the group however Jui is Frozen in fear Jin Wu is missing a leg and they can't make it out on their own so instead

Jin Wu tells Mr song to take care of Jui she is knocked out and carried away to safety Jin Wu just as he had for his Entire life was choosing to put others before himself he even says that he is glad that he is the only one who has to die however as the stat statues start cleaving down on him he can't help but resent those who left greedily and recognize that he is a liar he isn't happy that only he has to die he wanted to live too and he begs for one more chance

and In This Moment he gets one the statue's weapon freezes on its way down to kill him and a notification Appears before him saying that he has passed a secret Quest and asks if he wants to become a player adding that if he refuses time will continue and he will die in the next moment so obviously he accepts and this kicks off the main story so let's talk about the double dungeon opening Arc I think it does a lot of things really effectively firstly it's exciting and it keeps you on edge the entire time and

this largely comes from the fact that we know Jin Wu is so Weak the same point which allows the audience to see themselves in the main character also allows them to feel the fear and frustration that he is experiencing we can both celebrate his triumphs in solving puzzles and sympathize with his anger as he watches people abandon him on the altar I think it's a very Human Experience to not feel like you are good enough to be overwhelmed and to be hurt by others and we can experience all of that through Jinwu these can all

be some of the hardest parts of life this dude who was looked down on by everyone else had saved them and then been betrayed and killed for it however jinwu also shows us the best of Humanity he does everything in his power to help others he genuinely cares for his family and he is completely selfless but at the same time we get to see the desperation to live some of the last thoughts on his mind are that he can't lie about being Content with becoming a sacrifice and I think it's a very interesting and extremely

human moment where you can act selflessly and put on a brave face for others and sometimes that can actually really [ __ ] suck jinwu is a good guy but he's not aane he's smart but he's not strong he is not perfect and he can make mistakes but even so he is always trying as hard as he can and carries the burdens of as many others as he possibly is able to and I think that all sets him Up as a very compelling protagonist when he wakes up he finds himself in a hospital and is

fully recovered from the dungeon that being said Jin Wu's second chance at life is the perfect idea for a power Fantasy character he doesn't become strong right away he has to earn it he ended up being found alive in there but all the statues and monsters that the survivors were mentioning had completely vanished and so the hunters Association sends Wu jinchu to ask Questions to Jin Wu at first they believe that he had received a second Awakening but after testing his mana and finding out that he's still only measuring a 10 they quickly dismissed this

idea for reference the weakest that an e rank is supposed to score on this measure is 70 so having a 10 is pretty rough seeing this ginu leaves confident that nothing has changed for Jin Wu and to be fair he is right right now Jin Wu is not stronger at all but he has the Potential to be by becoming a player jinwu has earned the ability to level up so while all the other Hunters have their powers set in stone he can continuously grow on top of just leveling up the system gives him a daily

workout routine and if he completes that he can get three skill points to put into any of five categories those being strength agility sense intelligence or health the game wants him to be a better version of himself but there's no cheat Code or easy way to get there he needs to improve on his own and put in the work it also doesn't allow him to slack off because if he ever does skip out on his daily workout he is sent to a desert dungeon filled with massive venomous centipedes who will chase him throughout a 4-Hour

penalty period and let me tell you that is pretty good motivation to get your push-ups in I don't know about you but reading this gave me the same feeling I got when watching highq or Other shows like that where just by watching you want to put in more effort in your own life or go get some exercise watching Jin Wu grow makes you want to improve as well in a way that just isn't present in many other similar ilar series if a character is always op you can't get inspired by their growth Beyond just the

three skill points jinu also receives a status recovery that will completely heal him and refresh him as well as a random Loot drop every day For completing these tasks because you got to get the gacha element in there somewhere that is how you get kids hooked on the game after 3 days of training though he gets a key which allows him to create an instant dungeon and this is where his growth really begins inside jinwu comes across a giant red wolf with a steel jaw called a Ryon thanks to his exercise and bonus stat points

that he's received he's able to dodge and fight back as opposed to being Completely dominated like he had been in the past it isn't like he is just suddenly insurmountably stronger but he's at least able to protect himself and it gives him essentially a fair starting point something that all the other hunters in the world had that he never actually received but even with these new stats he isn't able to kill the Ryon however the system does give him a bit of a hand here you see normally Hunters go buy weapons and Equipment to help

themselves out but because Jin Wu is so weak and because he had to pay for his mom's medical expenses he couldn't really afford to buy anything to help himself and even if he could with the little money remaining it was so low quality that it would just break right away anyways in this battle though Jin Wu opens the system's inventory and finds the sword that Mr song had dropped in the double dungeon this is the really only advantage that The system gives him to start with not magic not anything unbelievable or crazy it brings him

to the starting point that everyone else began at he's literally only given things that other Hunters who don't have his burdens would already have access to now with this sword and hand he manages to cut down the wolf and earns his first level up but of course things don't stop there and he would continue to grind against the monsters in this dungeon until he reached level 15 and then enters the boss room to fight a massive serpent called Kasa despite all of his leveling up this is a rough fight Kasa is way faster than he

is his sword is so worn down by the monsters he has already defeated that he can't even leave a scratch and did I mention it's like a 70ft tall snake and so regardless of all of his effort jinwu realizes that he is is still worthless he thinks to himself about how much he hated being called the world's weakest Hunter and how he was ashamed because he knew the people calling him that were right but not only that even when he was useful people around him still took him for granted back in the double dungeon he

was the one who figured out each of the puzzles he was the reason that so many survivors made it out but that doesn't change the fact that everyone except Jui and Mr song abandoned him and this is where Jin Wu forms his core philosophy power is something that Trumps everything else people can make strategies or Stand Up Against Terror but Power will bring everyone else to their knees people might thank you for your wisdom or intelligence but in the face of power they will still betray you and this is at the heart of all of

Jin Wu's growth going forward he doesn't want to be weak or look down on anymore he doesn't want anyone that he depends on to betray him and to ensure that he needs to become the best version of Himself he can't just become stronger he has to become the strongest luckily in this fight he has something that does make him special he knows what true fear is jinwu had stood on death door so many times and he had always made it out and having come face to face with the Statue of the Lord he knew what

true power looked like and sure Kasa is terrifying and it's way stronger than he is there's no question there at all however in comparison to the horror of standing Before the Lord Kasa is just another monster and so rather than running away jinu runs towards the attacking snake grabs onto its neck and uses all of the strength at his disposal to squeeze down until he crushes it and when he finally manages to kill the dungeon boss he thinks to himself that he is so glad to have just become a Little Bit Stronger so before I

get into the scene I want to to quickly discuss a similar moment in Sword Art Online yes I know I keep Bringing up this series but it's the closest and most iconic parallel that we have so it's just more useful than most other examples especially when we're talking about the early bits of season 1 that was so impactful at the time within the community plus let's be real there are already so many Jin Wu and Kyo comparisons that it's hard to ignore now let me set the scene Kito and ASA are in this big raid

and come across a surprising ly difficult boss called Gleam Eyes and this monster wipes out the vast majority of their group seeing this AA dives into attack and gets swatted away immediately forcing Kyo to go in and protect her but just like Jin Wu in his fight against Costa Kito realizes that he's not strong enough to beat this boss as he is then homie takes out a second sword and proceeds to dunk on the boss comparing these two moments which is cooler honestly unless the animation studio does something crazy With Kasa I got to say

