This article is updated based on new theories and knowledge.
Solo leveling is a top-tier webtoon creating considerable waves in the webtoon community recently. Published by D&C Media based on the light novel “I alone level up” by Chu-Gong and illustrated by Dubu from Redice studio. The art and design are indeed a spectacle for being one of its kind, and the story is spreading the craze like wildfire.
The webtoon started serializing in July 2016 and entered its popular phase recently in early 2020 as its 1st season came to an end. Now that the manhwa series has concluded, we can talk about some of the strongest characters in the series, the all-powerful Monarchs.
Powers of all Monarchs in Solo Leveling
9) The Monarch of White Flames, the King of Demons, Baran
With an army of hell’s demons, he has a unique power of lightning manipulation and immense Mana. With the ability of dimensional storage, he could easily summon nasty demons on his command and overpower many S-rank hunters.
He can manipulate fire and weather. With a threat level of ‘Demon,’ he could stall Jin-Woo for some time and forced him to summon his elite shadow army. Although we didn’t get to see Baran in his original form, we saw a copy of him as the boss of the 100th floor of Demon Castle.
Despite this, he was insanely strong, as he had initially overpowered Sung Jin Woo during their fight. He had many annoying abilities like lightning breath and hell’s army, which showed a glimpse of his power level.
After knowing about his past, this clone of Baran is way weaker than his original form.
8) The Monarch of the Beginning, the King of Giants, Legia
With an army of giants, he has a unique power of herd command, which enables him in mass murder and destruction. He can perform distortions in the fabric of reality and cross gates voluntarily. With a threat level of ‘Dragon,’ he can cause massive chaos, but he could not last long in the Japan Arc.
Although he was the first Monarch introduced to us in the manhwa, he only stuck around briefly. We also only know a little of his abilities aside from the fact that he could cast a spell between himself and someone else, preventing both of them from lying.
He was dealt very easily by Sung Jin Woo since he was also chained, and he didn’t get to see much action.
7) The Monarch of the Iron Body, the King of Monstrous Humanoids, Tarnak
With an army of nearly indestructible Golems, he has unique energy manipulation and statistics enhancement power. Using the ability to distort dimensions, he could travel among dimensional rifts and has extraordinary martial arts skills.
Screening a threat level of ‘Dragon,’ hypersonic speed, and regeneration, he sits just beside the king of beasts in terms of raw power. In the Solo Leveling story, he came along with other monarchs to destroy the National Authority Hunter, Christopher Reed.
He was a very egoistical individual who was always overconfident in his abilities. Despite this, he understands that some opponents, like Sung Jin Woo, are far stronger than him.
Tarnak also had a spiritual body manifestation, which transformed him into a huge golem with armour. Despite his power level, Sung Jin Woo didn’t deal with him directly and sent Thomas Andre, Bellion and Beru to defeat him.
And, with no support and connections cut from Antares, he could only do a little against the trio.
6) The Monarch of Beastly Fangs, the King of Beasts, Rakan
With an army of monstrous beasts at his command, he has a unique power of transforming into a huge white wolf with an attack of range in kilometers. He can perform spatial distortion and hide in between dimensions for surprise attacks.
He can manipulate sound through howling. With a threat level of ‘Dragon,’ he easily pierced Jin-Woo from back to front in his chest with his claws. Apart from this, he was a fierce fighter who had defeated Thomas Andre.
Rakan had inhuman base attributes for strength, speed, durability, and regenerative abilities. These attributes only further strengthen his title of King of Beasts.
5) The Monarch of Plagues, the Queen of Insects, Querehsha
With an army of deadly parasites, she can awaken the undead by infesting the brain of the corpses, doubled with her ability to shapeshift into a horde of insects; she reigns unstoppable. She could create a portal at will and hide after the 6th war.
With a threat level of ‘Dragon,’ she heavily injured Jin-Woo and has a considerably low range of attack with poison spits and viral infestation. During her fight, she could easily hold Beru back with her raw strength.
On top of this, she could transform into an insect-like monster, improving her base stats even further. Her most broken ability was that she could regenerate herself even after being sliced by Sung Jin Woo once.
Despite this, she was ultimately killed after Sung Jin Woo sliced her numerous times.
4) The Monarch of Frost, the King of Snow Folk, Arte
With an army of ice soldiers and frost equipments, he has an extensive range of attacks. He has a unique power of extraordinary spells casting notably sleep magic. He is an abyss level Mage and can create his own dimensional portals of a blue tint.
With a threat level of ‘Dragon,’ hypersonic speed, and calm understanding, he easily overpowered Kamish’s Wrath Jin-Woo. Also, he was the one behind the death of the Korean Hunter Association Chairman, Go Gun-Hee.
If there was a monarch who did give Sung Jin Woo a hard fight, it was the combination of Arte’s and Rakan’s fight. Although the Frost Monarch was successfully gravely wounding Sung Jin Woo, he could not finish him.
Despite the Frost Monarch’s power, Sung Jin Woo easily defeated him once he unlocked some of the special abilities of the Shadow Monarch.
