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The following contains spoilers for Solo Leveling.
At the end ofSolo LevelingSeason 2, Sung Jinwoo’s power has become seemingly unmatched. He effortlessly defeated the Ant King, who was stronger than every single S-Rank hunter we had seen so far combined. Early in the series, S-Ranks were hyped up to be hunters so strong that their magical capacity could not even be measured by a machine. Yet, Jinwoo has arrived at a level even further beyond that.
It feels hard to believe that there could be a single character who might serve as a check against Jinwoo’s rapid growth in the world ofSolo Leveling. Just which future characters in the story, if any, could serve aspotential rivals to Jinwoo’s power?
The National Level Hunters
Will His Immediate Rivals Be a Challenge?
AsSolo Levelingheads into Season 3, the next tier of power that Jinwoo will face is the National Level Hunters, who stand at the top of humanity. These hunters are so far above other S-Rank hunters that a whole tier was created despite there only being a few of them. It is soon revealed the true reason why National Level Hunters are so powerful: they were granted additional powers from higher beings. The Rulers, a race of beings created by the Absolute Being, chose a few humans to become their vessels to allow them to enter Earth and oppose the entities formed from primordial darkness: The Monarchs. With such a powerful origin for their abilities, the National Hunterssurely will stand up to Jinwoo in the future, right?
Unfortunately, although these National Level Hunters are special, Jinwoo turns out to be even more extra special. His powers come from the strongest Ruler turned Monarch. With the help of the Architect, he is, for some reason, the only character able to draw out the full extent of his powers. Normally, vessels can only use a small portion of their true power without burning out their bodies, but this limitation seems to never come up for Jinwoo. His power over shadows and death will also make him seemingly immortal as the story goes on, though the Shadow Monarch warns Jinwoo during his fight with the Frost and Fangs Monarchs that there is no such thing as infinite power. This suggests that at some point,Jinwoo’s reign as a powerful character will end, but will this be a limit that is ever detailed in the series?
Potential Future Rivals
Who Could Defeat Jinwoo?
At the end of the series, the Destruction Monarch Antares had the potential to kill him because of his mastery over the aspect of destruction, which would seemingly be the only thing able to defeat Jinwoo. His Breath of Destruction attack is thought to be able to erase someone from existence, but we never get to see it in action on Jinwoo to find out for sure. Potentially, someone in the future could use the Breath of Destruction against our MC.
A sequel series, known asRagnarok,contains a few more potential rivals for Jinwoo in the form of the Itarim. It is revealed that the Absolute Being is but a single member of a race of beings known as the Itarim. As Gods of their respective domains, they could potentially have more power than Sung Jinwoo could access. Luckily, they prefer to send lesser beings to fight in their place than appear to fight the Sung family directly. This gives Sung Suho andSung Jinwoo time to keep increasing their powerand look for a way to defeat these beings who seem to be inspired by eldritch-like horrors.
“Over there, over there……!” A technician shouted in a trembling voice. His finger pointed to the Void Gate. A giant eye appeared beyond the gate. It was so large that at first it could not be recognized by the eye. But that was definitely an ‘eye’! The giant inorganic eyes were moving slowly, observing this way. It wasn’t just about looking. He was analyzing and manipulating everything, as if he were a scientist looking at cells through a microscope. To this extent, just looking at it was enough. “No way, that’s… Ita…!” -Chapter 355 of the Raganork Web Novel.
It’s hard to imagine that Jinwoo, by himself, will easily be able to stand against these outer-dimensional god-like beings without some kind of significant upgrade beyond just leveling up. We already know that his shadow extraction ability does not work against beings with astral bodies, which is why he couldn’t add any of the Monarchs he defeated in the original series to his shadow army. With his son Suho already set up to become stronger than his father someday, it’s possible that Jinwoo will eventually meet his match, sacrificing himself for his sonjust like his father Sung Il-Hwan did for him.
Solo Leveling
Cast
A-1 Pictures' Solo Leveling is an anime based on Chugong’s popular web novel. Set in an unforgiving fantasy world where hunters explore dungeons filled with monsters, the vulnerable Sung Jinwoo gains a significant power boost after he is picked to be a solo player by the System.
