- The Limitations of His Powers
The overpowered main character of Solo Leveling, Sung Jinwoo, seems to be nearly invincible by the end of Season 2. He has managed to outclass nearly every S-rank hunter he knows and has gained immensely powerful shadows that put him in the upper echelons of strength in the world.
While Sung Jinwoo seems at this point to have unassailable power, is there anything someone weaker than him can do to survive in a fight against the shadow monarch class hunter? Could there be some weakness Jinwoo has that could be exploited in Solo Leveling?
Jinwoo Isn’t All Powerful
The Limitations of His Powers
While Jinwoo certainly possesses the deadly aura to make it seem like he could never lose, his powers in Solo Leveling are not limitless. Sung Jinwoo’s shadow army requires an immense amount of mana to keep going. While Jinwoo can supplement this weakness with mana potions or his daily recovery reward in long fights, a crafty opponent could try to exploit this problem to win against Jinwoo.
We see that many times, Jinwoo’s fatigue buildup and lack of mana almost causes him to lose fights on several occasions. If someone had enough prior knowledge of Jinwoo’s abilities, they could try to devise a plan to tire him out as much as possible. Once he is out of mana, he can’t use any of his broken skills or reconstitute his shadow soldiers.
Jinwoo may also fall to a strong, coordinated attack from multiple powerful opponents. The overpowered shadow monarch hunter’s personal combat skills are more suited to fighting duels than multiple enemies. If he is forced into a situation where he can’t use his shadow army, Jinwoo doesn’t have a lot of good ways to defeat a group of opponents all at once. If, for some reason, the world’s hunters and military decided to team up against Jinwoo, he would struggle immensely against their combined power.
A Hidden Weakness
The Power of the System
One of Jinwoo’s biggest weaknesses is actually the fact that he relies so much on the system. All of his powers and abilities are facilitated through the system. He uses it to level up, assign his stat points, utilize the store, and manage his shadow army.
“If the system is bent on using me, I’m just gonna have to use the system.” -Sung Jinwoo
If someone had a way to interfere with the system’s connection in some way, Jinwoo could find himself cut off from the majority of his powers and would be extremely vulnerable. Another way the system is a huge weakness for Jinwoo is the power it has to punish him. The system has shown that while it seems to want to protect his life, it has no problem assigning quest penalties that could result in his death. During one instance when hunters tried to kill Jinwoo, the system declared it would stop Jinwoo’s heart if he didn’t complete the quest.
If someone else knew how much power the system had over Jinwoo, there’s a possibility they could cause a quest to appear that Jinwoo would hesitate to complete, resulting in his injury or even death. There could be a quest that the system imposes on Jinwoo, one that conflicts with his morals too much, that he would rather choose death than complete. An evil character in the series could engineer a situation where innocent people were involved, forcing Jinwoo to choose between ing the system’s orders and keeping himself alive.
The anime for Solo Leveling has not yet revealed much about the system’s origins, motivation, and goals for Jinwoo, making it a possibility that such a plot line could be explored in the future. However, if the anime continues to the path of the other adaptations, this potential weakness for Jinwoo completely disappears as he grows in power. Still, at the current moment in the anime, it’s possible that someone could pit Jinwoo against the system, as his status as the player is not yet set in stone.
Solo Leveling can be streamed on Crunchyroll and Amazon.
A-1 Pictures' Solo Leveling is an anime based on Chugong's popular web novel. Set in an unforgiving fantasy world where hunters explore dungeons filled with monsters, the vulnerable Sung Jinwoo gains a significant power boost after he is picked to be a solo player by the System.
