Solo Leveling Monarchs — All 8 Monarchs Explained

The Monarchs are eight primordial beings of darkness created by the Absolute Being to wage eternal war against the Rulers. Each one commands a specific type of army and represents a different destructive force. They are not monsters — they are the source from which all monster life in the Solo Leveling universe originates. Every gate, every dungeon, every creature that hunters fight traces back to the Monarchs and the war they were built to fight.

One important clarification before the breakdown: some sources list nine Monarchs. The ninth — Yogumunt, the Monarch of Transfiguration — appears only in the original web novel, not in the manhwa. This article covers the eight Monarchs who appear in the manhwa, which is the version the anime adapts.

The table below lists all eight with their titles, army types, and status at the end of the series.

What Powers Do All Monarchs Share?

Every Monarch possesses three abilities regardless of their individual power set: Spiritual Body Manifestation, Truth Inducement, and an innate resistance to all human-level attacks.

Spiritual Body Manifestation allows a Monarch to release their true form — their original non-human body — in combat. For Antares this means transforming into a city-scale dragon. For Rakan it means becoming a creature larger than buildings. The ability dramatically increases power output but also signals to the enemy exactly how seriously a Monarch is taking the fight.

Truth Inducement allows a Monarch to force a target to speak truthfully. It works on humans and lower-level beings without resistance. Against other Monarchs or Rulers it is less effective.

All Monarchs also regenerate from damage at a rate far above anything human. Standard attacks from even S-rank hunters do not meaningfully injure a Monarch — the gap between a Monarch and the strongest human hunter is not a matter of degree but a matter of category.

To enter the human world, every Monarch requires a human vessel. Taking a vessel means erasing the host’s consciousness completely. Ashborn is the only Monarch who ever deviated from this rule.

Antares — King of Dragons

Antares is the most powerful Monarch in existence and the final villain of Solo Leveling. He was the first Monarch ever created by the Absolute Being, built specifically and solely for destruction.

His army consists of dragon-class monsters — the strongest creature type in the series. Dragons are not common monsters scaled up. They are a distinct species with their own intelligence and destructive output that places them far above anything else in the monster hierarchy.

Antares holds three abilities no other Monarch possesses. Dragon Fear is a passive pressure field generated by his presence — when he activates it fully, the effect is felt globally. Hunters and monsters across the world simultaneously feel the weight of it. Breath of Destruction is a fire attack that does not merely damage — it erases targets from existence at a fundamental level. Shadow soldiers, who regenerate from almost any other attack, cannot regenerate from Breath of Destruction. Indestructible Scales make his body resistant to the vast majority of attacks, including those from Jin-woo at peak output.

One detail most articles misrepresent: Jin-woo did not defeat Antares alone. After an extended direct fight in the Final Battle Arc, Jin-woo occupied Antares frontally while the Rulers entered the conflict and struck from behind simultaneously. The combined assault is what finally overcame Antares’s regeneration. Antares himself confirmed before the original war that he would beat Ashborn in a direct one-on-one — which is why Ashborn worked through a succession plan rather than confronting Antares directly.

Ashborn — The Shadow Monarch

Ashborn was simultaneously the strongest Ruler who ever existed and one of the eight Monarchs — a dual origin that made him the most powerful being in the series before the war depleted his army.

His full story and how he transferred his power to Jin-woo is covered in the Shadow Monarch article. In the context of the Monarchs, what matters is his position within their hierarchy. Ashborn was not subordinate to Antares. Before the war, Ashborn was stronger. After Rakan and Baran attacked him and destroyed most of his shadow army, the balance shifted — his power remained but his army, which is the Shadow Monarch’s primary force multiplier, was severely depleted.

Ashborn sided with the Monarchs not because he shared their goal of destroying humanity, but because he needed a position within the war to run his succession plan. He was always operating on a separate agenda from every other Monarch in the group.

Rakan — Beast Monarch

Rakan is the most aggressive and war-focused Monarch after Antares, and the one who plays the largest direct role in Jin-woo’s personal story — he is the Monarch who kills Jin-woo during the Monarchs War, triggering the full Shadow Monarch awakening.

His army consists of beast-type monsters — creatures with high physical output, instinctive pack tactics, and the ability to be controlled individually or in formations by Rakan directly. In his true form he becomes a creature large enough to dominate battlefield geography.

Rakan’s defining ability is his combat experience. He has been fighting continuously for millennia and has faced every combat style and power type the Rulers and other Monarchs have produced. This makes him adaptive in a way most opponents cannot account for. Jin-woo’s fight against him in the Monarchs War arc starting from Chapter 78 is the closest any Monarch battle comes to genuinely threatening his survival before the full awakening.

The attack that kills Jin-woo physically — triggering Ashborn’s direct intervention and Jin-woo’s return as the complete Shadow Monarch — is delivered by Rakan. This makes him indirectly responsible for the moment that ends the war.

Sillad — Frost Monarch

Sillad is the most tactically defensive Monarch — he does not fight to destroy outright but to control terrain, slow everything around him, and kill through attrition rather than direct assault.