Kito takes it by a mile it's just so much more flashy and fun and exciting and that is very hard to argue against but which of these moments feels like the character has actually developed more Jin Wu pushes himself to the absolute limit he comes face to face with his own weakness and builds his whole sense of identity around his struggle in this fight it is desperate and it feels exhausting and and on the other hand we have Kito Letting a whole group of people die because he didn't want to show off his special skill

or for people to know how strong he really was jinwu is earning his strength while Kito is demonstrating his it is a very small difference that speaks to the core difference in why despite their similarities solo leveling and Sword Art Online feel so distinct but going forward jinmu begins thinking about the consequences of his growth if the public finds out that he is the only Person in the world who can continuously improve like this and He will draw a ton of attention not only that but let's say a more powerful Hunter sees him growing and

fears being outshined by the world's weakest they may want to eliminate him out of jealousy or before he becomes a problem hell it wouldn't even have to be another Hunter the government might see a hunter with this skill and see him as dangerous as well with this in mind he tries to keep a low profile file and Signs up for easy jobs for example he goes on a very simple and easy Mission working for a c ranked guy named donguk basically the law says you need 10 people to enter a dungeon for safety reasons but

donguk Squad only has eight members so they need two more people to pad things out and who will carry their bags for them this ends up being Jin Wu and a dranked rich boy named jinho in this dungeon we quickly see just how much Jin Wu has grown despite everyone Here being C or D d rank it is jinwu who first realizes that they are about to be attacked by a swarm of giant bugs but the insects aren't the only threat here there are also the lizards lizards in this case refer to the hunters who

betray and kill other Hunters inside of Dungeons and it's where the name of this Arc the lizard Ark comes from when they find the boss room donguk and his men trap Jin Wu and jinho alone with the boss and then simply wait outside for Them to die so that they don't have to split the earnings as many times and let me tell you if this was 2 weeks ago Jin Wu would have been eaten alive by this gigantic spider in moments however with his newly earned strength Jin Wu manages to shock everyone as he continues

to get his ass beat a c rank boss is still just too much for him to take on but because he's able to think on his feet he's able to overcome the odds when he finds himself about to be killed he uses his Daily status recovery to fully heal then using this opening he leaps over the spider's attack and lands a chain of strikes on the Monster's eyes on top of that jinwu's dagger is made from kasa's Fang and has the special ability to either paralyze or cause bleeding on hit by outsmarting the boss and

proing the status effects Jin Wu is able to take the spider down despite being weaker than it again this is Jin Wu struggling against the boss but playing into his Strengths just as he did in the double dungeon and the instant dungeon but he puts in work every day to become stronger and still he isn't enough so he has to make the most of his situation and create a plan to succeed we're like 20 chapters in at this point and while we are certainly growing definitely aren't Untouchable in any way and I think this level

of struggle being incorporated into his story really helps with the accessibility of solo leveling It's escapism for the audience but it's escapism with effort the early stages of the story kind of take the emotional strength from investing in a character's work from things like Naruto or even Demon Slayer because we see these characters working to improve themselves they become more likable and I believe that's why Jin Wu as a character is so much more compelling early on than he is in the middle of the series obviously he gets way [ __ ] cooler as he

gets Stronger but the thought of him putting in effort gets a bit washed out as the series goes on and he becomes less relatable as a result now dongu is obviously more than a little surprised when he sees the two Hunters he trapped not only survived but have killed the boss he thinks that because jinho had a bunch of fancy armor that he must have been the one to do this and because of that he tells jinho that if he kills Jin Wu he will accept him into the group and Allow him to live but

jinho just saw our boy drop a 30ft tall spider on his own he knows what this guy is capable of and he's trying not to cross him and so he turns donguk down instead if if you've been keeping track and think back to the Revelation during the Kasa fight jinwu had stated that power is something that can make people betray you and the only thing that can guarantee they won't is to become powerful yourself and this is the followup on that idea chinho sees How strong he is so he sides with him over donguk power

can keep your allies loyal now dongsuk and his men begin attacking Jin Wu themselves when jinho won't do it for them and the system gives Jin Wu an urgent quest to kill the Hostile enemies around him seeing this he begins to realize that the system needs him to be strong for a reason and resolves that if the system planned on using him then he will use the system as well this battle acts as a bit of a Turning point for his character where he's forced to kill another person eight of them in fact it's the

beginning of a mindset where monsters and humans are kind of seen in a similar way doesn't matter who or what is attacking Jin Wu will survive at any cost and kill anyone who is trying to take his life and finally the third part of Jin Wu's core philosophy comes when he is fighting a monster called cus who is guarding a dungeon called the demon Castle while The strongest monster jinu has come across so far had been a c rank Cerberus is an srank and as you might expect this fight does not go well jinwu is

basically ragd dolled and thrown around the doggo even manages to take a big bite out of his shoulder however as he is getting beaten down he begins to notice that the system is automatically triggering skills like tenacity this reducing incoming damage and keeping him alive it is quite literally plot armor But it is plot armor that is believable and that comes with a purpose and in seeing this jinwu begins to understand that the system is going out of its way to save him he wasn't just a player he was someone's Avatar and he was very

important to the game and if that's going to be the case he needs to exceed the expectations of whoever is in charge and swallow the system whole before he is the one consumed by it now plot armor is bad right well it tends to be at Least we often see plot armor taking shape in things like the power of friendship which you hear about a lot in shows like fairy tale in cases like that the plot is being manipulated to protect a character it's plot armor however here we have something a little bit different this

all powerful system that has has been established to need Jin Wu in some way is giving him a buff to help him survive firstly it is self-serving the system is a part of the plot which has Been at least somewhat explored to this point and the fact that it needs Jin Wu to survive has already been established but you know what the most important part of that description was it helps him survive cus brings him from 3600 Health to 400 and then it triggers tenacity which reduces damage by 50% at this point he is still

dead if he gets hit again once or twice and there is no active changes being made to help him overcome the battle it is simply trying To give him one more chance as far as plot armor goes this is pretty inoffensive and in reality jinwu doesn't even take another hit in this fight so the system trying to help him isn't even needed this moment of plot armor isn't to actually protect jinwu it's to reinforce the idea that the system needs him and I think presenting it as plot armor is actually kind of Genius it's a

really interesting use of a Trope that often creates a huge issue or point of Criticism in other stories like this now once jinu finishes off cus the demon Castle is open to him but based on the ass whooping that he just took he decides to level up more first more importantly though this is about the time that Jin Wu is really starting to question the meaning of the system and why he was selected for it and it is super important to bring this up now as if I'm being honest we're about three arcs away from

hitting the point where Jinwu becomes untouchably strong so these early moments that plant seeds for future plot threads are vital in keeping us invested in more than just his power progression this shift allows us to go from how strong will Jin Wu get to why is Jin Wu able to become so strong it's a very small but crucial change in perspective we explore this more as we enter the prisoner Arc this sees jinu being reunited with some of the survivors of the double dungeon as they Enter a dungeon with a group of prisoners who are

trying to lighten their sentence by doing community work the raid is being overseen by someone named Kang teik a b rank Hunter who works for the association who is supposed to keep the prisoners in line for jinmu it's pretty nice to see Jui and Mr song again but he's less excited to see Kim sangik this is the dude who abandon jinmu because he had family at home and our boy is still holding a Grudge about that the AR quickly goes to [ __ ] though as Kang has been hired to kill one of the prisoners

because they forced themselves on a girl and that led to her taking her own life so Kang kills the prisoners but Kim ends up seeing him do this and now he's got to go too and at that point the whole raid might as well be eliminated in the process before Kang can make it to the rest of the group though jinwu comes across Kim as he is bleeding out and we see the Protagonist in a very dark place as he says that he wants this man to live so that he can continue hating him and

at first this feels a little bit out of place but looking back hate has been a huge part of his character hating himself for being weak as well as hating the people who betrayed him and using that as a motivator to become stronger so it doesn't happen again which is why he is a little bit disheveled when Kim spends his last moments genuinely giving A heartfelt apology for his actions leading to a moment of self-reflection in Jin Wu right before his fight with Kang now now as is Tradition at this point Jin Wu is completely

outclassed by this B rank opponent and a big part of that is because he's been funneling most of his stats into agility and strength but coming against a high B rank assassin makes it pretty impossible for him to actually land a hit on Kang at the end of the day he's just way faster And if Jin Wu can't touch him all that strength doesn't matter in a lame man's terms you can't hit me and to top it all off Kang has a special Hunter skill that even allows him to turn invisible luckily Jui is there

and she gives jinu a support buff to allow him to keep up but by using his own skill bloodlust he's able to intimidate Kang to the point that he is Frozen in place long enough to inflict paralysis and bleed against him just like he had the spider Boss as jinwu looks down on Kang dying he asks let's say I'm a hunter that improves with every battle how much stronger do you think I'll get and Kang remarks that his shadow has become one with darkness and as a result he can expect to become as powerful as

