Top 10 Strongest Solo Leveling Characters, Ranked

The strongest Solo Leveling characters are, in order, Sung Jinwoo, Antares and Ashborn, with the other Monarchs and Jinwoo's father a step behind and the best human hunters further down. Below, we rank the top ten in Solo Leveling on canon feats through the ending, explain how Monarchs, Rulers and hunters compare, and flag what the anime has shown as of October 2026.

The top 10 at a glance

#	Character	What they are	Defining feat	Animated? (Oct 2026)
1	Sung Jinwoo	The second Shadow Monarch	Kills Antares alone	Up to the Ant King
2	Antares	Monarch of Destruction	Shrugs off the Shadow Monarch's attacks	Not yet
3	Ashborn	The first Shadow Monarch	Beats two Monarchs at once	Not yet
4	Sillad	Monarch of Frost	Kills Go Gunhee	Episode 25 cameo
5	Sung Il-hwan	Jinwoo's father, a Ruler's vessel	Holds off two Monarchs	From episode 15
6	Rakan	Monarch of Fangs	Kills Jinwoo before his ascension	Episode 25 cameo
7	Bellion	Grand Marshal of the shadows	Easily beats Beru	Not yet
8	Beru	The Ant King's shadow	Shatters Sillad's ice meteor	Episodes 22-25
9	Thomas Andre	World's top-ranked hunter	Fights Rakan evenly for a time	Cameos, episodes 21 and 25
10	Igris	Jinwoo's first knight shadow	Holds off Sillad alone	From episode 11

How we ranked them

Placements rest on what happens on the page through the end of the main story (179 webtoon chapters, finished in December 2021) and its epilogue: head-to-head results first, then who a character beats or holds off, then the story's stated hierarchy. The sequel Solo Leveling: Ragnarok is left out because it reshuffles several of these characters.

Spoiler warning: most of what follows, including the ending, comes after the anime's stopping point at episode 25.

Are the Monarchs stronger than the hunters?

Yes, by a wide margin, and that gap explains the whole list. The setting has four layers:

• The Absolute Being, the god who made the Rulers from light and the Monarchs from darkness. Seven of the eight Rulers killed him eons before the story, so he never fights on the page.
• The Rulers and the Monarchs, near-equal races who need human vessels to enter our world. A Monarch fully possesses its host and fights at full power, but dies with the body; a Ruler only lends power to a host who stays in control. Antares alone arrives in his own body. The seven Rulers act as a bloc, so they sit in this tier rather than in the list.
• Ruler vessels: Thomas Andre, Liu Zhigang, Christopher Reed, India's Siddharth Bachchan, Brazil's Jonas, Go Gunhee and Sung Il-hwan. That borrowed power is why the top National Level hunters dwarf ordinary S-ranks.
• National Level hunters and S-ranks. The title dates from the five hunters who survived the Kamish raid; Cha Hae-In and Korea's other S-ranks sit below them.

The proof arrives in the arcs after Jeju. Three Monarchs kill Christopher Reed, the world's third-ranked hunter, in his own home; Sillad kills Go Gunhee in his office; Rakan beats Thomas Andre once he stops holding back. Four of the seven vessels die. The weaker Monarchs still miss our top ten because they barely get to fight: Baran died at Ashborn's hand eons ago, a pre-ascension Jinwoo beheads Legia in Tokyo and cuts Querehsha apart in Seoul, Tarnak falls to Thomas fighting beside Jinwoo's shadows, and Yogumunt dies easily in the epilogue.

1. Sung Jinwoo: the hunter who outgrew the Monarchs

The System only Jinwoo can see was built to grow a vessel for Ashborn, and it turns the "world's weakest hunter" into one strong enough to inherit the Shadow Monarch's power instead of being possessed by it. Before that ascension he beats Thomas Andre to the edge of death and kills the Plague Monarch Querehsha. After it, Rakan and Sillad fall almost at once, and his Dragon's Fear paralyses Antares's ten-million-strong army. Then the epilogue: once the Rulers rewind time with the Cup of Reincarnation, Jinwoo spends 27 years hunting the Monarchs alone in their realm (about two years pass on Earth) and kills Antares single-handed. Our Solo Leveling watch order shows where the anime stops.

