A man in a long dark coat stands alone on a broken elevated highway at dusk, looking over a ruined city where giant shapes crouch among the towers, while his shadow spreads behind him and rises into a dark army.
Japan after the Tokyo gate broke: a country the rest of the world left to burn, and one hunter with an army in his shadow.

Solo Leveling · Volume 6 · Yen Press, December 2022

Volume 6

Tokyo’s giants, America and the Frost Monarch: Korea’s strongest hunter goes abroad to fight for a country the rest of the world has abandoned.

Volume 6 of Chugong’s Solo Leveling (Yen On, December 13, 2022; translated by Hye Young Im and J. Torres; 272 pages, with Ki Hong Lee reading the Yen Audio edition from February 2023) is the volume in which Jinwoo Sung stops being Korea’s secret and becomes the world’s problem. It opens with Tokyo already overrun: the S-rank gate broke midway through Volume 5, Russia’s barrier mage Yuri Orlov is dead, and Japan, having lost its best hunters on Jeju, has been left to burn. Jinwoo goes, and not purely out of kindness. As the back cover puts it, he is eager to grow stronger, and an S-rank dungeon full of giants is the best training he could ask for.

Its ten chapters swing from Japan (the giants, their captive king, an account at last of what the gates are for) to America (the International Guild Conference, a kidnapping, a fight with America’s strongest hunter), and then back to Seoul for the blow the back cover’s tagline promises: “MAY ALL THAT YOU WISH TO PROTECT BURN TO ASHES…” The story stays close to Jinwoo but keeps cutting away to the people watching him, American bettors, a Japanese soldier, a boy at a radio, so that his power is seen from outside. It is the volume where the Monarchs step onto the board, and where the endgame starts.

This page summarises the whole volume, ending included. Only its opening chapter could be read in the Yen Press text; how the rest was pieced together is in the Notes below.

Part 1

A Country Abandoned

The volume opens a long way from Tokyo, in the most luxurious hotel in Maryland. A gathering of American S-rank hunters, most of them augmented by Mrs. Sellner, the woman who can make a hunter stronger, hears President Go of Korea’s Hunter’s Association announce that Jinwoo Sung is going to Japan. Since the slaughter the dragon Kamish left behind, the world’s hunters have closed their doors; Japan is offering a reward to anyone who can put out the fire, and nobody else is going. One man against giants that move far too fast for their size strikes the room as a joke, so they bet: a yacht that he dies on the first day, a house that he lasts two. From a corner, where he has been eating quietly, the national-level hunter Thomas Andre puts down his cutlery and asks whether they really think so. No hunter since Kamish fell, the narration notes, has surpassed the survivors of that disaster, and Thomas is one of them. He smirks behind his sunglasses and raises the stakes:

“I’ll bet the Scavenger Guild headquarters that he survives.”

Then he walks out. When the bettors hear that Jinwoo is taking a D-rank tank with him against S-rank giants, they decide he has lost his mind: crazy understands crazy, which would explain why Thomas Andre is cheering him on.

At Incheon International Airport that tank, Jinho Yoo, the Ahjin Guild’s vice president, in huge sunglasses and hauling two bags of equipment, proudly asks the crowd to make way while Jinwoo follows, calm and collected. Japan has sent a private jet and waived customs. President Gunhee Go and Manager Jinchul Woo of the Association see him off. Go admits he would still like to talk him out of it; when Jinwoo grins that he wants to fight magic beasts, the old man gives up, and they shake hands.

Japan is in retreat, and the giants’ advance south is gathering speed. At a radio a boy shouts that Hunter Jinwoo Sung has arrived, and faces brighten, but whole districts have lost power and gas, and no one in them knows help has come. Chugong then narrows the disaster to one small nursing home, where an elderly doctor and his wife will not leave more than ten patients who cannot walk. Two young soldiers of the Self-Defense Forces have no room for the dying and no time to wait, and one comes back with his rifle to force the couple out. A bedridden old woman offers him her rice ball: “Here, don’t be shy.” He remembers why he put on the uniform, radios his partner to go on without him, and stays. Then a giant comes at the house on all fours with that partner dangling from its mouth. The soldier fires until the rifle clicks empty; the giant swallows the man and leaps.

