(Two weeks ago, Incheon Port)
On the central pillar base of the Cheonho Bridge, Jin-woo emerged from the shadows, watching as patrols withdrew after the bodies of the Hwang brothers and their henchmen had been collected.
At that moment, three humanoid ants emerged from the sea floor, dragging something heavy behind them. It was a winged creature, resembling a bat but with a thick coat of brownish fur. Its size was that of an average person, yet its musculature was quite pronounced.
"Another monster..." The young man hardened his gaze at this strange animal, while a kind of dark, smoky aura began to slowly envelop it. "And this one could cloak its presence."
And no wonder, for the world he knew had changed completely. In the last battle between the Rulers and the Monarchs, Jin-woo was the unforeseen variable, the interference in all plans that caused a cataclysm for both sides.
As a human, he did not side with either, but chose his own. And this planet, his planet, was something he had sworn to protect.
Therefore, with all his might, he decided to put an end to the endless strife by facing, alone, all the Monarchs!
To the skeptical Rulers, he was a being who could threaten all they had risked. To the Monarchs, he was a major setback and a bad omen in their struggle for survival.
But for humans, he was a beacon of hope, a light that rose ahead on the dark path that lay ahead.
And with the faith of all humanity resting upon him, Jin-woo, the new Shadow Monarch, after a brutal and fierce battle against all the Monarchs, achieved what he had set out to do.
But, although the outcome was as expected, the cost to all humans was high.
Therefore, Jin-woo asked the Rulers to let him use the 'Reincarnation Cup' one last time and return to the past, to a land where portals, dungeons, magical beasts, and hunters did not yet exist.
For his goal was simple, he would end all Monarchs within the dimensional rift!
And end all Monarchs was what he did.
When he returned everything to the past with the last power of the 'Reincarnation Cup,' Jin-woo found himself transformed into a fourteen-year-old boy.
Enjoying a short time of that longed-for moment of his life, he left his family behind and ventured into the dimensional rift.
Although to the world he was lost for two years, within that desolate wasteland he spent almost thirty years while eliminating the entire army of Monarchs and their leaders.
After returning to his world, having modified his body to appear as a sixteen-year-old boy, he resumed his 'normal' life. He didn't care if no one knew what he had done for humanity; all that mattered was keeping his world safe for all his loved ones.
However, what happened nearly eight months ago was something that not even he, with all his infinite power, could prevent! When the immense storm covered all of Korea, alarms went off in Jin-woo's mind as an ominous feeling seemed to sweep across the world!
Unable to make a move, Jin-woo saw that the massive explosion at the end of the storm sent a kind of energy wave throughout the world, cracking the thin walls of realities, almost breaking the world apart completely!
Normal humans would never perceive this, but Jin-woo was someone with the power of a God, so he could see that this shockwave had the same characteristics as the portals previously used to enter other worlds.
Jin-woo's first thought was that a race from another dimension was approaching Earth to attack it, so he prepared along with his immense army of shadow soldiers.
However, despite the Monarch's heightened state of alert, things seemed normal after the storm ended. Despite the calm that the whole world felt, Jin-woo never stopped being vigilant because nothing seemed normal to his senses.
First of all, before the storm occurred, he was about to enter his first year of high school, which meant the date was in March. But after the storm, time was altered and inexplicably jumped to mid-year, August, about to enter the second semester!
While the Rulers and Monarchs are sensitive to changes in time, Jin-woo had no idea what had happened because both his family and everyone else seemed to have no problem with this temporal leap!
This ruined his reunion with someone very dear to him, a meeting he had carefully planned to happen at an athletics competition in April, but that month was completely skipped. So he had to wait almost a year for that competition to take place.
Another thing that worried the young man was that when he tried to contact the emissaries of the Rulers, he couldn't find them anywhere! The Rulers hadn't left Earth unattended, as they had borrowed the bodies of several humans to monitor the world.
However, no matter how much Jin-woo searched all over the world, he only found the hosts, who had no idea they had been possessed to serve as emissaries. It seemed as if the Rulers had completely disappeared!
Adding to all this, despite Jin-woo's attempts to open portals to transport himself to other places, such as the dimensional rift, he couldn't do it.
This was most serious, as it seemed that Earth had been completely spatially isolated! Therefore, the most important thing for Jin-woo was to know what had caused this, or who.
But things started to get complicated when he felt that small energy spikes were appearing at various points in Korea that shouldn't exist.
By the time he extended all his shadows, he began to encounter various creatures and monsters roaming the entire peninsula!
Although they weren't terrifying beings like the magical beasts that appeared in dungeons, they posed a threat to humanity, so he began to secretly hunt them.
While some of them had already been discovered by army units, it wasn't something to worry about because they could handle them since, although they were very strong, they seemed to lack intelligence.
However, what his shadows had captured right now told him that some of these beasts seemed to have intelligence because this captured specimen had systematically killed several people and concealed both its presence and power to avoid detection.
And today, while his shadows were hunting one of these beasts, they informed him of a disturbance taking place at Incheon port, so he personally came to see what it was about.
However, when he arrived, he only found corpses everywhere. Initially, Jin-woo thought it was one of these beasts, but after analyzing everything, he concluded that this had been the work of a human, a very vicious one apparently.
That added a new problem to his already long list of problems.
'My king.'
Suddenly, the voice of one of his most loyal soldiers emanated from the depths of his shadow, pulling him out of his thoughts.
"What is it, Beru?"
"Do you still have that aura around you?"
The question from his faithful servant made Jin-woo seem to recall something, and he raised his hand while observing it for a moment.
"Yes, I still have it."
Jin-woo said this because of a phenomenon he had noticed shortly after the storm occurred.
He had noticed something he had never seen before.
A kind of mist, almost imperceptible, like a very faint fog, was in every space, as if the invisible air had become slightly dense.
This mist-like aura concentrated both in the air and on the ground. It surrounded the animals, the plants, and all living beings he had observed.
But what made him most cautious was that the same aura swirling around everything that had life seemed much more concentrated in his current body than in other beings, as if it were something special, taking on a pronounced golden color.
"This is already a complete disaster... I just hope it doesn't escalate further."
With these final words, the young man lost himself in the shadows once again.
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AUTHOR'S NOTE
Hey guys, these last two chapters are purely informative about the basics of what happens in the story of 'Solo Leveling'. Although the original Manhwa ended with Jin-woo's return to Earth after defeating the Monarchs, the novel has much more story that is only now being published as a Manhwa.
This information is for those who haven't read the novel (although I doubt anyone hasn't) and for the curious who want to refresh their memory.