Solo Leveling

**Solo Leveling** (나 혼자만 레벨업) is a Korean web novel written by Chu-Gong (추공). It was first serialized by Papyrus on November 4, 2016 and ended with 14 volumes and 270 chapters. On April 13, 2018, a webtoon serialization was released on KakaoPage, drawn by artists Gi So-Ryeong (기소령) and Jang Sung-Rak (장성락). It officially ended on December 29th, 2021 with 179 chapters.

**Synopsis:** In a world where hunters, humans who possess magical abilities, must battle deadly monsters to protect mankind from certain annihilation, a notoriously weak hunter named Sung Jinwoo finds himself in a seemingly endless struggle for survival. One day, after narrowly surviving an overwhelmingly powerful dungeon that nearly wipes out his entire party, a mysterious program called the System chooses him as its sole player and in turn, gives him the extremely rare ability to level up in strength, possibly beyond any known limits. Follow Jinwoo's journey as he fights against all kinds of enemies, both man and monster, to discover the secrets of the dungeons and the true source of his powers.

## Terminology

**Hunters:** are humans who possess magical powers and use them to fight and kill magic beasts. They first appeared around the same time humanity was exposed to the existence of magic. As hunters turned out to be the only ones who could kill magic beasts and close gates, a global billion-dollar industry eventually developed around them as a result. Hunters are ranked by an international S-E system to show how strong they are, with E being the weakest and S being the strongest, and can possess a wide range of abilities. There are also two general categories of hunters, combat and non-combat, and six different specific types of hunters:

* **Fighters:** Fighter-type hunters are able to deal large amounts of damage to their opponents and typically engage in standard melee combat. They also have fairly high defense and good stamina. Since they're brawlers, fighters generally use weapons like swords, axes, knives, and even their bare hands.
* **Mages:** Mage-type hunters are the most versatile of them all and are able to cast elemental spells, enact curses, and call forth spirits to fight for them. As a result, a large portion of their abilities are projectile attacks. However, since they attack from a distance, mage-type hunters are at a huge disadvantage in close combat.
* **Tankers:** Tanker-type hunters are extremely durable as they specialize in defense, tankers generally carry shields and are tasked with shielding the rest of the team during raids so that the other hunters can perform their roles.
* **Assassins:** Assassin-type hunters are swift and agile, and are considered to be the fastest hunters around. They typically fight with smaller weapons like daggers or hidden blades. Their speed can make them hard to hit by hunters from other classes; mages in particular are at a disadvantage against them due to the time it takes to cast their spells.
* **Rangers:** Ranger-type hunters specialize in physical attacks from a range. As a result, they generally wield bows and arrows and are tasked with covering the blind spots of their allies during raids. Unfortunately, this also means that they are at a huge disadvantage in close combat.
* **Healers:** healer-type hunters usually serve as support and rely on damage dealers to protect them in battle. Although they mainly specialize in healing other hunters of their injuries, healers are also able to cast buff magic in order to enhance both their own abilities and the abilities of their teammates. However, since they mainly use their abilities for support, they are generally at a huge disadvantage in battle.

**Awakened Beings:** Awakened beings are humans that undergo a magical awakening, these humans can go to the hunter association to figure our their ranking, or they can live their life without doing so. Theres also outliers that happen where a human can have a second awakening.

* **Second Awakening:** Reawakening is when a hunter undergoes a second awakening and receives a significant boost in strength, bypassing their previous natural limits. The results can be pretty drastic, to the point that there have been E-Ranks who have risen up to C-Rank and B-Ranks who have risen up to S-Rank.

**Dungeons:** are pockets of the chaos world that are connected to the human world through gates. They generally contain a horde of monsters, which are led by a boss, and remain open until the boss is killed. Once the boss is killed, the dungeon will stay open for about an hour before closing on its own. A dungeon must be cleared in 7 days or a dungeon break with occur.

* **Dungeon Break:** These occur when a Dungeon isn't cleared in the 7 day timeframe, these events always cause mass loss in human life due to regular humans being unable to fight against he monsters.

**Guilds:** Guilds are organized groups of hunters led by a person to fight against monsters in dungeons.

**Monarchs:** The kings of chaos that were created from darkness when the absolute being was forming a balance.

**Rulers:** are and ancient race of angelic humanoids and the arch-enemies of the Monarchs.

**National Level Hunters:** These are hunters classified as the strongest there is. After defeating Kamish (A monster of the dragon race) 5 Hunters were given the authority of an entire nation.