Solo Leveling Characters: Every Hunter and Shadow Ranked

TL;DR: Solo Leveling characters make more sense sorted by role than by the alphabet: Sung Jin-Woo and his inner circle, Korea's ranked hunters and the rare National Level Hunters, the named Shadow Army (Igris, Beru, Iron, Tank, Kaisel, Bellion), and the Monarchs behind the invasion. Every name below is checked against AniList's character data for the completed 200-chapter manhwa, not pulled from memory.

Key Takeaways

• Sung Jin-Woo starts as the "World's Weakest Hunter" and ends the series as the new Shadow Monarch, commanding the shadow soldiers he extracts from defeated enemies.
• Cha Hae-In, Yoo Jin-Ho, and the Sung family (sister Jin-Ah, father Il-Hwan, and eventually son Su-Ho) make up Jin-Woo's actual inner circle, not the hunters he fights alongside for one arc and never sees again.
• The named Shadow Army (Igris, Beru, Iron, Tank, Kaisel, and Bellion) are all former enemies Jin-Woo killed and reanimated. Each keeps the personality it had when it was alive.
• National Level Hunters like Liu Zhigang and Thomas Andre sit above every ranked hunter in Korea, and Jin-Woo eventually surpasses that entire tier.
• Ashborn (the previous Shadow Monarch) and Antares (the Monarch of Destruction) are the two Monarchs the story spends the most time on, and they're where the "hunter ranks" framing of the series stops applying.

Solo Leveling characters, ranked by role instead of the alphabet

I've clicked through enough alphabetical Solo Leveling character wikis to know how useless they are mid-read: forty names, one-line power descriptions, no sense of who actually matters to the plot versus who shows up for a single raid and disappears. That's not especially useful if you're trying to keep the cast straight while you're still reading.

This guide sorts Solo Leveling characters the way the story actually treats them: Jin-Woo and the people around him, the ranked hunters and National Level Hunters he interacts with on the way up, the Shadow Army he builds out of dead enemies, and the Monarchs who explain why any of this is happening. Each section also notes roughly where that character enters the story, so if you're mid-read and trying to figure out who someone is, you can jump to the right section instead of scrolling through an alphabetical list.

One note before the character list starts: Jin-Woo's family situation, specifically his marriage and his son, is only confirmed in the side stories that close out the completed run. If you haven't read chapters 180 through 200 yet, either skip that part of the family section below or accept the spoiler now. For the full chapter-by-chapter breakdown of how the story gets there, our Solo Leveling reading guide covers every arc in order. If you just want the verdict on whether the series is worth the read in the first place, that's in our Solo Leveling review.

Every name in this guide is checked against AniList's character database for the manhwa itself (not the anime or the Ragnarok spinoff), plus the platform-level facts already verified for this site's other Solo Leveling coverage: 179 main chapters plus 21 side story chapters, a completed run as of December 2021, art by DUBU (Jang Sung-rak) and story by Chu-Gong.

Sung Jin-Woo and his inner circle

Sung Jin-Woo is the protagonist, introduced in chapter one as the lowest-ranked E-rank hunter in Korea, a designation the story treats almost as an insult given how weak he actually is at that point. The system that turns him into "the Shadow Monarch" by the end of the run classifies him as a Mage, which surprises readers expecting a straightforward melee build given how much of his fighting style reads as physical. He founds and leads Ahjin Guild once he's powerful enough that guild politics stop being optional.

Cha Hae-In is a Sword Fighter and the Vice-Guild Master of Hunters Guild, trained under Song Chi-Yul's dojo, and one of the strongest S-rank hunters in Korea in her own right before she ever meets Jin-Woo. Fans nickname her the Blade Dancer for how her fights look on the page. She's part of the raid party for the Jeju Island incident, one of the series' biggest set pieces, and her relationship with Jin-Woo develops over the second half of the run rather than being an instant thing. I went in expecting a fairly flat romance subplot and came out thinking it's one of the better-paced ones in the genre. By the completed ending, she's his wife.

