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Solo Leveling is a series with very strong world-building aspects that began as a simple action-based story with some RPG elements. It soon turned into a full-blown epic and a war between two sides, the Rulers and the Monarchs, that has been going on since the beginning of time itself. While it is the story of Sung Jin-Woo and how he went from the lowest kind of Hunter to the strongest, the Shadows are another prominent element of the series' world-building.
The Shadows are a race of undead entities in the Solo Leveling universe and the stronger they are, the more personality they have. While some of them can be fairly basic when it comes to their emotions, some of the strongest have very defined personalities, which is something that is determined by their origin.
Disclaimer: This article contains spoilers for this series. Any opinion expressed here belongs to the author and not Sportskeeda.
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Explaining the origin of the Shadows in the Solo Leveling series
The Shadows are undead entities who are a direct result of a person doing the Shadow Extraction ability, which turns a slain beast or person into the aforementioned beings. However, a person can only execute Shadow Extraction on slain individuals who are weaker than them, thus leading to the latter being loyal to the former.
It is worth pointing out that the personalities of the Shadows become a lot more individualistic the stronger they are. A good example of that is one of the strongest Shadows in the series, Beru. He happens to enjoy watching Korean drama series in his spare time, which goes to show how much they can develop based on strength.
They can also become stronger as they defeat and kill more enemies in combat and are almost impossible to detect when they are hiding in a human's shadow. The Shadows who were born out of a slain beast are not affected by the power of the Cup of Reincarnation. Meanwhile, those born out of humans would go back to their original forms with no memories of what they did as those undead entities.
The focus of the Shadows in the story
The Shadows are perhaps one of the most unique elements of the series as they can serve as complete armies and allies to a lot of major characters in the story. Sung Jin-Woo is among those characters, especially as he reaches his position as the Shadow Monarch, leading a lot of the strongest Shadows to be loyal to them.
This element also makes the deaths of several characters all the more interesting since they can have, in a way, a second chance to stand out in the series. This can be interesting as a character can die and come back with a different design and somewhat different abilities but maintain some core elements without feeling like a fake-out.
When it comes to Sung Jin-Woo, the Shadows also serve as a way for him to demonstrate how much he has grown in the story, especially considering how he got the most out of the System's methods.
Final thoughts
The Shadows are an undead race in the Solo Leveling series who are a direct result of a person using the Shadow Extraction technique and turning weaker slain beasts or humans into these creatures.
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