Jeju Island Arc

Ranked thirteenth in Solo Leveling, this segment follows the Return to Demon Castle events and leads into the Recruitment storyline. It spans roughly chapters 111 through 127 of the novel, chapters 90 through 107 of the webtoon, and episodes 21 through 25 of the anime. With his mother at last freed from Eternal Slumber, Jinwoo plans to skip the Jeju Island Raid and care for her. He reverses that decision once a monstrous ant surfaces mid-raid and begins cutting down S-Rank hunters in droves.

The arc opens with the Korean and Japanese S-Rank hunters sizing each other up through a string of training bouts before the raid proper. Once the operation begins, the ants prove devastating: the Ant King slaughters figures such as Akari Shimizu, Kenzo Tanaka, Tatsumi Fujishima, Kei, Ippei Izawa, Goto Ryuji, Mari Ishida, and Min Byung-Gyu, while the Korean squad manages to kill the Ant Queen. Jinwoo finally confronts the Ant King directly and ends its rampage. A sprawling cast of Korean and Japanese hunters runs through the events, set across Jeju Island with developments also tied to the USA and China.

During the fighting, Jinwoo's Critical Attack skill evolved into its final form, Mutilation, and he passed level 100. He raised the fallen Ant King as a shadow soldier named Beru, gaining one of his most powerful allies. With the boss dead, the Jeju Island S-Rank Gate was declared cleared.