that darkness is deep and yes we do take the W here but not without a cost during the fight jinu actually notes something very important just after healing himself with status recovery he says that Another one of his emotions has died even after the fight he remarks that I feel like something is destroyed inside of me every time I get stronger while he continues to grow Jin Wu can literally feel his Humanity slipping away as the system slowly begins to consume him and as if doubling down on that growing Darkness jinwu suddenly takes up the

role of Judge to this point in the story he has only ever killed other people who were a threat to his own life however After telling Mr song and Jui to wait outside the gate he grabs the man that Kang had been sent to kill by some miracle this dude had survived and was playing posum through the entire conflict but Jin Wu spots him and drags him into the body his chamber and throws him into the Hobgoblin and his army Jin Wu asks the man if he remembers the faces of his victims that he forced

himself on and tells him that he is even more Despicable than Kang so he can't be Allowed to leave the dungeon now don't get me wrong [ __ ] this guy and anyone like him I don't blame or judge Jin Wu for putting him to death at all however this is the first person that is in no way a threat to Jin Wu that he eliminates it's the moment where he decides that his morality can be enforced on those around him and while there are small individual cases that follow this throughout the series we don't

get a lot of moments like this and I do think that it could have been a very interesting plot thread to explore more thoroughly now I spent a lot of time talking about what solo leveling does really well so far but here is where the series actually pulls a bit of a magic trick you see these characters Mr song and Jui it almost felt like they were going to be coming back into the story right well solo leveling waves a tarp over them and poof they completely disappear we might get an odd Cameo with Them

here and there but they are essentially written out of the show after Mr song takes the credit for killing Kang so that Jin Wu can remain unnoticed this is by far the thing that the series struggles with the most in essence if your name isn't Sun Jin Wu you are not going to be getting much development I'd say a solid 90% of the characters in this series more less drop off the face of the Earth as soon as jinu becomes stronger than them even Some of the s-ranks that we get introduced to were built up

to be these super large figures just get dwarfed so quickly that they don't matter in the grand scheme of things so with that in mind here's a handy dandy list of the characters to look out for who actually make an impact on the story Beyond just being temporary hurdles or having singular Arc importance we have jinho the d rank hunter from the lizard AR we have chairman Goan he who is in charge Of the hunters Association cha ha who is the second in command of the hunters Guild dong Su who is the brother of the

guy who tried to kill Jin Wu in the lizard Ark Thomas Andre who's in charge of one of America's biggest hunting guilds and arguably s Ilan who is jinu's dad and son jinah who is his sister this is a 200 chapter story and nowhere in that time is any real attention given to other characters to give them weight even this list is extremely generous and In most cases they're here because they stay in the story not so much because they influence things in any important way like sure jinho and chahen have their own little story

arcs here and there but to say that their characters actually develop is a stretch at best they are one-dimensional and at worst they are satellites to Jin Wu and what I mean by that is like most other characters any potential change for them is only focused around their Interactions with Jin Wu it's kind of unfortunate but this is definitely the point in the story where you start to notice that literally no other Character Matters from here we get a small Arc of Jin Wu helping jinho clear some gates so that he can earn a Guild

Master license and this continues until he hits level 40 and earns access to the job change Quest this functions very similar to the first instant dungeon back then he had to learn to deal with Wolves monkeys and Panthers all that attacked in specific patterns and now he has Knights assassins archers and mages the big difference in this case is that Jin Wu cannot heal or open his shop and doesn't have access to most of the systems UI benefits the only time that he is able to heal is through leveling up and it's very much a

slog through all these monsters where he becomes more and more exhausted until he reaches the boss room now because of this healing limitation Jinwu can't just grind endlessly here here like he did in the instant dungeon he can only go until he becomes too tired and on top of this the monsters just keep spawning so he never gets a chance to rest he even decides to push back his daily workout Quest because there's just no time to do it here but at least the monsters drop some useful loot like a chest plate and even a

gauntlet that has a palm that can't take damage that all brings us to what is Ultimately the biggest turning point for the series though Jin Wu enters the boss fight and finds Knight command ER igis the red this Behemoth of a knight completely ragd dolls him whereas in the fight with Kang he was at least stronger or had abilities that he could use to turn the tide jinu has nothing going for him here igis is faster stronger and is devastatingly talented in swordsmanship but he's also very chivalrous when jinu realizes that his daggers aren't going

To be useful against a suit of armor like this he drops them and chooses to fight with his hands and seeing this igris does the same so Jin Wu Dives in ready for a brawl and gets launched across the [ __ ] room as igris goes in for the kill he picks up his sword again but Jin Ru manages to catch it on the way down with that special Gauntlet I mentioned and using that opening he resummon his dagger and stabs igris in the eye which ultimately leads to him Defeating the boss but there is

no time for celebration as after clearing this challenge Jin Wu gets a notification saying the job change Quest will now begin all of that was just the Prelude the real test is a survival Mission involving a NeverEnding horde of knights emerging from a portal but our boy still hasn't been allowed to heal and dealing with complete exhaustion he finds himself face to face with his own limitations once again he starts Thinking of all those people who considered him to be a burden as an e- Rank and goes into an absolute rage he's violently swinging at

the knights around him and continues until he is literally too tired to move and as the world begins to darken around him he begins getting visions of Mr song and Jui telling him that he has done enough and that he has earned a break since Awakening jinwu has not stopped stagnation is death and he had never Allowed himself to slow his progression because he hated being weak so much and now he is paying the price for that impatience and greed he's visited by a vision of his past self who asks why he continues putting himself

in these life or death situations when luck is the only thing that's kept him alive for so long the old hymn continues by berating him saying that he's gotten taller and more muscular and he even looks stronger but all of that is only appearances he Is still the same weakling who found himself in over his head and now these Knights were going to kill him just like the statues of the double dungeon and again it's all his fault as the monsters continue to overwhelm him the the old Jin Wu warns that he still has very

far to go he will have to kill many more people make many more sacrifices and abandon his friends and family and even after all of that everything will eventually lead to his own death and With that a knight swings down to kill Jin Wu and the timer on his daily workout expires as he is saved and sent to the punishment Zone and with that all the old hymn can remark is that luck is also a skill and that there must be someone who who thinks it is a shame if it all ended here I mean

obviously this is more plot armor [ __ ] but at the very least it was hinted at earlier and it falls into that same thing that happened with cus where the system needs Him to survive that said homie just dealt with a whole dungeon and a cracked boss without being allowed to heal himself before immediately being thrown into a survival Mission as BS as the save here is and it is BS the situation he was in is also completely crazy so it is what it is but now that he is technically out of the dungeon

jinwu can open his shop and refresh himself he still isn't able to heal but at least he's not tired that said he does only Have one HP left the plan he comes up with in this situation is to overcome the challenge of not being hit and then Farm on the desert centipedes over the next 4 hours to level up enough to regain some of his health but again he is down if he even gets scratched by the end of the penalty he has reached level 51 bought himself a armor-piercing dagger and even earned a new

skill called Commander touch which basically gives him the force as he gets sent back To the dungeon this power up allows him to deal with the Knights more effectively as well as find and eliminate the Mages who were summoning them with that jinu manages to clear the test having technically survived for 4 and 1/2 hours and because of this completely blowing past the expected result Jin Wu earns the class of necromancer as well as a promotion to the monarch of Shadows now this comes as a pretty big Surprise for him as he's been shoving his

stats into strength and Agility so a Magic based class seems to not make sense however looking back Jin Wu was never good at physical things he was a character who could sense Danger from experience and solved the riddles of the double dungeon he is innately talented at intelligence and sense-based skills but he for for himself to be good at other traits that he believed would be more beneficial the things he saw in Others and had become jealous of by giving him the monarch of Shadow class the system basically hits him on the head and says

hey dummy you're doing it the wrong way this is what you need to do and obviously there is more to this later but at the very least I like the idea of him starting to actually focus on what he's good at now that said this is the point where we shift away from the core pattern of the series as well as that feeling of growth that has been So important to Soul leveling as a whole going forward it is very rare for something to feel like a challenge to jinwu and that comes from being the

monarch of Shadows what I mean by that is that this class allows him to summon the souls of the Dead around him as Shadow soldiers to fight for him now it's not really a foolproof system as the length of time that it's been dead or the power of the individual can affect the revive rates but that becomes An issue like one and a half times throughout the whole series so you can kind of write that off in practice this means that jinwu can kill a group of monsters then revive them then use their Shadows to