Yoo Jin-Ho starts as a D-rank hunter with no particular standing, a Tanker by class, and becomes Jin-Woo's most consistent companion almost by accident: he attaches himself to Jin-Woo before Jin-Woo is worth attaching to, and the loyalty pays off. He ends up Vice-Guild Master of Ahjin Guild despite never becoming one of the story's power players himself, which is sort of the point of his character. Not every important person in this story is the strongest person in the room.

Jin-Woo's family gets its own thread. Sung Jin-Ah is his younger sister, present from early in the story as one of the reasons he keeps fighting even when the E-rank life nearly kills him. Sung Il-Hwan is his father, who went missing years before the story starts under circumstances that only get explained much later, once the Monarch lore is on the table. And in the side stories that wrap up the completed run, Sung Su-Ho is introduced as Jin-Woo and Cha Hae-In's son, a kid mostly interested in beating his father in a sparring match and not much else. If you want the full 200-chapter path from E-rank hunter to that ending, the Solo Leveling reading guide walks the arc order start to finish.

Cha Hae-In, Vice-Guild Master of Hunters Guild and the S-rank hunter fans call the Blade Dancer.

Korea's top hunters and the National Level Hunters

Below Jin-Woo's inner circle is a wider cast of ranked hunters, mostly guild leadership, who show up across multiple arcs without ever becoming the emotional core of the story.

Go Gun-Hee is an S-rank hunter and the Chairman of the Korean Hunters Association, the guy running Korea's entire hunter bureaucracy from the top. Woo Jin-Chul is an A-rank hunter working investigations for that same Association, the character most likely to show up asking pointed questions when something in the hunter world doesn't add up. Baek Yoon-Ho is an S-rank hunter and Guild Master of White Tiger Guild, and Choi Jong-In is one of Korea's ten official S-rank hunters and Guild Master of Hunters Guild, the guild Cha Hae-In serves as Vice-Guild Master under. It's easy to mix those last two up since they're both S-rank Korean guild heads introduced in roughly the same stretch of story; Choi runs Hunters Guild, Baek runs White Tiger.

Above even the S-ranks is a much smaller tier: National Level Hunters, a handful of people worldwide, roughly five at the point the story establishes the concept, who operate outside the normal ranking system entirely. Liu Zhigang, called the Hero of China, is one of them, brought in by the US government to help handle the first S-rank gate that opened on American soil. Thomas Andre, nicknamed the Goliath and considered the strongest tank hunter on Earth, is another, and he leads the Scavenger Guild. Both get real page time once the story goes international around the Jeju Island threat, and both exist partly to establish just how far above ordinary hunters Jin-Woo eventually climbs. By the back half of the manhwa, National Level status stops being a useful way to measure him at all.

Solo Leveling isn't the only manhwa built around a hunter rank system worth understanding before you dive in. rounds up the other series that do it well.

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The Shadow Army: every named shadow, ranked

Of every group of Solo Leveling characters covered in this guide, the Shadow Army is the one that makes Jin-Woo's power set distinct from every other hunter in the story: he can extract a shadow from anything he personally kills, turning a defeated enemy into a permanent soldier under his command. Most of these are unnamed mobs, but a handful earn names, personalities, and recurring page time.

Igris is one of the first named Shadows Jin-Woo gains, originally a Knight-grade guardian standing watch over an empty throne in an early instant dungeon. Extraction failed twice before Igris agreed to protect Jin-Woo instead of the throne, which is as close as the early story gets to explaining why some Shadows have personalities and opinions at all.

Beru has the most dramatic origin of the group. Before he was a Shadow, he was the Ant King, born from the Ant Queen on Jeju Island and single-handedly responsible for killing more than half the S-rank hunters sent to deal with him during the Fourth Jeju Island Raid, one of the story's most devastating single fights. Jin-Woo kills him and revives him as a Shadow afterward, and Beru spends the rest of the story as one of the most powerful and most talkative members of the army, fully aware of how much damage he used to do to the people Jin-Woo now calls allies.

Iron was Kim Chul while he was alive, an A-rank hunter attached to White Tiger Guild before being reawakened as a Shadow during the Red Gate Incident, one of the story's earlier turning points. Tank, despite the name overlap with Thomas Andre's Tanker class, isn't a person at all: he's the shadow of an ice bear Jin-Woo encountered during that same Red Gate Incident, which is the easiest way to keep the two straight if you mix them up.