2. Antares: the strongest Monarch and the final villain

The King of Dragons is the oldest and strongest of the nine Monarchs. No human body could hold him, so he crosses over in his own form through a vast gate in Canada, burning the S-rank Jay Mills to ash and letting his dragons kill millions to draw Jinwoo out. In their first duel, on a remote Japanese island, Jinwoo's blows bounce off until he baits an opening and carves Antares almost in half with his father's dagger, and even then the Rulers, pouring through the space their clash has torn open, land the killing blow. Antares ranks above Ashborn because Jinwoo held Ashborn's full power in that fight and still could not hurt him by normal means. Not animated yet.

3. Ashborn: the Ruler who became the King of the Dead

Ashborn started on the other side: the greatest of the Fragments of Brilliant Light, the strongest Ruler, and the only one who stayed loyal when the others killed their god. Left for dead, he woke a power hidden inside him and rose as the Shadow Monarch. His signature feat comes from a betrayal Antares ordered: Rakan and Baran ambush him with their armies, and Ashborn beats both at once, crushing Baran's skull in one hand while Rakan flees. He never fights Antares, and the story calls them each other's only rival, so second against third is the closest call here. Rather than possess Jinwoo, he chooses to hand his power over. The anime has not revealed him yet.

4. Sillad: the Frost Monarch who nearly ended it early

Of the lesser Monarchs, the King of the Snow Folk has the best record. When Sung Il-hwan lures him to America, Sillad forces him back. He kills Go Gunhee while Jinwoo is abroad. In Seoul he baits Jinwoo's guard so Rakan can land the fatal strike, traps the shadow army in ice and, after Il-hwan has outfought both Monarchs for a while, maims him with an ice storm and raises a meteor of ice over the city that only Beru stops. Once Jinwoo returns with Ashborn's true power, Sillad dies quickly. On screen he appears only in episode 25's closing scene, sensing the Shadow Monarch's trace on Jeju.

5. Sung Il-hwan: a Ruler's vessel who outfought two Monarchs

Jinwoo's father is the strongest human who is not Jinwoo. Trapped in a dungeon ten years before the story, he was kept alive by the Rulers, given their power and sent to kill the next Shadow Monarch, a mission he drops on learning the target is his son. In Seoul, as Jinwoo's heart starts beating again, Il-hwan kicks Rakan into Sillad, sending both through several buildings, and outfights the pair until Rakan runs. Sillad is the reason he stops at fifth: the Frost Monarch had already forced him back in America, and that night his ice storm takes Il-hwan's left arm. His body was never prepared for a Ruler's power the way the System prepared Jinwoo's, and he dies in his son's arms soon after. The anime introduces him in episode 15, walking out of an American gate and hospitalising Hwang Dongsoo.

6. Rakan: the Beast Monarch who escaped Ashborn

The Monarch of Fangs is the traitor who got away from Ashborn alive. He helps murder Christopher Reed, and in Seoul Thomas Andre matches him until Rakan stops holding back, activates Spiritual Body Manifestation and crushes him. Then, with Sillad's help, Rakan lands the blow that kills Jinwoo before his ascension. He sits below Il-hwan because he flees from him in the same battle where Sillad stands his ground, and once Jinwoo revives, he tracks Rakan down and kills him in four strikes. He shares Sillad's Season 2 cameo.

7. Bellion: the strongest shadow in existence

Bellion led Ashborn's army as Grand Marshal long before Jinwoo existed, and he arrives with the rest of that army through a gigantic gate over Seoul after Jinwoo's ascension. He proves his rank at once: sparring with Beru, he swats the ant into the ground with his centipede-like whip blade. He has fewer showcase fights only because he joins so late; the story is explicit that no shadow outranks him. Not animated yet.

8. Beru: the Ant King turned favourite general

The Ant King hatches in episode 22 and turns Jeju into a massacre in episode 23, flooring Cha Hae-In with a single blow, impaling the healer Min Byung-gyu and killing Goto Ryuji, Japan's strongest hunter, before Jinwoo beats him down in episode 24. Extracted in episode 25, he talks and absorbs the skills of whatever he eats. His biggest manhwa feat: with Sillad's ice meteor hanging over Seoul, he breaks out of the Frost Monarch's ice prison and shatters the meteor in one blow. Our Season 2 recap and ending explainer covers how his arc closes the season.