A humongous naga slams into it: Jima, once the boss of the naga nest dungeon Jinwoo cleared in Volume 5, now one of his shadows, drawing a black spear up out of a shadow on the ground. While the two wrestle, a young Korean man who looks younger than the soldier himself offers him a handkerchief and a thumbs-up, and the soldier realizes who this is: the hunter said to have killed S-rank beasts almost single-handed. The fight is too close to the nursing home, so Jinwoo goes to draw it away; Jinho stays behind to wait for his boss. Jinwoo pats the soldier’s shoulder and walks into the fight.

That giant is not even a boss, and it is too much for Jima, once the boss of an A-rank dungeon and fighting with the old people at his back. Jinwoo bends his knees and launches himself at its face; the giant sees him coming in mid-leap, and he concedes, with something like respect, that these creatures are in another class. His fist lands anyway. The giant bolts, and he streaks after it, thinking of giants as weapons of war on a colossal scale. Afterward Jinho brings him cold tea in the lid of a thermos and Jima comes back with his shoulders slumped. Jinwoo tells him he fought well, and the naga melts back into the dark. Jinwoo had sent the rest of his army off in other directions and kept the nagas with him to level them up on giants. The giants are simply too strong for them.

Then he looks at the body.

“Here lay the biggest reason he had come to Japan.”

Every giant he kills is a soldier he can raise, and he has asked Japan for the rights to all the beasts’ remains, a condition its government was glad to accept. When people try to come over, Jinho rushes to block their way so the boss can work undisturbed. Across the ruins Beru leads the ant shadows, under orders to leave enough of each carcass to extract. Three giants against the ants look like elephants against mice; Beru charges anyway, and the swarm ends it at once.

In a chandeliered hotel dining room, two hunters in evening clothes laugh over their wine while an enormous bearded man in sunglasses, alone at a corner table, sets down his knife and fork.
6 · 1 The Maryland Wager The volume opens in America, not Japan. In Maryland’s most luxurious hotel, S-rank hunters, most of them augmented by Mrs. Sellner, hear that Jinwoo is going to Japan and start betting on how soon he dies: “I’ll bet my yacht on him getting killed on the first day.” From his corner the national-level hunter Thomas Andre, a survivor of the raid on the dragon Kamish, sets down his cutlery, bets his guild’s headquarters that Jinwoo survives, and walks out.
In a bright airport terminal with a private jet beyond the glass, a beaming young man in big sunglasses strides ahead with two bags while an old man in a dark suit shakes hands with a calm, taller man and a broad man in sunglasses looks on.
6 · 2 Farewell at Incheon Incheon International Airport. Jinho Yoo, the guild vice president Jinwoo is taking into an S-rank disaster though he is nowhere near S-rank himself, proudly asks the crowd to make way; Jinwoo follows, calm and collected. Japan has sent a private jet and waived customs. President Gunhee Go, seeing him off with Manager Jinchul Woo, admits he would still like to talk him out of it, then shakes his hand. The old President has had his eye on Jinwoo since his re-evaluation. This volume is his last.
At dusk a highway is choked with people fleeing on foot from a darkened city, where a giant crouches beneath a tall rift of blue light, while a boy standing on a stalled car holds up a radio.
6 · 3 The Retreat of Millions Japan in the first chapter: the giants’ advance south gathering speed, whole districts without power or gas, and the rest of the world staying home. Then a boy at a radio shouts the only good news in the country, “They said Hunter Jinwoo Sung has arrived in Japan!”, and faces begin to brighten. The chapter’s title is a promise: the retreat of millions, and the counterattack of one.
In a ruined street, a huge serpent-tailed shadow of black smoke slams into a giant crouched on all fours, drawing a black spear out of a pool of shadow, while a young soldier sprawls with an empty rifle in the foreground.
6 · 4 The Naga and the Giant One young soldier stands in for the whole country. Sent to a nursing home whose bedridden patients there is no room to carry out, he stays with them after one hands him her rice ball. Now he has emptied his rifle into a giant that came on all fours with his partner in its mouth. As it leaps, a humongous naga slams into it: Jima, once boss of the naga nest dungeon Jinwoo cleared in Volume 5, now his shadow.
On a rubble-strewn roadside, a calm young Korean man crouches to offer a folded handkerchief and a thumbs-up to a weeping soldier while a giant and a huge serpent-tailed shadow grapple behind them.
6 · 5 A Handkerchief and a Thumbs-Up While the naga and the giant wrestle, a young Korean man, younger-looking than the soldier himself, offers him a handkerchief and a thumbs-up. Only then does the soldier understand who this is: Hunter Jinwoo Sung, the man said to have killed S-rank beasts almost single-handed. The fight is too close to the nursing home, so Jinho stays to wait for his boss while Jinwoo pats the soldier’s shoulder and goes to draw the giant away.
A man in a dark jacket hurtles through the air toward the face of a building-sized giant rearing up among broken towers, its small eyes already fixed on him.
6 · 6 A Different Caliber The giant is not even a boss, and it has overwhelmed Jima, once the boss of an A-rank dungeon. Jinwoo bends his knees and launches straight at its face, and the giant spots him in mid-air. “They really are of a different caliber,” he thinks. His fist lands anyway; the giant bolts, and he goes after it like lightning. Giants, he decides, are weapons of war built on a colossal scale.
A building-sized giant lies dead across crushed cars while a man in a dark jacket raises a hand over it, wisps of black smoke rising, and a young man in shiny armour spreads his arms to hold back a few onlookers.
6 · 7 The Biggest Reason After the kill, Jinho brings cold tea in a thermos lid and Jima slinks back into the dark, beaten by an ordinary giant. Jinwoo turns to the corpse, which is what he really came to Japan for: every giant he kills is a soldier he can raise, and he has asked Japan for the rights to all the beasts’ remains. When people try to come close, Jinho rushes to block their way.
An upright black-armoured ant warrior charges down a ruined avenue at the head of a swarm of shadow ants toward giants many times their height.
6 · 8 Mice and Elephants Jinwoo has not come with his ants for nothing. Elsewhere in the ruins Beru, the Ant King of Jeju and now the commander of Jinwoo’s ants, leads the ant shadows against the giants, under orders to leave enough of every carcass for his liege to extract. Three giants against the ants look like elephants against mice. Beru charges anyway, the swarm covers the ground in black, and the fight is over at once.
Part 2