His ice magic does not just deal damage. It creates environmental hazards that make movement and combat coordination impossible for enemies operating in normal conditions. By freezing the ground, the air, and the space between combatants, Sillad turns every battlefield into a version of an environment that suits him and disadvantages everything else.

Sillad killed Go Gun-hee during the Monarchs War — one of the manhwa’s most emotionally significant deaths. Go Gun-hee was a Rulers’ vessel and a character the series had built carefully across many arcs, and Sillad’s attack ended him before Jin-woo could reach him. This is the moment that made many readers see Sillad as the most personally costly of the Monarchs despite his lower raw power ranking.

He is also one of the few Monarchs who explicitly shows fear. When confronted by an opponent he identifies as stronger than himself, Sillad becomes visibly distressed — a trait Rakan, Antares, and most other Monarchs do not show. His power is enormous but his psychological ceiling is lower than his physical one.

Querehsha — Monarch of Plagues

Querehsha is the only female Monarch in the manhwa and the one whose methods are the most indirect — she does not fight with brute force but with infection, infestation, and biological control.

Her army of insect and parasite-type monsters is designed to overwhelm through numbers and contamination rather than individual power. Each creature in her force can infect a target, and infected targets become extensions of her control. In the Southeast Asia sequence of the Monarchs War, Querehsha deployed this system across an entire region — the monster-based disease that spread through both hunters and civilians was her doing.

Her personal combat ability is deceptive. She appears weaker than Rakan or Sillad in direct combat — and she is, by raw output. But her Necromancy ability, which lets her reanimate and control dead humans through parasite insertion, means every battlefield death potentially adds to her forces. In a prolonged conflict she becomes more dangerous over time rather than less.

She is defeated when Jin-woo uses Beru’s healing ability to counter the infection controlling the surrounding forces and closes in while she is directing the larger battle. Beru — himself born from an insect-type origin as the Ant King — is specifically effective against her because of the nature of their compatible power types.

Legia — Monarch of the Beginning

Legia is the first Monarch Jin-woo defeats in open combat outside of Korea — the Japan Crisis Arc is built around his arrival over Tokyo and Jin-woo’s solo response.

He is called the Monarch of the Beginning because he was among the earliest Monarchs created, and his giant-type army represents the first wave of creature types the Absolute Being produced before the diversity of later monster classes emerged. His power is raw and physical rather than elemental — giant-class monsters are not intelligent or tactical, they are overwhelming.

Legia’s personal ability is gravity manipulation. In combat he can increase the gravitational force on a target or an area, making movement impossible and causing structural damage to terrain passively. The floor of the battle in Tokyo literally cracked and sank under sustained gravity pressure during his appearance.

His defeat in Chapter 65 is the first time the international hunter community sees Jin-woo perform at full S-rank-plus output. Every foreign hunter organisation begins monitoring him directly after this.

Tarnak — Monarch of Iron Body

Tarnak is the least prominent Monarch in the manhwa’s main story — he does not receive a solo conflict with Jin-woo and is defeated in a combined assault by Beru, Bellion, and Thomas Andre during the Monarchs War.

His ability, Iron Body Reinforcement, increases his physical offensive and defensive output far beyond baseline Monarch levels. The effect extends to his soul, making him resistant to life-draining and debuff-type abilities that would affect other beings at his power level. It also extends to his weapons when he chooses to apply it.

The reason Tarnak never faces Jin-woo directly is deliberate — by the time the Monarchs War reaches its final stages, Jin-woo is occupied with Antares. Tarnak attempts to kill Thomas Andre, assuming a lone human National Level hunter is a manageable target. Beru and Bellion intercept and the three of them defeat him together. Tarnak is the only Monarch whose defeat does not involve Jin-woo directly.

Baran — Monarch of White Flames

Baran is the only Monarch who is already dead before the main story of Solo Leveling begins — killed by Ashborn during the first war between the Rulers and Monarchs.

His demon-class army was among the most powerful force the Monarchs fielded before Ashborn destroyed it. Baran’s signature ability is White Flames — a magical fire that operates differently from normal fire in that it targets and burns mana itself rather than physical matter. Against magic-type opponents or mana-dependent abilities, White Flames bypasses physical defence entirely.

Baran appears in the manhwa only as a magical clone — the floor 100 boss of the Demon Castle. The clone was installed by the dungeon’s design to serve as the final challenge of the tower. It is a constructed copy with access to Baran’s abilities and a significant fraction of his original power, but it is not the actual Monarch. The real Baran was considerably stronger than the version Jin-woo fights in Chapter 28.

His death at Ashborn’s hands was the event that turned the Monarchs against Ashborn — Rakan and other surviving Monarchs attacked Ashborn directly in retaliation, which is what depleted Ashborn’s army and led to his long withdrawal before the events of the manhwa.

How Are the Monarchs Ranked by Strength?

The power ranking among the Monarchs has a clear top tier but becomes more debated below it.

The table below presents the ranking as supported by the manhwa’s direct evidence — confirmed statements, fight outcomes, and ability descriptions — rather than speculation.

Read the Monarchs War arc where most of these confrontations take place starting from Chapter 74 at readsololevelingmanga.us.