Title: Solo Leveling Vol. 11
Author: Dubu (Redice Studio), Chugong (Original Story)
Publisher: Ize Press
Language: English
Format: Paperback
Pages: 312
Genre: Fantasy, Action
Publication Date: February 18, 2025
The Story
Volume eleven of Solo Leveling concludes the battle between Thomas Andre and Jinwoo. In the end, Jinwoo uses Arise on someone we weren’t expecting him to, adding another powerful soldier to his army. When Jinwoo returns to Korea, there is a meeting of the top hunters where they listen to a lecture about nine mysterious collections of magic matter gathering around the world. Jinwoo silently likens them to the nine monarchs and wonders if it’s purely a coincidence.
Meanwhile, President Go is visited by one of the monarchs who claims that the Fragment of Luminosity is hiding within him. After the battle, Jinwoo is summoned and takes it to the monarch, later revealed to be the Frost Monarch. The Frost Monarch, realizing he’s no match for Jinwoo, escapes and holds a meeting with the other seven remaining monarchs. He asks for their assistance to kill Jinwoo, aka the Shadow Monarch; however, only two are brave enough to take him up on his offer while the others cite that the Shadow Monarch is the strongest of the nine and they don’t want to die and end up in eternal servitude as a part of his army.
Meanwhile, Thomas Andre wants to gift Jinwoo with something for sparing his life as well as his guild members’ lives. He meets with Jinwoo in Korea; however, one of the nine magic matter disturbances manifests over Seoul in the form of the largest gate in recorded history. While this is happening, Jinwoo needs someone to talk to so he meets up with Haein Cha. They go to an amusement park and then he takes her on a ride on top of his shadow dragon. As they are spending time together, The Fang Monarch arrives in Seoul and begins to rampage. Thomas Andre engages and holds his own but Jinwoo gets a call from the Hunters Association President and is informed of the situation. Jinwoo arrives to find a three-on-one battle!
Characters
In terms of development, Thomas Andre was severely humbled by the beatdown he suffered against Jinwoo. He was humbled to the point where he had a high amount of respect for him… so much so that he gifted him something absolutely legendary. It’s a friendship forged through combat!
Through the meeting of the monarchs, we learned a little bit more about Chaos, the Shadow Monarch. We know he’s the strongest of the nine and even some of the other monarchs fear him; however, because of Jinwoo, they know that he is still in human form and not his true self. They wonder how Jinwoo was able to tap into so much power but also wonder why he hasn’t claimed all of it yet. They also talked about The Architect and how he and Chaos were friends and in league with one another but they don’t divulge anything beyond that, leaving more questions to be answered. At least we have a better picture of what Jinwoo is now.
Speaking of Jinwoo… that romance came from out of nowhere. He randomly called Haein Cha so he could have someone to talk to and then ends up going on a pseudo date with her. Throughout the date, Haein was practically fawning like a schoolgirl over Jinwoo. While nothing is official as of yet, you can tell that something is there. Jinwoo didn’t exactly reject any of her flirts or advances either. To see him so warm and caring after being so direct and cold for the past 10 volumes, it was an odd twist but it was nice to see a more “human” side to him. We also saw this “human” side when he saw the massive gate and realized that he had friends and family to protect. While there have been minor flashes of his humanity throughout the series, this is probably the biggest chunk of it we’ve seen to date.
Final Thoughts
Another excellent volume of Solo Leveling! The fight between Jinwoo and Andre along with Andre and the Fang Monarch was well-done and action-packed as one would expect from this series. Also, the gift that Jinwoo received is quite an insane power-up! It makes me wonder if the Shadow Monarch doesn’t fully assimilate with Jinwoo because he’s more powerful this way. I don’t know this for sure but if Jinwoo is a Player and can acquire levels, experience, and powerful weapons, would that be to the Shadow Monarch’s benefit and indirectly empower him? It seems as if Jinwoo has a bond with the weapons he uses so perhaps the monarchs don’t have that bond which means even at their full power, they are still limited by the powers they have whereas Jinwoo isn’t. He can keep growing and growing.
Ms. Sellner even remarked about Jinwoo having infinite power when she peered into him so that also lends a bit of credibility to my theory. The fact that the other monarchs are underestimating him because the Shadow Monarch is still in a human vessel and not fully awakened is a classic egotistical villain trope. When these three monarchs are defeated, they will probably come to the realization that Chaos was stronger borrowing a human vessel instead of fully controlling Jinwoo because of that very reason… that infinite potential to grow… something the monarch can’t do.
This also raises the question of what happens if Jinwoo eliminates all of the remaining monarchs. Does Chaos leave his body? Does he continue living inside Jinwoo? Does he just destroy the world? Does he battle Jinwoo to eliminate the one threat that stands in his way of world domination only to get destroyed because he, too, underestimated Jinwoo’s potential despite living in his body all this time? (That last one wouldn’t be a face palm nor a head desk moment.. that would be a body window moment if it were to happen)
Things have gotten interesting for sure! Three volumes remain so let’s see how all of this wraps up!
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