Sung Jinwoo has literally climbed his way to the top in Solo Leveling in more ways than one. He went from being considered the weakest E-Rank Hunter in all mankind, to being one of the strongest Hunters in all of Korea unbelievably quickly, gaining the respect of his fellow Hunters and the admiration of the public. However, it’s arguable that the most impressive climb he accomplished was in Season 2, Episode 8 (Episode 20 overall), “Looking Up Was Tiring Me Out”, when he finally reached the top of the Demon’s Castle and defeated its boss, The Demon Monarch Baran.

The Demon’s Castle has been a staple of Jinwoo’s journey pretty much ever since he first reawakened as a Player of the System following his near-death experience in the Double Dungeon. In Solo Leveling Episode 7, Jinwoo went above and beyond in completing one of his routine Daily Quests, and was rewarded with the enigmatic Demon’s Castle Key for his efforts. He had no idea this key would unlock something far more sinister and terrifying than he could ever imagine. Reaching the 100th floor of the Demon’s Castle marked the end of his most difficult quest, but it was also the start of something way bigger.

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Esil Hints At The Demon’s Castle’s True Identity Early On

The System Overrides Esil’s Conversation With Jinwoo in Solo Leveling Manhwa Chapters 82–83

Even after clearing the Demon’s Castle and defeating Baran in Episode 20, Jinwoo still has no idea about the castle’s secret connection to the series’ endgame. However, he deduces some key pieces of information that hint at the truth. While it doesn’t happen in the anime, the manhwa sees Jinwoo getting a very strong hint as soon as he steps into the Demon’s Castle.

Looking around at the “field-type” dungeon he has entered, Jinwoo has a shocking realization: the burning city of the Demon’s Castle closely resembles his hometown of Seoul, Korea. Jinwoo dismisses this as a mere stylistic detail, but the truth is further hinted at later, when he returns to the Demon’s Castle for a third time.

After meeting and befriending Esil, Jinwoo embraces the rare opportunity of finding a Magic Beast who can speak human language by questioning her about her life prior to coming to the Demon’s Castle. As Esil reveals, she lived in the Demon Realm, where her people were preparing for a war. Unfortunately, she’s not able to get out any more information before the System takes over, but this provides a valuable clue as to the reality of the Demon’s Castle itself. What Jinwoo doesn’t quite realize yet, is that the war Esil is referring to is the very same war that will lead to the utter destruction of Seoul, creating a scene very similar to the one Jinwoo sees in the Demon’s Castle itself.

Jinwoo isn’t completely oblivious to the powers of the System and the possibilities therein. After Esil passes out because of the System’s intervention in their conversation, Jinwoo questions the implications via an internal monologue: “The system reacted immediately at the identity of this enemy of the Demons. If they have some transcendental power that they can use to affect the Earth and me somehow-“ Even at this stage, Jinwoo suspects that the System may be much closer to deity than he would’ve hoped.

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Between the hint of this “transcendental” power of the System, the likeness to the demon’s Castle to Seoul, and the existence of the Demon Monarch on the 100th floor, a very grim picture of the Demon’s Castle takes shape. While these hints are substantial, Jinwoo never quite finds himself with enough spare time to fully contemplate his situation, or comprehend the implications.

Baran is The Clearest Indication of The Demon’s Castle’s True Identity

Jinwoo Fights Baran in Solo Leveling Manhwa Chapters 85–87

Of all the clues Jinwoo receives as to the Demon’s Castle’s true connection to Solo Leveling’s endgame, Baran himself should’ve been the most overt. While Jinwoo recognizes the overwhelming power of Baran the moment he sees him, there’s one aspect of Baran he fails to recognize: his title.

From the second the System revealed the name of Baran as “The Demon Monarch”, Jinwoo probably should’ve spotted the connection between this boss monster and his own class title of “Shadow Monarch”. After all, the Shadow Monarch was a “hidden class” awarded by the System, which should’ve immediately raised red flags for Jinwoo. While Jinwoo did think the fact he was chosen to be a Necromancer class was strange his inability to see this connection between the Demon Monarch and the Shadow Monarch is puzzling.

