(Synopsis from the back cover):
«Jinwoo Sung, officially S-Rank. Leveling up in C-rank dungeons has become next to impossible for Jinwoo. But an E-rank hunter attempting anything higher? Well, that would raise some serious red flags…so the time has come for a reevaluation. And when the results are back, it’s official-Jinwoo is the tenth S-rank hunter from South Korea! An entirely new world, brimming with powerful magic beasts and elite hunters, is now open to him. But before he can immerse himself in it, there’s something absolutely vital he has to do…»
It is a Korean novel, and the names and surnames become quite confusing and similar as the cast expands, making it easy to lose track of the secondary characters.
“‘The strong devour the weak.’ Jinwoo believed in this law of nature.” This idea points to the concept of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. He also believes in “equivalent exchange,” a concept that seems taken from Fullmetal Alchemist. Its definition is: “The Law of Equivalent Exchange states that to obtain something, something of equal value must be lost.” In short, it is a form of the law of retaliation (an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, or, according to the RAE (the official spanish dictionary), “a punishment consisting of inflicting on the offender the same harm they caused”).
The work is of low literary quality, with a simple, direct, and functional style.
The violence is somewhat graphic and quite “spectacular,” as if the protagonist were a superhero with superhuman strength.
It is the third volume out of a total of eight books. Originally, thirteen volumes were published between 2016 and 2017. In 2019, a second edition was released, compiled into eight volumes. The version reviewed here is the English translation of this second Korean edition. In Spanish, four volumes have been translated so far, unlike the English version, which is already complete.
The protagonist, Jinwoo, unlike in the first book, begins to show some more likable traits and a certain degree of altruism. Although he continues to be driven by the goal of gaining more power and becoming stronger, his main motivation is to cure his mother, who is hospitalized due to an illness called “Eternal Sleep,” which is essentially a coma caused by a lack of resistance to “mana,” that is, the magical power emitted by hunters, portals, monsters, and magical beasts. As the number of hunters in the world increases, it becomes difficult to avoid this exposure. Hunters “awaken” suddenly with magical powers, randomly and with a fixed rank that cannot be changed. Jinwoo is the only one capable of increasing his power and leveling up thanks to the mysterious “System,” which functions in a way similar to a video game.
It is also worth mentioning Jinwoo’s ability of “soul extraction,” a skill that allows him to summon the soul of a defeated enemy to serve him and join his army of shadows. Thanks to this, he commands a large army that appears to serve him loyally, without resentment or any sense of enslavement. Moreover, these are mostly the souls of dungeon monsters and magical beasts. However, up to this volume, there is one case of a human who, after dying in battle, comes to serve him, which is morally problematic and leaves a negative impression. Likewise, there are certain contradictions, as at some point in the series it is suggested that the protagonist does not believe in God, which raises several unanswered questions within the complexity of this magical universe.