9. Thomas Andre: the world's top-ranked hunter

Nicknamed the Goliath, the Scavenger Guild's master ranks first among the National Level hunters and uses Reinforcement to push an already huge body further. He survived the Kamish raid and kept the dragon's sharpest fang, later forged into the Kamish's Wrath daggers he gives Jinwoo. When the International Guild Conference brings Jinwoo to America, Thomas goes all out against him and is beaten nearly to death by bare fists. In Seoul he trades blows evenly with Rakan for a time, and in the final battle, backed by shadows Jinwoo hid in his shadow, he helps finish off the Monarch Tarnak. The anime has shown him only in cameos, in episodes 21 and 25.

10. Igris: the knight who tested Jinwoo first

Igris, the Blood-Red Commander, is where the shadow army begins: Jinwoo's job-change trial pits him against the knight in episode 11, and in episode 12 Igris rises only on the third "Arise". Newer recruits such as Tusk and Beru outshine him until Jinwoo inherits Ashborn's full power and Igris jumps two grades, from elite knight to marshal. His best feat is holding off Sillad alone until Jinwoo returns. That edges him past China's Liu Zhigang, the world's second-ranked hunter, whose showcase feat is killing a giant at sea, but he stays below Thomas, whose feats run from the Kamish raid to Tarnak.

How strong is Cha Hae-In?

Cha Hae-In is one of Korea's elite S-ranks and vice-master of the Hunters Guild, but she sits well outside this top ten. Her skills, Sword Dance and Sword of Light, run on speed and precision, earning her the nickname "the Dancer", and she senses other hunters' mana as smell. Jeju shows her ceiling: in episode 23 she lands the final blow on the Ant Queen, then the newborn Ant King drops her with one punch, and only Min Byung-gyu's shadow, raised by Jinwoo, heals her. Later she beats a not-yet-promoted Igris in a guild test and pierces Beru, who has to be restrained before he kills her. Our verdict: top tier among Korea's S-ranks, below Goto Ryuji, the National Level hunters and Jinwoo's marshal-grade shadows.

What has the anime animated so far?

As of October 2026, A-1 Pictures has made two seasons: 12 episodes from January to March 2024 and 13 more, Arise from the Shadow, from January to March 2025, ending around webtoon chapter 110. One common misreading: the Demon King Baran that Jinwoo beats in episode 20 is a copy the Architect built as the Demon's Castle's final boss, not the real Monarch of White Flames.

Next is the film Solo Leveling: Beyond the System, announced at Anime Expo on 3 July 2026 to continue after Season 2, with no release date yet. A third season has not been officially announced, though a D&C Media investment report points to 2027-2028. To read ahead, start the webtoon at chapter 111. Meanwhile, try our anime like Solo Leveling list, or see how other series compare in our strongest anime characters of all time.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is the strongest character in Solo Leveling?

Sung Jinwoo, the second Shadow Monarch. After time is rewound, he spends 27 years hunting the Monarchs alone and kills every one of them, including Antares, the strongest, without help.

Is Antares stronger than Ashborn?

Narrowly, yes. They never fight, but Antares is named the strongest Monarch and overpowered Jinwoo even while Jinwoo held Ashborn's full power. Ashborn's best feat is beating the Monarchs Rakan and Baran at once.

Who is the strongest human hunter in Solo Leveling?

Apart from Jinwoo, it is his father, Sung Il-hwan, a Ruler's vessel who held off two Monarchs at once before his body gave out. Among officially ranked hunters, America's Thomas Andre is first in the world.

Does Jinwoo kill Antares by himself?

Not the first time. In the original timeline Jinwoo cuts Antares almost in half, but the Rulers' spears land the killing blow. After the Cup of Reincarnation rewinds time, Jinwoo kills Antares entirely on his own.

Has the Solo Leveling anime shown the Monarchs yet?

Only briefly. As of October 2026 the anime has two seasons (25 episodes) ending with the Jeju Island raid, and the Monarchs Sillad and Rakan appear only in Season 2's final scene. The film Beyond the System continues the story but has no release date.