3) The Monarch of Transfiguration, the King of Demonic Spectres, Yogumunt
With an ability to create numerous eyeballs anywhere, nothing goes unseen for this specter. His unique ability is clairvoyance by constructing a huge eyeball. With divine fabric manipulation, he can easily travel among dimensions to create huge illusions easy to intercept but deadly.
He posed as the most troubled nemesis to Jing-Woo besides Antares. He had summoned countless portals to summon a massive dragon army, which had troubled Sung Jin Woo for some time.
Despite this, his army was annihilated by Sung Jin Woo and turned into his shadow army. Also, Sung Jin Woo didn’t kill him in their first battle; he challenged Yogumunt later and killed him the second time.
2) The Monarch of Destruction, the King of Berserk Dragons, Antares
Aka The strongest monarch, Antares, is the last boss in the manhwa with an indelible body and OP abilities. He is a sole fighter with a dragon scale longsword and has two unique abilities, unlike the other seven monarchs.
He uses Breath of destruction to wipe out anything in a range of 1000 kilometers, even the seemingly immortal shadow soldiers.
With the Dragon Emperor’s roar, he can freeze everything in an instant; even S-rank hunters start having convulsions. With a boasting threat level of ‘Demon God,‘ he can even negate others’ regeneration and has the highest spatial manipulation.
Showcasing speed faster than light and extremely high stamina, only after he intervened, the monarchs could overpower the Shadow Monarch. All of his abilities showcase why he was called the strongest and the oldest Monarch.
He was very durable, as Sung Jin Woo couldn’t even damage him with most of his attacks. On top of this, he could also transform into a dragon or a human-dragon kind of species.
However, in the end, hunter Sung Jin Woo along with the full power of Ashborn, finally defeated Antares two times. This exhibit that presently, Sung Jin Woo is the strongest character in the Solo Leveling world.
And even when Sung Jin Woo struggled during their first battle, he still defeated Antares easily during their second battle.
Strongest Monarch in Solo Leveling
1) The Shadow Monarch, the King of the Dead, Ashborn, then Sung Jin-Woo
Ashborn was a ruler who later became a monarch after God was betrayed and assassinated by the rulers; he was the greatest fragment of brilliant light with an army of reanimated shadows forming an undefeated herd and had the unique power of death god’s sovereignty. He was later betrayed and weakened by the monarchs too.
Despite his demise, he was still one of the strongest rulers when he was alive. He had immense raw strength and had a massive shadow army to fight his battles. Apart from this, he had various other abilities which justified his title of the strongest ruler.
After helplessly dying once, Jin-Woo accepts Ashborn’s dark heart and becomes the shadow monarch; with all hellish powers yet soaring high up-to-the heavens, he has the highest range of attack ever.
With many unique abilities inherited from Ashborn, he can teleport by shadow exchange and is the strongest human on earth. He also has the ability to bestow power, unlike other monarchs.
Despite Ashborn’s strength, he was still second to Antares regarding raw power. But that is different with Sung Jin Woo. He surpassed Ashborn’s power after he had defeated all of the Monarchs alone. This shows why Sung Jin Woo can be called the strongest Monarch.
Solo Leveling Plot
Moving on to the plot premise, the story follows Sung Jin Woo in a world where Dimensional gates started popping up, which connected this ethereal reality to an unbelievable barbaric dungeon full of monsters. Along with it, some ordinary people awakened to unrealistic powers and recognized themselves as the “Hunters.”
Sung Jin-Woo was an E-rank hunter and came to be known as the “weakest hunter in the world.” Being too weak, Sung Jin-Woo barely earned anything and still had loads of responsibilities.
One day, facing a parlous enemy, losing his whole crew, and nearly accepting death, he got a log ping: an option to become firm, an opportunity to LEVEL UP.
In the last few chapters, Sung Jin Woo has become the strongest character in the Solo Leveling world after defeating all the monarchs alone one more time. Now every monarch is gone, and the story has started from the beginning.
One of the most important divulge is the introduction of The Absolute Being (God), who split the powers of light and dark into eight each, which became the eight dark monarchs and eight light rulers. The monarchs sorted to destroy the universe, whereas the rulers fought to protect it.
So, here the question arises, there are a total of 9 monarchs, but The Absolute Being created eight monarchs. So, who was the 9th one? The answer is simple, the Shadow Monarch.
Ashborn, the Shadow Monarch, was the ruler before the assassination of the Absolute Being. Always being the side of God, he was granted by the dark power after his death and became the Shadow Monarch.
Conclusion
As displayed in the chapter, Sung Jin Woo defeated every monarch twice, one on the Earth and the other in the dimensional rift. Since the manhwa was completed, we now have complete information on all of the Monarchs in the series.
Most of them have displayed their abilities and special powers, too. So, we have ranked all of these Monarchs in this list based on their power levels and feats.
You can read the webtoon on its official site; the English translation can be found at fsapk.com. This is an official site that has paid chapters, so do support the author by reading from it. Keep following our page for more exciting epics from the story. We will be back with another post. Till then stay tuned with us and read the articles below.
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Eswar Keshav is an ardent anime fan for more than a decade. Along with this, he also has been following anime and manga updates for years. He is also enthusiastic and passionate when it comes to writing about his favorite things. Combining his love for writing and his love for anime and manga, his articles speak of his love for the genre.