The King of Giants

What follows is an operation on the scale of a war. The shadow army fans out across Japan and kills the giants one by one, with Jinwoo at the centre of it, and then he walks into the gate itself. The boss room does not hold an ordinary boss. It holds a Monarch: the King of Giants, a prisoner of the Rulers.

The King answers Jinwoo’s questions, and what he tells him is what the gates are for. The magic beasts that have poured through them are captives from the Monarchs’ own armies, sent to Earth to fill it, slowly, with mana, in preparation for a war between the Rulers and the Monarchs that has yet to come. The war, if the King is telling the truth, may be more than even Jinwoo can stop.

Then Jinwoo kills him. The gate’s true master is dead, Japan is saved, and the country’s morale lifts; Jinwoo is a hero there and at home. He raises the dead giants as shadows, and an army of knights, orcs, ice bears, ants and nagas gains a rank of building-sized infantry. By the next volume one of them, No. 6, is leading the rest, and Jinwoo is still turning over what the King said about the war.

In a vast dim stone chamber lit by one shaft of cold light, a colossal white-maned giant king sits bound by heavy chains while a lone man in a long dark coat stands before him.
6 · 9 The King of Giants With the giants across Japan falling one by one, Jinwoo walks into the gate itself. Its boss room holds no ordinary boss but a Monarch, the King of Giants, a prisoner of the Rulers. He answers Jinwoo’s questions, and the answers reframe the series: the magic beasts are captives from the Monarchs’ armies, sent to fill the Earth slowly with mana before a coming war between the Rulers and the Monarchs.
A man in a long dark coat, a dagger held low and his shadow surging up around him, walks toward the bound giant king, who watches him come.
6 · 10 The Captive’s End When the talking is done, Jinwoo kills the King of Giants. The gate’s true master is dead, and with him the threat to Japan; the country’s morale lifts, and Jinwoo becomes a hero there and at home. What the King said does not die with him. At the start of the next volume Jinwoo is still turning over the war the captive Monarch spoke of.
In a ruined city at dusk, colossal giants of black smoke with violet eyes rise out of pools of ink one after another, towering over a lone man in a long dark coat.
6 · 11 Giants of His Own This is what Jinwoo came for. The giants that broke out of the Tokyo gate rise again from their own corpses as shadow giants, heavy infantry of a kind his army has never had, to stand beside the knights, orcs, ice bears, ants and nagas. Japan has its saviour, and Jinwoo has his soldiers. By the next volume one of them, No. 6, is leading the rest.
Part 3

Between Two Countries

Jinwoo is in no hurry to go home. With the giants gone, devastated Japan is still dotted with high-ranked gates its own guilds cannot handle, and he spends the time before the conference clearing them, every one of them experience. His fame grows, and his guild with it.