kill slightly stronger monsters which can then be revived and used to kill stronger monsters and do you see where I'm going here it's an endless feedback loop where he gets a stronger and stronger Army and he can just sit on his ass the entire time and This is made even more Extreme as these soldiers can continuously respawn as long as he has Mana available so even if they are way weaker than the enemies you can just Spam them until they completely overwhelm them in time after gaining this group of Shadows there is a potential that

jinu will never have to lift a finger again and sure he does stay somewhat involved in most fights but it never really feels like that struggle that he's had to face every Step of his journey so far and I know this makes sense at some point he's going to be stronger than everything and everyone else around him that's the whole conceit of the series but that doesn't change the fact that the vibe of the story going forward is drastically altered by no means is it a worse story but the ability for the audience to put

themselves in his shoes as the focus shifts away from his self-improvement and struggle is definitely more and more Limited as time passes as I mentioned though it isn't like there is no plot going forward but the quest to better himself instead becomes a quest to find his place in the system all of this is exemplified as we enter the next Arc after leaving the job change dungeon jinmu ends up on a raid with one of Korea's strongest guilds the White Tiger It's supposed to be a pretty low class gate but once they enter it begins

to turn red red gates like this are special For several reasons firstly they are all at least High B Rank and inside the terrain is almost always extreme in this case being a frozen tundra second an hour on Earth transl to a whole day inside the gate and finally you can't exit the gate until the boss is defeated and this is about the point in the story where we are meant to see what Jin Wu is really made of but to judge his strength we need something to compare it to so enter Kim Chul the

a rank Hunter who is The leader of this raid when he discovers that they're in a Red Gate he splits their group into those with power and the dead weight he leads all the upper ranked Hunters towards the boss while leaving the low ranks like Jin Wu behind and let me tell you with a group of powerful Hunters Kim Chul dominates everything that the dungeon has to offer by which I mean they can barely deal with the fodder enemies and he is quite literally the only Survivor of his group Meanwhile we follow Jin Wu as

he One-Shots an ice bear before finding its den and clearing out a huge horde of them with his Shadows which now means that he can replace all of his weak knights with an army of bears again becoming stronger without lifting a finger kimch eventually returns to the other group but in doing so he leads the dungeon boss and an army of ice elves towards them as well and this dungeon boss baruka is no joke he is an s-rank Monster who is just stronger than Jin Wu but more importantly than the actual fight is the discussion

between Jin Wu and baruka firstly Jin Wu can actually understand this monster which is new but baruka becomes the Catalyst for him becoming more serious when it comes to learning about himself Ruka begins their conversation by asking what are you doing among the humans you're not one of them obviously opening the possibility that there might be more to being a Player than just a Reawakening not only that but the elf talks about the voice that all monsters hear in their head demanding that they kill humans and how this voice disappears in the presence of jinwu

so in return jinwu begins asking baruka about who he is and where all the monsters come from but the elf glitches out and starts repeating himself the system doesn't believe believe Jin Wu is ready to hear this information yet and as such it will not allow baruka to Explain it to him now the fight itself is pretty straightforward with the exception of kimch attacking Jin Wu out of jealousy and frustration but as he tries igis kills him and he's ultimately turned into a shadow himself from here Jin Wu's smaller Shadows clear out all the elves

as igis kimch Shadow and jinwu take out baruka together despite making it out of the dungeon alive jinwu is left with with more questions than ever and is also pretty pissed that he failed To resurrect the dungeon boss again the only time that this really happens throughout the whole series outside the gate Jin Wu comes across an s-rank for the first time in the leader of the white tigers bak yunho and it is here that Jin Wu sees that he is officially at the power of an srank with this confidence in mind we finally return

to the demon gate castle and we actually enter it this time now this place is basically Sword Art Online just 100 Floors stacked on top of each other that Jin Wu will have to work through and fitting to that he also is given a quest where he must collect 10,000 Demon Souls from the monsters that live here as well as collecting an entry pass that will allow him to progress to the next floor and this is the point where incremental growth is more or less thrown out the window in fact while this place is definitely

cool as hell it also feels completely overlooked at this first dive Into this dungeon jinwu clears 75 floors and we skip the vast majority of them with the exception of a floor boss called Vulcan and another one called medis despite so many floors being passed we see like three or four of them and I feel like it's just such a missed opportunity to really explore his growth a bit more but it turns this thing that's kind of been built up for a while now the demon Castle into like two quick boss fights that feel like

nothing and Sure when we return for the final 25 floors there is some plot but even that is mostly skipped over and it's just conflated with numbers to be plot devices for making Jin Wu more powerful without taking the time to actually flush that out we're supposed to get here and think wow this dude just cleared 75 floors he must be stronger now but it is telling and not showing us that strength and it is unfortunately a very big missed opportunity in my Opinion the big takeaway from this dungeon though is that our lad is

much more powerful and and in defeating the bosses here he finds a blueprint for something called The Holy Water of Life a potion which potentially could be used to cure his mother of the Eternal Slumber with each of the bosses in this Castle dropping one of three of the required components and with the final piece likely being held on floor 100 the Eternal Slumber by the way is Effectively a coma that several people have fallen into because they're interacting with people who have a lot of mana and their body is sensitive to that there's not

supposed to be any kind of cure and this is why Jin Wu has to work so hard to keep his mom's medical bills paid now finding a cure for that is a good payoff for the demon Castle in general but I do wish that more time had been dedicated to Jin Wu thinking about his mother up until this point it is Largely something that we heard about at the very start of the story and then just sits unmentioned on the back burner for like 50 chapters now while all of this is going on there is

some stuff happening in America as well dongu the brother of the guy who tried to kill Jin Wu in the spider dungeon is interviewing a man who emerged from a gate and this guy is supposedly named Sun Ilan Jin Wu's missing father these things don't really come into play for a while but They are relevant enough that I should mention them here as for jinmu after returning from the demon Castle he is finally going to get re-evaluated but because his Mana levels are too high to check with normal machines there's going to be a 3-day

delay while they set things up that said being off the charts like this tends to be the sign of an srank Hunter so a few major guilds start trying to recruit him namely the white tiger and Hunter guilds they aren't the Only ones who are trying to approach him though as he also has a meeting with the chairman of the hunter Association go gun he and there's a line of dialogue here that I think very much encapsulates what part of the power fantasy we find ourselves in he says if the meter were capable of measuring

the full range of your power your results would have shown up as SS or SSS rank however no matter how many s's are added the results still won't be an accurate measure of your Power a huge appeal of this story to this point is the struggle of growth but by this point we have arrived essentially jinwu is the strongest person in the country and even on the world stage there's very few who compare with him but in terms of Storytelling this means that power just stops meaning anything our only sense of understanding strength is the

rank system that we've been given to work with however Jin Wu has surpassed that this is no longer a Story where we are comparing his strength to the world around him instead we're comparing the world to Jin Wu we're not looking up at other hunters or monsters we are looking down at them and it's a change in perspective that makes him feel Larger than Life but even considering that jinmu is still cautious in how he feels out the higher ranks though remember he's jumping from essentially C rank dungeons to the demon Castle but how does

that compared to the Other gates with this question in mind he tags Along on a hunter's guild raid as a minor to check out an A- rank dungeon for himself and here he meets chaan in meeting her we have another instance of Jin Wu questioning his Humanity as she typically can't stand the smell of hunters because she is too sensitive to the smell they give off but in his case she finds him to smell rather Pleasant for some reason raising the question what really is a player if They're this different from a normal Hunter he

eventually goes on a second raid with the Hunter's Guild this time carrying bags but things go very wrong as the Orcs inside overwhelm the other hunters and eventually lock them inside the gate the hunters get bodied by the leader of the Orcs And then Jin Wu feels like it is time to get involved out of courtesy he had taken a back seat as to not steal the raid from the people who actually paid for the pass but when They're going to die that becomes less important so he steps up to the orc leader and we

hear a familiar phrase as he calls Jin Wu a monarch this word hasn't come up super often in the series but it is the title of his class the monarch of Shadows whatever this Monarch thing is it leads the orc to question his meaning for life as the voice that monsters hear demanding them to kill also comes from a monarch of course the system starts glitching again as it Can't have Jin Wu learn too much too quickly and a fight breaks out where Jin Wu basically clears the boss fight effortlessly however he doesn't do this