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While Sung Jinwoo does develop some early inkling of what the Demon’s Castle’s appearance might imply, he has no idea of the truth of it until much later. It’s not until Jinwoo confronts the Architect directly by returning to the Cartenon Temple (the location of the Double Dungeon incident) that he begins to learn this terrifying truth about the Demon’s Castle.

After Jinwoo defeats the Architect in their initial fight, the Architect grants him the ability to see some of Ashborn’s memories, and that includes the memory of what happened in Seoul as it appears in the Demon’s Castle. As he soon learns, the Demon’s Castle is a simulation based on a fragment of Ashborn’s memory of a previous war against the Monarchs prior to the events of Solo Leveling.

During this conflict, Ashborn killed Baran, the Demon Monarch, in the middle of Seoul as the city burnt to ashes around them. Therefore the Demon’s Castle looks like a burning city, because it is a literal representation of the setting where Ashborn killed Baran in a time long past.

Similarly, this is also why Jinwoo has to fight Baran on the 100th floor of the Castle; it’s another detail hinting at this vital moment in Ashborn’s history. In a way, when Jinwoo is fighting his way through the Demon’s Castle, he’s also reliving one of the original Shadow Monarch’s most important memories.

The Demon’s Castle is a Memory of the Shadow Monarch’s Past

Jinwoo Sees Ashborn’s Memory of the Demon’s Castle in Solo Leveling Manhwa Chapters 128–129

The first time Jinwoo actually learns there are other Monarchs aside from the Demon and Shadow Monarchs is during his fight with the Architect. Realizing the Shadow Monarch has forsaken him, the Architect blurts out “Shadow Monarch, you! Do you think the other Monarchs will just sit back and let this happen?!”

However, this comes after Jinwoo has already seen the memories of the real Shadow Monarch, so the pieces of the puzzle had already begun to fall into place at that point. Still, it isn’t until much later – when Jinwoo actually meets Ashborn face to face during his battle against the Frost, Plagues and Beast Monarchs – that he learns the whole truth about what the Demon’s Castle really is.

As Jinwoo learns from Ashborn, the site that the Demon’s Castle is meant to replicate is Ashborn’s memory of the moment he learned that the Monarchs had betrayed and turned against him. Ashborn had joined forces with the other Monarchs to fight the Rulers, but fearing Ashborn’s powers, the Monarchs betrayed him. Baran is one of the first Monarchs to turn on Ashborn, and he ends up dead as a result.

This was also the moment when the Rulers begged Ashborn’s forgiveness, marking a major turning point in the war between the Monarchs and Rulers. Jinwoo learns during this conversation that Ashborn was once the Brightest Fragment of Brilliant Light, leader of the Rulers. Ashborn became the Shadow Monarch after the Rulers turned on him and left him for dead, not realizing that the Absolute Being had gifted him power over death.

“As the conflict between the citizens of your world and the denizens of chaos intensifies… more and more of your land will gradually become a battlefield. May it be… that all you wish to protect burns to ash.” – Regia, the Monarch of the Beginning

Using the System that the Architect created, the Shadow Monarch sought to prepare Jinwoo’s body to become a vessel for his personal return to Earth. The stronger Jinwoo became and the more he leveled up, the closer his body became to being able to handle the Shadow Monarch’s full power. That’s why the Demon’s Castle was created. Theoretically, by the time he reached the 100th floor of the Demon’s Castle and defeated the clone of Baran there, Jinwoo should’ve been nearly completely ready to be overtaken by Ashborn and turned into his bodily vessel.

Importantly, just as the Demon’s Castle is not the literal city of Seoul where Ashborn killed Baran, but only a simulation based on Ashborn’s memory, the same can be said about the version of Baran that Jinwoo fights on the 100th floor. This may explain why the Baran Jinwoo fights at the Demon’s Castle is far weaker than the real Demon Monarch that Ashborn fought.