At home, a miracle. Jinho’s father, Chairman Myunghan Yoo, asked Jinwoo in Volume 5 for whatever had cured his mother, and Jinwoo, weighing how rare it was, said no. Now the sleeping sickness takes the chairman. Jinwoo gives him the Elixir of Life after all, and he wakes, as Jinwoo’s own mother once did.

In America, the International Guild Conference, the most prestigious gathering of hunters’ guilds in the world, invites the Ahjin Guild to represent Korea. America’s hunters, meanwhile, lose one of their own. Christopher Reed, the country’s other national-level hunter, a man who has sneered at Jinwoo as second-rate, is killed.

In a quiet hospital room at first light, a gaunt grey-haired man in a narrow bed opens his eyes, an empty glass vial on the table beside him.
6 · 12 A Miracle In Volume 5, Jinho’s father, Chairman Myunghan Yoo, asked Jinwoo for whatever had cured his mother, and Jinwoo, weighing how rare it was, said no. Now the sleeping sickness takes the chairman. Jinwoo gives him the Elixir of Life after all, and he wakes, as Jinwoo’s own mother once did. Loyalty, it turns out, runs both ways.
Part 4

Heading to America

Jinwoo flies to America with Jinho, and the first thing he asks to see is not the conference but the dead: the remains of Kamish, the dragon that only the five future national-level hunters, together, were able to bring down. The Federal Bureau of Hunters keeps the body. Jinwoo has not come to look at it. He tries to raise it, and a shadow does stir, but the dragon has been dead far too long to keep its shape, and it crumbles away in front of him.

In a cavernous vault lit by cold blue lamps, a man stands small before the head of a colossal dead dragon, one hand raised, as thin black smoke begins to lift from its scales.
6 · 13 The Dragon’s Remains In America the first thing Jinwoo asks to see is not the conference but the remains of Kamish, the dragon that only the five future national-level hunters, together, could bring down. The Federal Bureau of Hunters keeps the body. Jinwoo has not come to look at it. He tries to raise it, and a shadow stirs, but the dragon has been dead far too long to keep its shape, and it crumbles away.
Part 5

The Lion and the Beast

Then an old grudge comes due. Dongsoo Hwang, an S-rank of the Scavenger Guild, America’s strongest, is the brother of Dongsuk Hwang, the lizard Jinwoo killed in Volume 1 on a raid that Jinho also survived. Dongsoo goes after Jinho instead of Jinwoo, takes him and hurts him, and the Scavenger Guild is suddenly at odds with Jinwoo. Jinwoo finds them, and Dongsoo comes within a breath of dying on the spot.

Thomas Andre arrives to stop it. Jinwoo will not stop, and two of the strongest people on earth fight, and it is not close. Jinwoo beats the national-level hunter so badly that only a national-level body could have lived through it; the papers will call it beating the entire Scavenger Guild. The two chapters are called “The Furious Lion” and “The Level of a Beast”, and the titles are free to apply to either man.

Beru, the Ant King of Jeju, heals Jinho. Dongsoo does not leave alive. Jinwoo kills him, raises his shadow, and names it Greed, for the selfishness that got him killed. The man who came to avenge his brother now serves the man he wanted dead.