before chahen or wuin Chul arrive and see what he can really do there's officially no hiding his strength anymore and even if he wanted to once he finally finishes the re-evaluation he is marked as Korea's 10th S rank and this more or less makes him a celebrity overnight again the srank is kind of Nebulous it just means that their power isn't measurable but that range is potentially Limitless unmeasurable can be too off the top of the scale or it could be a billion either way they'll both be marked as S rank and that's kind of

what chairman go was talking about earlier that said where does Jin Wu compare out of Korea's 10 sranks well up until now the two strongest hunters in Korea were chairman go and Cha haen just following them would be the leader of The hunter Guild Choy jong-in and after him is bayak junho of the white tigers but when we see Choy Jong in size up jinwu he immediately realizes that he has been completely dwarfed in comparison and this again is a sign that we are comparing the world to Jin Wu rather than the system we had

been working with in the past and because jinwu is so much stronger than everyone else it just doesn't make sense for him to join another guild if he is already The strongest so instead he and jinho start their own Guild further cementing his place in the world around him but with more and more of a spotlight being pushed on him he does begin to worry about his family so he attaches a shadow to to his sister to keep her safe as well as setting up a few around their home to build a kind of Shadow

neighborhood watch as well now that all the logistics are behind him though he grinds up to level 81 and re-enters the Demon castle where he gets the quest to defeat Baron the demon Monarch which as you might have guessed is sitting 24 floors above him at the top of the demon Castle on his way up he comes across best girl essel who is the culmination of all of the problems that the story has with writing side characters they build her up she joins the party there's this promise to see her again later and it's just

she's gone after she doesn't matter no matter how interesting a Character seems in this series they just don't matter and that's so unfortunate that said she does offer a bit of lore unlike other monsters she hears voices telling her to protect this place as opposed to telling her to kill humans not only that but apparently her and the others from the demon realm just woke up here one day and they don't know how or why when jinmu asks what they were doing before being here she starts glitching out as she tells him that they were

Preparing for war eventually elel offers to guide Jin Wu to the leaders of the demon Clans on each floors as they are the ones who have the entry passes that he needs and while it is cool seeing another party member for a bit honestly this just acts as a way to allow us to skip all of the final floors and bring us to baren unobstructed and the Demon King kind of mirrors jinwu in the way he fights he summons an army of demons to fight for him but we get to add in that He rides

a badass wyvern which is like 10 bonus cool points that he didn't need ultimately though all the soldiers go even they start wiping each other out and it comes down to a 1 V one between Jin Wu and baron however because of the massive Mana reserves needed to resummon his Shadows Jin Wu ends up falling into a bit of a desperate situation Baron has this overwhelming strength and as he closes in on jinwu he he begins charging a powerful beam attack from his mouth And this is where something different happens Jin Wu gets help essel

had been struggling to decide which side of the battle she should be on should her Allegiance be with the Demon King since she is a demon or should she help her new friend who was making her clan the most powerful by eliminating the stronger Clans she decides on throwing her weapon at Baron as he charges his attack and this opening allows Jin Wu to turn the tide and kill the demon moner AR and with the castle officially complete now he gets a few rewards firstly he turns the wyvern into a shadow then he creates the

Holy Water of Life to cure his mother with he gets a mystery key and a skill which allows him to swap places with any of his Shadows now that last one is both super cool and a massive trap for the rest of the series in the same way that gaining Shadows Chang the series by removing the sense that Jin Wu needed to struggle to Improve himself this ability also affects how the story is told in practice this in combination with Jin Wu placing Shadows on others means that there is no tension in the rest of

the story we have someone who is essentially the strongest man on the planet now being able to show up anywhere at any time with the only real limitation on this being that there's a 3-hour recharge time on this skill so as long as he isn't using it willy-nilly there Is no reason for anyone that he knows to get hurt ever again and that's the downfall of a lot of power fantasies at some point the hero is just strong enough to do everything and save everyone and when someone like Jin Wu can be anywhere it removes

so much pressure that things stop feeling like they matter it's no longer a matter of how can we get the hero to the battlefield it's a matter of how do we keep the hero away from the battlefield Because if you don't the conflict is just over immediately regardless Jin Wu has an instant way out of the dung so he promises essel that he will return and just [ __ ] dips and just like that she is completely written out of the story we have this very cool character who builds up a quick bond with our

hero and she even gets a spark of growth as she chooses to help him against Baron but then there's just no payoff and she's gone it's the same problem we saw with Jui it's the same problem we saw with Mr song and like everyone else that the story has suggested to be important but who ultimately get left behind but jinlu doesn't care about the hot purple-haired demon girl anymore he's got bigger things on his mind and rushes to the hospital where he heals his mom with the Holy Water of Life making her the first person

to ever recover from Eternal Slumber and looky that now we have a reason for jinwu to stay out from a Major conflict while he was in the demon Castle an ant had escaped from jju Island and started slaughtering a ton of people jedu Island by the way is where an s-rank dungeon broke and monstrous ants emerged from it completely taking things over the entire Island was basically marked as a no man's land and deemed unlivable for Humanity there were even a few efforts to clear the ants out but no raid had ever been successful and

now these ants had survived long enough That they were starting to evolve and had started to escape the island on their own so they have to be addressed so chairman go asked Jin Wu to help on a joint raid between Japan and Korea to eliminate the bugs but he's not interested because he wants to make up for Mis time with his mother which part of me gets and the other part thinks is pretty darn stupid because you got this army of ants that's coming one way or another but either way Jin Wu does Attend a

gathering of both countries sranks where there's this four on four sparring match and eventually the leader of Japan's Hunters goo ryuji challenges jinu to a fight now goto is hot [ __ ] people talk about him like he is God's gift to Hunters and he is considered to be the strong strongest person at the Gathering by far but in this sparring match Jin Wu just plays with him it gets to the point where goo gets so frustrated that he even tries to kill Jin Wu and the other sranks jump in thinking that they need to

stop them because their next attacks will definitely have resulted in one of them being killed before leaving the other Hunters jinwu plants his Shadows on a few of Korea's s-ranks and with that the raid begins as he heads home to his family Japan is supposed to lure out all of the small while Korea heads inside to kill their Queen and things go pretty well for the most part but they quickly Change with the emergence of the black ant this is the ultimate soldier of the colony and by far the strongest thing on the island but

we got a whole group of sranks with an s-rank healer nothing can go wrong oh wait no the healer is killed immediately and his abilities are absorbed by the ant that's not good everything looks horrible but with no Jin Wu here to save them there's nothing they can really do the combined effort of all of Korea's sranks is nothing Against this monster and things only get worse when he leaves to fight the king that he believes to be goto and recalls all of the rest of the Island's ants to deal with Korea's Hunters instead luckily

the raid was being broadcast on TV Jin Wu sees what's happening swaps in for one of his Shadows that he placed earlier and almost immediately clears all of the small ants with his Shadows before Reviving them into his own Army whicho thank God we almost had a moment Of tension there now unlike his previous raids this one is televised and all of Korea sees what he is capable of there is no more hiding his strength or his Shadows but at this point it just doesn't really matter now once the number of ants has been C

down quite a bit he takes the opportunity to give potions to the surviving sranks though chahen is too injured for this to work what's worse is that the black ant finally returns after effortlessly Killing goto and he challenges jinu to a fight so that he can't even focus on saving cha anymore so how does the black ant this monster who dominated two Nations worth of s-ranks compare to Jin Wu well he manages to leave exactly one scratch on him the ant gets so frustrated by getting clowned on that he transforms into a more offensive version

of himself but jinu just continues to throw him around again get so bad that the bug panics and tries to escape but He's just slammed into the ground and killed like it's nothing but this monster doesn't go to waste as he is resurrected and is made into Jin Wu's strongest Soldier being given the name baru this kill finally brings jinwu to level 100 there's no time to celebrate though as he needs to resurrect the srank Healer that had been killed so that he can use them to save chahen and just like that the island that