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​​​​​While it’s never directly explained why the Architect chose this specific memory as the backdrop for the Demon’s Castle, it’s fitting that he did. The Demon’s Castle is a representation of the place where everything changed for Ashborn, which makes it the perfect setting for Jinwoo’s most major turning point as well. While Jinwoo always finds himself facing increasingly difficult challenges, the one constant challenge he can never overcome is the Demon’s Castle.

Jinwoo gets the key to the Demon’s Castle in Solo Leveling Season 1, Episode 7, “Let’s See How Far I Can Go”, but after witnessing the power of the castle’s guardian, Cerberus, he doesn’t even attempt to return until Episode 15, “A Long Way to Go”. As Episode 15’s title suggests, though, he still has a long way to go even at that point. He’s unable to make it all the way to the top floor in the week’s time he has been allotted, and doesn’t have nearly enough rations to last the remaining days of his journey.

The Demon’s Castle is Jinwoo’s Longest Recurring Dungeon in Solo Leveling For a Reason

Sung Jinwoo Periodically Climbs the Demon’s Castle For 2 Months, Starting in Manhwa Chapter 26, and Ending in Chapter 87

After leaving the Demon’s Castle once again to regain his bearings, Jinwoo returns one last time in Episode 19, before finally completing the dungeon and defeating Baran in Episode 20. In the manhwa, it’s confirmed that from the time he received the Demon’s Castle Key, up until the time he returned to the Castle, 2 months had passed.

This is a very short period of time considering how much stronger he grows, but it does last nearly the entirety of the series up to that point. In total, it takes Jinwoo nearly 13 episodes of the anime to complete the Demon’s Castle, making it his single most difficult and most oft-recurring quest in the series.

That’s entirely by design. In reality, the Architect uses the Demon’s Castle as a means of gauging Jinwoo’s progress. That’s why Jinwoo is gifted with something as important to Jinwoo’s personal journey as the Elixir of Life at the top floor: it’s the ultimate incentive for the Shadow Monarch’s vessel to climb all the way to the top.

The Architect knows that Jinwoo’s biggest motivating factor is his family, making the cure to his mother’s illness the most obvious carrot to dangle in front of his head. If Jinwoo can truly make his way up all 100 floors and defeat the clone of the Demon Monarch, his body should be more than capable of housing the Shadow Monarch as a vessel. In short, the Demon’s Castle is the main test the System uses to measure how strong the Player has become.

Jinwoo even receives the Cartenon Key while in the Demon’s Castle, allowing him to eventually go back to the Double Dungeon where everything started. It’s clear that the Demon’s Castle is meant to be the final test for Jinwoo, but that’s not how it goes for him. After reaching level 100 following the Jeju Island Raid, Jinwoo receives his official invitation to return to the Cartenon Temple, but he doesn’t go right back just yet.

Instead, Jinwoo continues to go on other raids, leveling up in the process. This makes him even stronger than the Architect expected him to be by the time he returns to the Double Dungeon, in turn giving him the strength to defeat the Architect with his own hands. Jinwoo’s decision to go above and beyond after receiving the Cartenon Key perfectly demonstrates the single characteristic that made him such a promising vessel for Ashborn from the start.

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​​​​​It’s this quality of always pushing himself harder than anyone else that allowed Jinwoo to overcome all his struggles to become an S-Rank. And it’s that same quality that allows him to defeat the Architect and eventually beat the Monarchs. Sung Jinwoo could have easily just embraced his personal victory after beating the Monarchs in their first war on Earth.

Instead, he used the Cup of Reincarnation to fight yet another lengthy battle against them all on his own, going above and beyond anything the Rulers — even Ashborn — could have even imagined. Jinwoo will shoulder his burden on his own, solo, precisely because he had something he cared about more than himself that pushed him forward. The same thing the Architect dangled over Jinwoo’s head to push him to complete the Demon’s Castle, was ironically the same thing that pushed him to go above and beyond to save the world in the end: his family.

Solo Leveling Season 2 is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Solo Leveling

Release Date

January 7, 2024

Directors

Shunsuke Nakashige

Writers

Noboru Kimura

• Taito Ban

  Shun Mizushino (voice)

• 

  Genta Nakamura

  Kenta Morobishi (voice)

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