In a dark derelict hall under one bare bulb, a big man turns from a beaten young man slumped against a pillar toward a figure stepping out of the shadows of the doorway.
6 · 14 Hostage Dongsoo Hwang, an S-rank of America’s Scavenger Guild, is the brother of Dongsuk Hwang, the lizard Jinwoo killed in Volume 1 on a raid Jinho also survived. Dongsoo goes after Jinho instead of Jinwoo, and America’s strongest guild is suddenly at odds with the president of a very small one from Korea. Jinwoo finds them, and Dongsoo comes within a breath of dying on the spot.
Amid broken concrete and twisted steel, an enormous bearded man in a torn shirt kneels, breathing hard, while a leaner man stands over him, untouched, hands at his sides.
6 · 15 Not Even Close Thomas Andre, the Scavenger Guild’s president, arrives to stop Jinwoo from killing his guildsman. Jinwoo will not stop, and the two fight. It is not close: Jinwoo beats the national-level hunter so badly that he would have died ten times over if he were not a national-level hunter. One reader who knows both versions says the webtoon made this fight look far closer; in the novel it is no contest.
An upright black ant warrior kneels over a bruised young man lying on a dusty floor, violet light flowing from its clawed hands, while a man in a dark jacket stands watching.
6 · 16 Beru Heals Jinho has paid for a grudge that was never his. Beru, the Ant King of Jeju and now the highest-ranked of Jinwoo’s shadows, heals what Dongsoo did. The monster that once came close to wiping out Korea’s best hunters is now nursing Jinwoo’s vice president back to health. Jinho, for his part, will soon read exactly what Jinwoo did to get him back.
A hulking shadow made of black smoke kneels with its head bowed to the floor before a man in a dark jacket, who looks down at it coolly.
6 · 17 Greed Dongsoo Hwang does not leave alive. Jinwoo kills him, raises his shadow, and gives it a name to fit the selfishness that got him killed: Greed. The S-rank who came to avenge his brother now serves the man he wanted dead. Readers quote the naming line with relish; it is the volume’s coldest joke.
Part 6

The Conference

The International Guild Conference opens under a cloud: word goes round that someone is hunting hunters, and Reed is the proof. Thomas Andre, for his part, bears no grudge; in the next volume he turns up unannounced at the Ahjin Guild’s office in Seoul, grinning. The worse news is Jinwoo’s. His father, Ilhwan Sung, the hunter who vanished ten years ago, is alive, or something that looks like him is, and he is doing something nobody can explain. America’s Bureau wants him for Reed’s death.

There is warmth too. Jinho reads an article about how Jinwoo took on the entire Scavenger Guild to get him back, and he is deeply moved. Jinwoo’s perception is now so high that Jinho’s feelings reach him at full strength. Jinho would like a hug. He does not get one.

The Hunter Command Center asks Jinwoo to protect the world’s top hunters, and he does it his own way: a shadow soldier for each, hidden in the hunter’s own shadow, able to reach him from any distance. By “Night of the Hunters”, the eighth chapter, the guard is posted; if the hunter-killers strike again, an army will be watching.

In a grand conference hall with tall windows and rows of plain-coloured flags, a still young man sits in his seat while the young man beside him leans in to whisper.
6 · 18 The International Guild Conference The International Guild Conference, the most prestigious gathering of hunters’ guilds in the world, opens under a cloud. Word goes round that someone is hunting hunters, and Christopher Reed, one of America’s national-level hunters, is the proof. Jinwoo takes his seat among the guild leaders of every nation as the man who saved Japan and then beat Thomas Andre.
At night a man stands at a tall hotel window over a city’s lights, and in the dark glass beside his own reflection is the faint face of an older man with his features.
6 · 19 His Father’s Face On the American trip Jinwoo learns the volume’s most personal news. His father, Ilhwan Sung, the hunter who vanished ten years ago, is alive, or something that looks like him is, and he is doing something nobody can explain. In the webtoon, the Bureau wants him for Reed’s death; the novel’s pages we can reach do not say.
In a lamplit hotel room a young man sits on the edge of a bed holding a newspaper, eyes wet, while a taller man stands by the window with his arms folded, not quite looking at him.
6 · 20 The Article Jinho reads an article about how Jinwoo took on the entire Scavenger Guild to get him back, and is deeply moved. Jinwoo’s perception is now so high that Jinho’s feelings reach him at full strength. Jinho would like a hug. He does not get one. One reader of both versions found much of this volume more affecting in the novel than in the webtoon.
On a high terrace at night a man in a long dark coat watches as small shapes of black smoke with violet eyes slip away from his shadow across the rooftops toward distant lit windows.
6 · 21 Night of the Hunters The Hunter Command Center asks Jinwoo to protect the world’s top hunters, and he does it his own way: a shadow soldier for each, hidden in the hunter’s own shadow, able to reach him from any distance. This is the eighth chapter, “Night of the Hunters”, and the guard is posted. If the hunter-killers strike again, an army will be watching.
Part 7