had been sealed off for years is cleared by J W In a matter of minutes the story had to try very hard to keep Jin Wu out of this raid from the beginning because realistically he should have just gone with everyone else but you know family time and then when tension is actually built up they just pop him in there like it's nothing and the entire thing is resolved instantaneously this is what I mean when I say there can't be tension in the rest of the series for as long as Jin Wu Exists within it

now obviously this turns him from a Korean celebrity to someone known around the world and he is approached by a man named Adam White from America who asked him to meet with his boss who is the leader of the hunter management Bureau in exchange for joining them they offer jinwu a US citizenship and an upgrade they apparently have this woman named Norma selner who can upgrade a hunter's Power by 30% however when she tries to do this For Jin Wu she starts freaking out normally she can see the Hunter's connection to something otherworldly but jinwu

is different his power doesn't originate from anything else and instead it comes from the infinite Darkness within himself and because of that it means that he's not borrowing his power and that he has no limits which if you remember is basically what Kang said way back in the prisoner Arc not only that but she mentions that Jin Wu is a king Something that she has experienced before but never in this way and obviously King is a parallel for Monarch which we've heard many times at this point but this all adds fuel to those questions about

jinmu that he has been building up but luckily we are approaching the answer here that mystery key that he had received for clearing the demon Castle is finally revealing itself and leads him back to the cinon temple the double dungeon that Everything started at we get a bit of time focusing on some people who actually aren't Jin Wu before that though imagine as chahan asked to join his Guild because she has been sing over him since he saved her life but that's that's kind of it though that's her Arc going from from arguably the strongest

hunter in Korea to someone who simps for jinwu because he saved her and that's kind of all there is to her an interesting idea is posed here as we see Her facing off against her fears in the entry test as Jin Wu has her fight baru and like that's a really cool moment but ultimately jinu doesn't let her join the guild anyways because he wants to remain a one-man operation and that moment of potential growth is just like gone and wasted now aside from chahan there is also a small Arc involving Jin Wu's sister ginaa

after he uses Shadow exchange to meet with the night Guild on a raid his sister school is attacked by A group of Orcs And Jin Wu needs to rush over to protect her arriving at the very last moment this teaches him to be more conservative with using Shadow exchange and leaves jna with some serious PTSD which will surely lead to something right yeah probably not anyways finally chairman go asked jinu to ignore foreign offers like the USA was making and to remain in Korea Jin Wu agrees to this however he asks to be allowed to

enter Gates alone and no longer need to follow The 10p person rule as this rule was set up for Public Safety it's kind of silly for him to have to abide by it if he's the strongest person on the planet but as a formality chairman go arranges for this to go ahead as long as Wu Jin chill can follow him into one dungeon to make sure that he'll be okay and almost immediately he is blown away by what he sees jinwu has a group group of his soldiers clearing mobs another group mining Mana ore and

a third salvaging Monsters bodies and even when an a rank Boss shows up Jin Wu beats it in one shot so seeing this it is decided by the hunters Association that Jin Wu should not just be considered a oneman raid but should be thought of as a oneman guild on par with any of Korea's others which honestly is still kind of conservative and finally an srank gate emerges in Japan but again Jin Wu ignores a serious problem because it is time for him to head back to the double dungeon inside Jin Wu approaches a statue

holding Commandments and is told that if he survives this final test everything will be revealed to him this normally wouldn't be too big an issue but jinmu isn't allowed to use his summons or job specific skills meaning it's just him versus the statue in a 1 V one and during this fight we learn that the Commandment statue is actually the architect the creator of the system that jinmu has has been using for defeating Him jinwu is given the opportunity to retrieve lost memories and sees a brief history of the original monarch of Shadows specifically him

arriving to a war between monsters and Silver Angels however by turning all the dead soldiers on the battlefield into Shadows the Monarch is able to single-handedly turn the tide of this war but despite this even though he was the one who was winning the fight for the monarchs he was betrayed by the monarch of beasts And baron the monarch monarch of white flames and while jinmu is seeing all these memories and begins to sink together with them a black heart appears in his chest now while he was having this flashback several other Hunters including chahen

and Choy all enter the double dungeon to help him after finding out that he had entered alone the architect tells them that jinwu will be reborn as the true monarch of Shadows once the memories are complete and these Hunters will be his first sacrifices however the shadow Monarch doesn't emerge here instead Jin Wu wakes up and protects all of the other Hunters by killing the architect and as everyone leaves the dungeon Jin Wu opens up briefly but honestly as he tells Wu Jin Chul about the system making him really the only other person who knows

the truth which is kind of nice actually however not everything is going well as the world is kind of coming to an end While the srank gates had been extremely rare in the past really only once appearing in America and then on jedu island all of the sudden they were appearing all over the place Japan was the first as we mentioned earlier but now they had one in India and the UK and the USA again and several other nations with each potentially destroying the region that they appeared in if they aren't cleared within a week

and now luckily we do have the world's strongest Hunter here but unluckily after his fight with the architect he's out cold for 3 Days by the time he wakes up Giants are already destroying Japan but even so he doesn't want to get involved and this is added on to when Gina asks him to not go because she is still dealing with the trauma from the orc attack it's a really heavy moment that gets completely overlooked it's like a chapter before Jin Wu changes his mind goes to talk to his sister while she's Asleep and basically

says anyways I'm a go sorry and that's like the whole conversation and we just never focus on her or her trauma again in the series cuz her name isn't Jin Wu and that's so unfortunate because it could have been some something so cool to look into more now over in Japan there are Giants Taking Over the city that the gate appeared in but Jin Wu clears them out enters the gate to finish off the boss and here we have the second part of our Lore dump for Jin Wu The Dungeon boss is Leia the monarch

of Beginnings he has been chained down and asks if Jin Wu will free him and as a show of trust he explains what he knows about the war that Jin Wu saw in his Memories the Angels were beings called rulers and all of the monsters in the battle field served the monarchs with these two groups being sworn enemies not only that but the rulers were the ones who opened the gates around the world and filled Them with monsters and apparently there will be another War coming between the rulers and the monarchs and Leia warns jinmu

that he's going to be alone in this battle as the shadow Monarch he is the natural enemy of the rulers but he was also betrayed by the other monarchs in the past meaning he's going to have the biggest Target on him in this upcoming battle that said Leia does promise that if he he is freed he will help Jin Wu as an ally before letting Him go though Jin Wu asks if he will stand with Humanity when the Monarch avoids the question jinu ultimately chooses to kill him and with that the conflict in Japan is

over and the srank dungeon is cleared now this point in the story all feels very different from what we've seen so far like we've talked about becoming stronger no longer matters and learning about the shadow Monarch isn't really in jinu's control so it honestly feels like a lot of Waiting in most cases and that might be why we've actually been taking a little bit of time to explore some of the side characters even if very lightly however there isn't really enough time or follow through for any of them to end up feeling fully developed or

even satisfying in any way it's like we're being told hey look how interesting cha Haan could have been but then the writers just don't feel confident enough to commit and panic when jinwoo isn't on The page so we leave them all together I think this lack of confidence is why as we enter into the last section of the story Things become even more focused on Jin Wu than they had in the past this whole endgame section begins with Jin Wu flying to America which not so subtly means he's leaving almost everyone he knows in Korea

behind for a moment on the way there he finds out that his missing father had emerged from a gate and is the leading suspect in having Killed a national level Hunter which he doesn't take super well but while he is in America some things do go his way for example he meets with the head of the hunter Bureau and they offer him the the runstone from camish a dragon who was the boss of the first s-rank dungeon however jinwu isn't really interested in the runstone and instead asks to see the dragon's body naturally he revives

it as a shadow but because he's been dead for so long he Fades away shortly after Before camish passes on again though he warns jinwu about four humans who have borrowed the power of the rulers and speaking of we get to meet one almost immediately remember dongu the brother of the guy who attacked jinwu in the spider dungeon well he has kidnapped jinho and is torturing him to get revenge but jinu shows up and starts bodying the guy however because dongu is part of the Scavengers Guild their leader Thomas Andre arrives and begins To protect

him Andre is one of those humans with the powers of the rulers and he's considered to be the strongest hunter in the world so what happens when the most powerful Hunter clashes with Jin Wu I mean if you've been following along then you can probably guess Jin Wu dominates the dude however in the end he chooses to spare Andre's life as he realizes the dude is just filling his role as a Guild Master this again showcases the problem with the series Building up characters who aren't Jin Wu though like to this point they have spent

a lot of time talking up this Thomas Andre dude he's had more buildup than any other secondary character in the story then we actually get to see what he can do and it's just embarrassing the story is becoming something like if Superman was put in a boxing ring with toddlers like at what point does it just not matter how strong he is anymore if no no one is powerful Enough to put up a fight the value of strength in this power fantasy stops feeling satisfying and we lean into a category more similar to one punch