Kaisel comes from the Demon Castle instant dungeon, extracted from Kaisellin, a drake that Demon King Baran rode into battle as a mount. He's not "Jin-Woo's dragon" in the sense of being tamed alive; he's a Shadow pulled from a defeated mount the same way every other named Shadow is pulled from a defeated enemy.

Bellion is the strongest of the named Shadows by a wide margin, a Grand-Marshal grade servant of Ashborn described outright as the strongest shadow in existence, distinct enough in design (two pairs of black wings, a massive centipede-shaped blade) that he's hard to confuse with anyone else on this list once you've seen him on the page.

The Monarchs behind it all: Ashborn and Antares

The Monarchs are where Solo Leveling stops being "a hunter with a rank system" and turns into something closer to a war between god-tier beings, with Jin-Woo caught in the middle of it.

Ashborn is the previous Shadow Monarch, the entity whose authority and Shadow-extraction power Jin-Woo eventually inherits. He's called the King of the Dead in some translations and described as the Greatest Fragment of Brilliant Light, matching the raw power of the story's strongest Monarch. His backstory, once it's revealed, recontextualizes the entire system window Jin-Woo has been reading since chapter one.

Ashborn, the King of the Dead and former Shadow Monarch whose authority Jin-Woo eventually inherits.

Antares is the Monarch of Destruction and King of Berserk Dragons, the strongest of the Monarchs invading Earth and the closest thing the completed story has to a final antagonist. Everything the earlier arcs build (Jin-Woo's rank climb, the Shadow Army, the alliances with National Level Hunters) exists to get him to a position where fighting Antares is survivable at all.

If the shadow-army power fantasy and the hunter-rank system are what pulled you into this series, there's a whole lane of manhwa built on the same appeal. has 16 of them.

Manhwa Like Solo Leveling →

Step-by-Step

The order you actually meet everyone, tied to the arcs covered in the Solo Leveling reading guide, for anyone reading and trying to place a name.

1. Sung Jin-Woo, from chapter one. The story opens with him already established as the weakest hunter in Korea, so there's no ramp-up before you meet him.
2. Yoo Jin-Ho, Go Gun-Hee, and Woo Jin-Chul, early in the run. These are the first ranked-hunter-world characters Jin-Woo interacts with as he starts climbing.
3. Igris and the earliest Shadows, in the same early stretch. His extraction ability unlocks well before he's strong enough for it to matter much.
4. Cha Hae-In, within the first anime season's coverage (roughly chapters 1 through 45). She's established as a top S-rank hunter well before the story's larger international arcs begin.
5. Iron and Tank, during the Red Gate Incident. This is one of the earlier arcs where Jin-Woo's Shadow Army stops being a novelty and starts being a real asset.
6. Baek Yoon-Ho, Choi Jong-In, Liu Zhigang, and Thomas Andre, as the story's scope widens. The National Level Hunters specifically enter once the plot goes international.
7. Beru, during the Jeju Island arc. This is one of the manhwa's largest single set pieces; see the reading guide for the full arc breakdown rather than a chapter range here, since it's genuinely one of the longer arcs in the series.
8. Kaisel, in the Demon Castle instant dungeon, later in the run once Jin-Woo is taking on threats well above what a normal S-rank party could survive.
9. Ashborn and the Monarch reveal, in the arc that recontextualizes the system window's origin (chapter 111 onward, per the reading guide's arc breakdown).
10. Antares and Bellion, in the endgame. Both are tied to the final confrontation that closes out the main 179-chapter story.
11. Sung Su-Ho, only in the side stories (chapters 180 through 200). He doesn't exist anywhere in the main run; skip ahead at your own risk if you don't want the ending spoiled.

If you'd rather have a straightforward numeric reading order without the character framing, our Solo Leveling reading order guide covers that directly.