The Frost Monarch

The ninth chapter takes the volume home. In Seoul the Frost Monarch comes for President Gunhee Go, past eighty: by the fan wiki’s count of the web novel, the first time this Monarch appears in the story. The hunting of hunters has reached Korea. And the old President has a secret: he has been host to one of the Rulers, a human vessel for their power, and he fights the Monarch with it. It is not enough. Jinwoo comes, and cannot save him. The Frost Monarch escapes, and Gunhee Go, who had courted Jinwoo since his re-evaluation and had spoken to him of a grand plan of his own, dies in Seoul.

The last chapter, “Complicated Thoughts”, turns to the other side. The Monarchs regroup, and three of them, the Frost Monarch among them, agree to join forces and kill Jinwoo. The volume that opened with Americans betting on how long he would last closes with Monarchs doing the same arithmetic.

Whatever complicated thoughts the title has in mind, Jinwoo has no shortage of them. A captive king has told him a war is coming. His father is alive and hunted. The man who ran Korea’s hunters is dead, and three Monarchs want Jinwoo dead next. The next volume opens with the Association choosing Go’s successor, and with Korea in crisis.

In a dark office lit by one desk lamp, an upright white-haired old man looks up at a gaunt, pale, white-haired figure in grey furs by a frosted window, frost creeping across the floor between them.
6 · 22 The Frost Monarch In Seoul the Frost Monarch comes for President Gunhee Go, past eighty: by the fan wiki’s count of the web novel, the first time this Monarch appears in the story. The hunting of hunters has reached Korea. The old President has a secret that no earlier volume has given away, and he is about to use it.
In a wrecked office split by jagged walls of ice, an old man in a dark suit braces with pale golden light blazing from his raised hands against a pale figure in grey furs.
6 · 23 Light Against Frost The secret: Gunhee Go has been host to one of the Rulers, a human vessel for their power inside the oldest body in Korea’s Hunter’s Association. He turns that power on the Frost Monarch, and the old man fights like what he is carrying. One reader lists that discovery among the volume’s most memorable moments. It is not enough.
In a wrecked, frost-covered office at night, an old man sits slumped against an overturned desk with his eyes half closed while a man in a long dark coat kneels beside him, a hand on his shoulder.
6 · 24 Too Late Jinwoo comes, and he cannot save him. The Frost Monarch escapes, and Gunhee Go, who had courted Jinwoo since his re-evaluation and had spoken to him of a grand plan of his own, dies in Seoul. The next volume opens with the Association meeting to choose his successor, and with Jinwoo still wondering what that grand plan was.
On a dark plain under an ink-black sky, three towering figures stand together in council, the nearest pale and rimed with frost, the other two immense dark silhouettes.
6 · 25 Three Agree The last chapter, “Complicated Thoughts”, turns to the other side of the war. The Monarchs regroup, and three of them, the Frost Monarch among them, agree to join forces and kill Jinwoo. The volume that opened with Americans betting on how long he would last ends with Monarchs doing the same arithmetic. Their attack on Korea is the next volume’s business.