B except this isn't a comedy so it just doesn't feel right but like yeah obviously it is fun to watch Jin Wu Style on people but the story is taking itself seriously and at some point fun just isn't enough on its own we are officially beyond the point where Humanity matters in this story and we Need to be introduced to a new Force to bring any semblance of t or waight back into things which is why this is the point where the monarchs begin planning their assault in the background so there is some hope for

the future of the story now we also have a bit of a human element of Jin Ru being explored through the conference as he is surrounded by hunters questioning his loyalty when a bounty is placed on his father China's representative asks what jinu will do if His dad needs to be killed to this he responds that as a hunter it is his duty to slay monsters however if that monster still has his father somewhere inside of him then jinu will protect his family from all the other hunters in the world if necessary it is a

super cool scene and when combined with how serious he got to save jinho it brings back that sense of humanity that had been slipping away from jinu since he started becoming more powerful it seems as though with The architect out of the way the system is no longer trying to change him from who he was anymore the final push towards showing us that Jin Wu does in fact still have a heart though comes when the frost Monarch arrives and tries to kill chairman go as he is another human chosen by the rulers now remember how

I said that we need to create a reason as to why Jin Wu can't be everywhere at once because he has Shadow exchange well conveniently the other Monarchs can distort space or something like that they don't go into it too much and that makes it so that his Shadows can't relate information to him it isn't until the seal around the Monarch and chairman go is cracked that jinmu is made aware of the situation and can warp in but but by then it's too late he scares the frost Monarch away but the chairman is beyond saving

at this point as he dies go thanks Jin Wu for existing and ask him to stand with Humanity when It becomes time to make a choice but with his death jinu gets a personal Vendetta against the frost Mark and Promises wuin Chul that he will avenge their friend this all brings a lot back to the series that the previous section had been missing when jinu was learning about himself he needed to wait to either meet a new enemy who could give him information or until the architect was willing to open up to him it was

all completely out of his control but now Jinwu has several goals in front of him find his father and see if he's a monster avenge chairman go by killing the frost Monarch prepare for the coming Monarch and ruler War these are all things that he can more actively work towards and it gives the series a sense of direction again now preparing for war is the easiest to work on so Jin Wu starts sparring with his shadow Shadows to level them up not only that but Thomas Andre shows up and as a means of Thanking jinbu

for sparing him he gives him a set of daggers made from cish and finally he spends some time with his family and even goes on a date with chah to get all of his Affairs in order before things go down and speaking of things going down nine massive Gates appear in the sky all over the world and no one is able to enter them not only that but other Gates stop appearing alt together which obviously makes people kind of nervous but with those pieces in Place the stage is now set for the climactic arc the

battle of the monarchs things begin with the monarchs of frost plags and beasts grouping together and Jin Wu showing up to battle them he manages to kill the monarch of plagues but the others get the upper hand and chinu is actually overwhelmed for the first time since like a hundred chapters ago when he fought igis in fact the two remaining monarchs even managed to kill him but as his HP h H zero a hidden Skill activates due to him having the black heart when this triggers jinwu wakes back up in the hospital from chapter 11

this time though he has retained all 146 of his levels as well as all of his inventory his skills his shadows and memories with this all in mind he tries to live his life fixing all the mistakes and saving as many people that he can however all the while a notification keeps popping up asking him if he wants to restart the world he Tries to ignore it but eventually he must face this choice and he's approached by the original Shadow Monarch ashborne if you remember all the way back to the job change Quest jinwu envisioned

the old version of himself but this was actually ashborne speaking to him and now that jinu had become one with death by experiencing it the shadow Monarch was ready to show him the beginning and the end the true story of what we had been dancing around for Nearly 60 Chapters at this point and I'm going to be honest this back story is equally badass and confusing I think I had to read the section like three times to actually understand what was happening all the way through but that probably just came down to some of the

wording and perspectives that we were given we kind of learned about things from ashbourne's perspective and there's a few moments that feel like other people just flip-flop their morality Which had me reaching the end and not really understanding who was supposed to be good or bad but the story basically goes like this in the beginning there was an all power ful deity called the absolute being he took the primordial light and darkness and transformed them into the rulers and monarchs respectively with the rulers being given the order to protect life while the monarchs Were Meant

to destroy all in the desire of creating balance however As these two forces opposed each other an endless war broke out the rulers believing themselves to be in the right approached the absolute being and asked him to help them defeat the monarchs and it's my head cannon that he just didn't want want to upset the balance and this is the reason that he refused however the rulers couldn't understand this decision and came to the conclusion that this war that they were fighting was for nothing but the absolute being's Entertainment and if that's going to be

the case they were no longer going to serve him so seven of the eight rulers decided to rebel against him so that they could finally bring the war to an end but the last and strongest ruler ashborne opposed them he tried to stop them but as he was outnumbered he ended up being defeated and left on death's door it is here that ashborne finds a special gift given to him by the absolute being unlike the other rulers Ashborne could transform and so moments before his death he receives a second chance at life as the king

of the dead and the monarch of Shadows which is very similar to what jinwu was experiencing right now with this new power he returns to the battlefield but he is too late the rulers have already slaughtered the absolute being and not only that but in the process they managed to capture Leia and sealed him away this totally turned the tide of their battle seeing this Balance fall apart ashborne joins the other monarchs and returns things to their natural order but his power leads to jealousy the monarch of Destruction secretly convinces the monarchs of Beast and

white Flames to betray him and though he would manage to kill Baron the Beast Monarch would Escape not only that but ashborne Army was completely destroyed in this battle this is when the rulers approached him and asked for forgiveness but he was having none of That he had lost his God after his fellow rulers turned against him and now the monarchs were betraying him as well and so he felt he had no place and just wanted to die and be set free from all of his suffering those keeping track by the way why did Jin

Wu want his power because in the double dungeon after he saved so many people who did not believe in him those people still ended up betraying him and leaving him for dead he believed if he became stronger he Would never be betrayed again and the more that we learn about ashborne the more their lives start to overlap obviously though the rulers didn't want to kill ashborne as he is so powerful and could be potentially very useful so when they refused to kill him he decided to go into hiding hoping he could rebuild his army and

take revenge on the Beast Monarch that said again he would be too late with he Leia and now Baron out of the the picture the monarchs are Completely overwhelmed by the force of the rulers and they are made to go into hiding the remaining monarchs arrang to invade Earth and fight the rulers again once they were back to full strength but the rulers had a special tool to help them the cup of reincarnation which allowed them to turn back time 10 years which they would use to prepare Earth you see a world without Mana could

not survive the battle between monarchs and rulers but let's say the rulers could Create Gates filled with with monsters and monotones and awakened some of humanity so that they could learn to fight back while powering up the world with the resources they gained in raids this is why the dungeons were created by the rulers this was really their only form of Defense but no matter how hard they tried the monarchs would always win and the cup would need to be used again this happened so often that it basically leaves the cup empty with at best

one Use remaining however on the final attempt some something different happens ashborne had followed the monarchs to Earth looking for a place where he could belong in the universe but because he was so powerful he couldn't find a suitable vessel this is when the architect approached him and offered to help him in exchange for immortality ultimately together they would find Jin Wu and selected him to become a player someone who could level up and become Powerful on his own as they were slowly drip-fed ashbourne's power and eventually could become a perfect vessel for him now

with the introduction of ashbourne's vessel in the timeline that leaves the question is this enough to stop the monarchs after sharing his story ashborne offers jinu a choice he can remain in this perfect dream world that he had created or he could return to life and continue the fight against the monarchs without any hesitation Jin Wu calls out arise and revives himself as the true Shadow Monarch deleting the system and removing all limits on his power when he wakes up he finds that his father had been protecting him from the remaining monarchs but once he

