Solo Leveling Volume 13 Review
MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD – READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!
The final battle has come—Hunter Jinwoo Sung has to protect Earth from the army of the remaining Monarchs led by Antares, the King of Wild Dragons and the Monarch of Destruction. Are he and his shadow army strong enough to protect the people he loves and the rest of humanity? Let’s find out!
In Volume 12, Hunter Sung had to face three Monarchs at the same time, and it was only thanks to his full ‘merge’ with the original Shadow Monarch that he was able to acquire the full powers of the Shadow Monarch title. He won, but the remaining Monarchs and their leader are even stronger, and he’s the only one with knowledge of their plan to attack humanity. When he shares his intel with the hunters all over the world, not everyone believes him, only for these people to come face-to-face with the Monarchs and pay the consequences of their disbelief with their lives.
Jinwoo has a plan—well, let’s say multiple plans as Plan A fails spectacularly. However, not all is lost. He knows what he needs to do and who can help him achieve that, and he’ll do it even if it means sacrificing himself just to protect his people. The readers are given hints that strongly suggest something terrible will happen to Jinwoo, and I spent over half of the volume expecting him to sacrifice his life just to take down the Monarch of Destruction. I wasn’t ready for that, and I considered putting the manhwa down multiple times because I refused to reach that point. Thankfully, the authors had something else in mind, but I don’t know if it’s any less cruel than Jinwoo sacrificing his own life to defeat Antares. He knows the Monarch of Destruction is stronger than any other foe he has ever faced, so he needs a little bit of extra help—which comes surprisingly from a new power that he’s able to develop during his fight and from the Rulers, as they are putting all of their hopes in Jinwoo. Our favourite hunter knows that the Rulers have a stake in this battle, and he’s not above using them to win.
While some readers might expect the fight between Jinwoo and Antares to drag through multiple volumes before the winner is announced (I’m looking at you, Dragonball and Naruto!) we are lucky enough that we can witness it all in one volume without waiting months for the next volume to come out. However, if you think that’s the end of it, you’ll be surprised! There is a plot twist, which I don’t know if I should be grateful for or not. While I still debate its positives and negatives in my mind and try to come up with an answer, I wonder what will happen next to Jinwoo and the people he loves. The decision he makes has many repercussions in his and everybody’s lives, including the Monarchs and Rulers. This left me more on the edge of my seat than the final battle between the two Monarchs. Now, I need to wait months before my mind can be at peace and hope for a well-deserved happy ever after.
While readers are used to action and fighting scenes in the series, Volume 13 takes the top spot: war is present from start to finish, and you can go pages without any dialogue and just witness combat scenes. I still enjoyed it, but I think some of the attack scenes would have worked better in an anime setting as there would have been the full development of the attack, from start to finish, and not just the ending, such as an explosion or a blow hitting the target. It’s nonetheless a spectacular sequence of scenes, and readers should be excited to watch it when the anime adaptation reaches the final volumes. The ending of this volume hints at a time of peace going forward, with no more battles to be fought and not even hunters, so I wonder if we’ll still see some of the fighting that we got accustomed to see in the final volume of the series.
Solo Leveling started as a web novel before being adapted into a manhwa published in volume format in the English language by Ize Press. The series is written by Chugong, illustrated by DUBU (REDICE STUDIO) and adapted by h-goon. The first two seasons of the anime are available on Crunchyroll, and the live action is scheduled for a theatrical release in 2026. The 14th and final volume of the manhwa is slated for release in December 2025.
Our review copy was supplied by Ize Press.