What the anime and webtoon took from this volume

  • The anime has not reached this volume. Season 2, Arise from the Shadow (2025), ends with the Jeju Island raid (Volume 4 material). Its continuation, the theatrical film Solo Leveling: Beyond the System, was announced in July 2026 as Season 2’s sequel, with no release date and no announced arc; a third TV season has not been announced by its producers.
  • The webtoon adapts this volume in roughly chapters 133–151 (KakaoPage, January–May 2021): the Japan Crisis arc, the International Guild Conference arc, and Gunhee Go’s death. The fan wiki narrates the webtoon, which keeps the novel’s order of events but, as one reader of both puts it, with different weights.
  • Japan has named heroes in the webtoon. Its Japanese S-ranks (Kanae Tawata, Minoru Hoshino, Reiji Sugimoto) grumble on a dead giant’s head about being useless; no novel debut is recorded for any of them. The novel’s first chapter sees Japan through an unnamed soldier, a nursing home and a boy at a radio. Thomas Andre’s wager of his guild’s headquarters, often remembered from the webtoon, is the novel’s too, made in its opening pages.
  • The King of Giants is the fan wiki’s Legia, a chained Monarch who laughs when a fellow Monarch finds him, binds them both with a spell that stops either lying, and offers to fight beside Jinwoo; Jinwoo spots an essence stone the Rulers planted in his neck and kills him with one stroke. In the webtoon a last giant also escapes toward China and is killed by Zhigang Liu. Whether the novel names Legia here, or has the stone, could not be checked.
  • Jinho’s father is cured in a stealthy hospital visit in the webtoon, after a butler gives Jinho his father’s scrapbook of Jinho’s achievements.
  • America in the webtoon, in scenes the novel’s sources here do not reach: the seer Norma Selner warns Christopher Reed of his death; three Monarchs kill him in a dimensional gap, and his mansion burns so hot it takes 1,800 firefighters to put out (the novel names two of those Monarchs only much later). On the plane the Bureau’s Adam White tells Jinwoo his father is a suspect, and Jinwoo nearly strangles him with telekinesis. Kamish’s shadow rises, bows, says it served the Dragon King, warns of four humans given power by the Rulers, and crumbles.
  • The Thomas fight is closer in the webtoon, which gives Thomas named skills and ends in about a hundred Scavenger hunters facing more than a thousand shadow soldiers; in the novel, one reader says, it is not even close.
  • Gunhee Go’s death in the webtoon: an ant shadow rides in his shadow; he holds the Frost Monarch off at first, is run through with an ice blade, breaks the barrier so the ant can call Jinwoo, who arrives by Shadow Exchange; the Monarch walls himself in ice and escapes through a portal; Go refuses the Elixir and asks Jinwoo to stay on humanity’s side. The novel’s staging could not be checked.
  • The Frost Monarch appears far earlier in the webtoon, beside another Monarch in the Jeju aftermath, and the anime’s Season 2 finale includes those scenes; in the novel his first appearance is in this volume.

Continuity notes

  • Jinwoo ends the volume as Japan’s saviour and the man who beat Thomas Andre, with two new kinds of soldier, the shadow giants (led by No. 6 in Vol. 7) and Greed. He has heard from a captive Monarch why the gates exist and that a war is coming.
  • Jinho Yoo is kidnapped, hurt and healed; his father Myunghan Yoo wakes from the sleeping sickness.
  • Gunhee Go, President of the Hunter’s Association, is killed in Seoul by the Frost Monarch; he was a Rulers’ vessel. Jinchul Woo is named his successor in the first chapter of Vol. 7.
  • Thomas Andre is beaten, not killed, and bears no grudge; the Scavenger Guild is humbled. Dongsoo Hwang is dead and serves Jinwoo as Greed. Christopher Reed is dead.
  • Ilhwan Sung, Jinwoo’s father, missing for ten years, is alive (or something with his face is); in the webtoon the Bureau wants him for Reed’s death.
  • The King of Giants is dead. The Frost Monarch escapes and, with two other Monarchs, resolves to kill Jinwoo; their attack is Vol. 7.
  • Haein Cha, Jinah and their mother have no confirmed scene in this volume.

Notes

  • What could be read. The Yen Press text was reachable only through Google Books’ preview of the first chapter (the Maryland hotel to Beru’s charge); every quotation on this page comes from there or from the back cover. Chapters 2–10 follow a reader’s chapter-by-chapter notes on the Yen Press volume, reviews of the novel, the first-chapter preview of Volume 7, and, at the level of events only, the fan wiki’s account of the webtoon, which tells the same story in the same order. Details only the webtoon shows are in the aside above, not in the summary.
  • What little is known of two chapters. “Night of the Hunters” and “Complicated Thoughts” are summarised only as far as the sources reach: the guard Jinwoo posts on the top hunters, and the Monarchs’ pact.
  • Names. Yen Press forms in this volume: President Go (Gunhee Go), Manager Jinchul Woo, Mrs. Sellner, Zhigang Liu, Brannon, Yuri Orlov. The webtoon’s English has Go Gunhee, Liu Zhigang, Norma Selner, David Brennon and Yuri Orloff. The fan wiki calls the King of Giants Legia and the Frost Monarch Sillad; whether this volume uses either name could not be checked.
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