rejoins the fight his dad vanishes regardless our boy is at full strength now and we get to see him showing off against beast and frost the Beast Monarch wants nothing to do with this and teleports to some far off place but within a matter Of seconds Jin Wu finds him and emerges out of his shadow before killing him in just four hits he then returns to the frost Monarch and when the enemy tries to stab him his weapon literally crumbles on impact and from there it would only be a few more moments before Jin Wu

killed the frost Monarch as well and finally Avenged chairman goat after the fight Jin Wu finds his father and his dad explains that he failed to leave a dungeon after killing a boss and had Been trapped in the rift between Dimensions until the rulers approached him and gave him a second chance at life if he promised to kill the monarchs once they discovered that his son was the new monarch of Shadows though the rulers changed his priorities to instead become to protect Jin Wu their time together wouldn't be super long lived but Jin Wu tells

his dad about how much he hated him for disappearing and how every time he left for a mission or made it home to His sister and his mom he began resenting his father more and more but despite that feeling he still missed him the entire time and with this context in mind it adds a lot to how Jin Wu clung to life in each dungeon yes he was the weakest - Rank and he was always in over his head yes he was always injured or hospitalized after each raid but he could never allow himself to

die because this would hurt his mom and sister in the same way that his father had hurt Them before these two eventually hug in a very tear-filled moment however ilan's time runs out as he has taken too much damage in the fight against the monarchs and so he Fades away in his son's arms leading jinwu to pledge to destroy the monarchs for what they had did to his father and now we are in the end game following this the gate in the sky finally opens but it isn't mon ERS that emerge from it instead an

army of 100,000 Shadow soldiers come forth and This is ashborne real army they have finally made it to Earth and now that jinwu has taken their Master's place they will all serve him from here we can jump to preparing for the final battle with eight other Gates around the world it's unclear where the final monarchs will show up or how many soldiers they will bring But ultimately their entire force shows up in Canada the farthest point from Korea which will give them the most time to destroy things and it Really would not take long before

Canada is essentially wiped off the map and so jinwu needs to make his move as well he warps to America collects kish's runstone and visits selner for a psychic reading she asks him if he's really planning to sacrifice himself for everyone else knowing that they won't even remember him and he starts smiling because this reaction means that his plan will work finally before heading to the battlefield he calls chaan one more Time and he promises proes that he will come see her again no matter what these are all very small moments that do a lot

in the foreshadowing department when he arrives in Canada Jin Wu attacks on two fronts firstly he goes in alone and kills as many soldiers from the army of Destruction as he can before summoning their Shadows to fight for him meanwhile he sends Thomas Andre to another location to draw out the ironbody Monarch only to have all of Jin Wu's Actual Army pop out of Andre's Shadow and kill the monarch almost instantly anares finally shows up and chases Jin Wu through a portal and by using the skill he gained from kish's runstone he makes an opening

to bring the monarch of Destruction to an isolated island on the other side of the world it would fight here until morning but jinu secretly sets up a trap similar to what the frost Monarch had done when he attacked chairman go by creating a dimensional Pocket around their Battlefield he could buy time for the rulers to arrive undetected and when the conflict finally broke that seal the rulers could swoop in and finish off on tares now it does feel like kind of a cheap win but at the same time it takes advantage of the way

of thinking that allow jinwu to survive so long as an e rank it is quick thinking planning adapting to his situation all of his strengths that allow him to defeat the one person alive Who could compete with him the rulers offer jinu a reward for helping them end the war and he makes a very bold wish asking them to use the cup of reincarnation for the final time as a monarch jinu would be able to keep his memories and power when time is turned back and so he asked the rulers to not set up Gates

on Earth this time and instead just allow him to take care of the monarchs on his own he knows the risks and the sacrifice that this will Involve not to mention all the friends and family that he will have to leave behind in this world but these are all the things that ashborne had warned him about way back in the job change Quest he had already made peace with this reality with that in mind he believes that all of this will be worth that if he can avoid the countless deaths and losses that this world

had experienced since the gates had appeared and the Monarch's attack and so he will go back Carry all of the burden on his own and save everyone this time and in doing so he would fulfill his promise to Chairman go by choosing to stand with Humanity he arrives back in time as a child and finds his father still at home and it's this really sweet moment where he starts crying because he's so happy ultimately he would choose to spend some time enjoying this life but would eventually need to make his sacrifice so he leaves a

note for his parents saying he will Return when he can and then dives into the world of endless Darkness for the next 2 years however time in this Dimension Works differently and jinwu would spend 207 years in isolation until he managed to kill all of the monarchs on the other side when he finally returns home he is approached by a messenger of the rulers and they ask if he wants to remain in this world or go to a new one saying that his overwhelming Mana might have an effect On the world around him but Jin

Wu chooses to stay even though he's unsure of his role on earth now that he is effectively an immortal Monarch again we are paralleling ashborne who went to Earth searching for purpose but jinwu has something that ashborne never did he happens to see cha ha running by In This Moment and chooses to remain in this world for the people that he loves and for the people who love him and with that the story ends as Jin Wu fulfills His promise and makes it back to chah so solo leveling main story ends here it is a

whole power fantasy Journey that has you experiencing struggles and growth through Jin Wu's eyes however it offers something more than just a feeling of power it very quickly moves beyond that and explores themes of self-improvement and reflection finding meaning and the value and responsibility associated with power this is by no means a perfect series I think I've spent more than Enough time covering the issues to prove that however it is one that I really enjoyed and found value in despite being extremely cliche and power fantasy trash typically this is where I'd be ending my review

but the story doesn't quite end here chapter 179 the main ending for the story has a message from duu he was the one responsible for this web tune adaptation of solo leveling and the art and the love that he supplied this story with can be felt in literally every page It's not an exaggeration to say that visually this was one of the most stunning and enjoyable experiences I've ever had with this kind of medium like some of these panels are just stunning and feel so much larger than life that it really makes solo leveling feel

like something special and that's why I was so interested in his final thoughts on it in this note at the end of the Final Chapter he says thank you for showing my web tune so much love despite its flaws I've learned a lot from taking on this new challenge and all the love this Series has received made me feel both happy and humbled he then goes into very heartfelt and personal thanks to everyone who helped make this project a reality but then he continues I will try to work harder from here on out thank you

life is an endless quest where you must level up constantly sometimes alone sometimes with company and therefore I'd like to wish luck to all of my readers On their remaining Journey thank you for showing Sol leveling so much love until next time honestly I had never heard of Duo before Soul leveling but just from reading this short note you really get a feeling of the kind of humble and genuine person he was he had just succeeded in creating one of the most successful web tunes of all time and all he had to say was thanking

his fans for loving it despite its problems and then showing appreciation to all the people That many others in his position might have overlooked and having completed this journey all that was on his mind was trying even harder next time a life philosophy that is so fitting to what what solo leveling is but unfortunately there wouldn't be a next time duu would pass away from a cerebral hemorrhage very soon after solo leveling ended and as such the epilogue was dedicated to his memory this extended ending for the story covers chapters 180 to 200 and Follows

Jin Wu's new life you see him coming across plenty of old faces finding his place in this new world and marrying chaan they even have a son named suho I'm not going to lie not every chapter in this section is a banger but there is this overall feeling of love that permeates through the entire thing it isn't the same old story at all the vibe is very very different but it's nice it's warm it feels lived in and it came with a wave of new life Being breathed into the series that I cannot understate the

value of that said I think once suho becomes the focus it really feels like experiencing the best parts of soul level all over again and when they parallel him and Jin Wu together it it really chokes you up however what really broke me was the final notes for the series Duo's disciples write about him being the great pillar who supported them and helped them grow as well as how much They miss and cherish him for everything that he was after the little bit I've been able to learn about duu I really feel like the world

has lost someone truly prolific and special he was someone who managed to impact so many lives all around the world while inspiring and cultivating all the people who knew him personally we spent a lot of time talking about what power means in this video and what the value of power is but even more so than having The strength to fight monsters or demons true power comes in the form of being able to make those around you better to prop up support and motivate others and in that sense I believe that duo is the definition of

powerful and I hope he rests in peace knowing all the good he put out into the world thank you all so much for watching and until next time I hope you all stay excellent