Common character mix-ups

Among these Solo Leveling characters, a few names get confused often enough that they're worth flagging directly, and I mixed up two of these myself the first time I read through. Tank the Shadow (an ice bear) has nothing to do with Thomas Andre's Tanker class or Yoo Jin-Ho's build; it's a coincidence of naming, not a connection. Iron and Tank both get extracted during the Red Gate Incident, which is the easiest way to remember they're a pair rather than unrelated additions. Choi Jong-In and Baek Yoon-Ho are both S-rank Korean guild masters introduced around the same point in the story; Choi runs Hunters Guild, Baek runs White Tiger. And Ashborn is not simply a name for "Jin-Woo's power": he's a separate character, a previous Shadow Monarch whose authority gets passed down, not a system feature with a name attached to it.

Tips for keeping these Solo Leveling characters straight

The easiest way to keep these Solo Leveling characters straight is to track them by the arc that introduces them rather than trying to memorize a flat list; this series adds cast members in waves tied to specific raids and dungeons, not gradually. Pay attention to which Shadows have dialogue versus which are silent, since Igris, Beru, and Bellion get actual personalities on the page while most extracted enemies stay background muscle. And if a name shows up in a family context (mother, sister, father, wife, son), that's Jin-Woo's actual personal stakes in the story; almost everyone else, however powerful, is a professional relationship first.

Related Reading

• Solo Leveling Review
• Solo Leveling Reading Guide
• Manhwa Like Solo Leveling
• Solo Leveling Anime Review

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is the strongest character in Solo Leveling? By the ending, Sung Jin-Woo, once he fully inherits the Shadow Monarch's authority. Before that point, the story spends real time establishing that Antares, the Monarch of Destruction, is the strongest of the invading Monarchs, and Ashborn, the previous Shadow Monarch, is described as matching him. Jin-Woo's climb from weakest hunter to the one who ends that fight is the entire arc of the series.

Is Cha Hae-In Sung Jin-Woo's wife? Yes. It isn't a background implication, it's confirmed directly in the completed run: Cha Hae-In and Jin-Woo marry, and the side stories that close out the series introduce their son, Sung Su-Ho. If you're only partway through and don't want that spoiled, skip the family section of this guide until you finish.

What is Sung Jin-Woo's Shadow Army? Shadows are soldiers Jin-Woo extracts from powerful enemies after killing them, turning former threats into permanent subordinates. Named, recurring Shadows include Igris, Beru, Iron, Tank, Kaisel, and Bellion, each pulled from a different fight and each carrying the personality and combat style they had when they were alive.

Who are the National Level Hunters in Solo Leveling? National Level Hunters are the handful of hunters worldwide, roughly five at the story's outset, who operate on a different tier from every ranked hunter beneath them. Liu Zhigang, called the Hero of China, and Thomas Andre, the American Guild Master nicknamed the Goliath, are the two the manhwa spends the most time on. Jin-Woo eventually surpasses this tier entirely, which is part of why the series stops using hunter ranks as a meaningful measure of his strength by the back half.

Does Sung Jin-Woo have a son? Yes, Sung Su-Ho, introduced in the side story chapters that follow the main 179-chapter run. He's stubborn, easily bored by anything that isn't a fight, and spends most of his page time trying and failing to beat his father in sparring.

Who is Ashborn in Solo Leveling? Ashborn is the previous Shadow Monarch, the ruler whose authority and shadow-extraction power Jin-Woo eventually inherits. He's referred to as the King of the Dead and described as the Greatest Fragment of Brilliant Light, on par with the Monarch of Destruction in raw power. His backstory is one of the reveals that recontextualizes everything the system window has been doing since chapter one.

What rank is Yoo Jin-Ho in Solo Leveling? D-rank, and he stays a low rank for most of the story. What makes him a main cast member instead of a background hunter is loyalty, not power. He sticks with Jin-Woo before Jin-Woo is worth sticking with, and he's rewarded with the Vice-Guild Master seat at Ahjin Guild once Jin-Woo forms it.

References

• Solo Leveling on AniList: Character and media data used to verify every name in this guide
• Solo Leveling on WEBTOON: Official English translation, full completed run
• Solo Leveling on Tappytoon: Premium high-resolution English release
• Solo Leveling (Wikipedia): General series background and publication history