Antares

“	Destroy everything! For that is the sole mission of our existence!	”
—Antares to his army, Chapter 170 (Webtoon)

Overview

Gallery

Antares
Hangul	안타레스
Epithets	King of Dragons Monarch of Destruction
Status	Deceased
Skills	Dragon's Fear Breath of Destruction Spiritual Body Manifestation Telepathy
Debut Appearances
Novel	Chapter 228NV
Webtoon	Chapter 163WB

Antares (안타레스) was the King of Dragons and the Monarch of Destruction. He was also both the strongest and the oldest of the nine Monarchs, as well as the final antagonist of Solo Leveling.

Appearance

Antares was a tall, handsome, and muscular middle-aged man with long red hair, a short red beard, glowing red eyes, and dark red claws. He also wore reddish-silver armor with a high collar and a reddish-brown tailcoat.

Personality

As the Monarch of Destruction, Antares reveled in the devastation that he caused with his powers. Due to his nearly unparalleled strength, he usually behaved in a very casual and confident manner, and was not the type to lose his head very easily. Like the other Monarchs, he also had a very disdainful attitude toward humanity and had no qualms with committing genocide against them in order to force the Shadow Monarch to come out and face him in battle.

However, despite his bloodthirsty nature, Antares had a sense of honor and was willing to negotiate with those who were strong enough to impress him in battle, as displayed when he promised Jinwoo that he would withdraw his forces and spare mankind as long as the former agreed to fight with him against the Rulers. Even after Jinwoo killed him in two different timelines, Antares continued to acknowledge his strength to the point that he was incredibly disappointed when he easily defeated Jinwoo's son Suho during their first encounter several decades later, leading him to lament about how weak Suho was and even claim at one point that the boy was unworthy of succeeding his father.

Despite all his personal faults, Antares displayed a level of care towards his minions and was disgusted by anyone who exploited them for experimental purposes. He also appeared to believe in blood purity and had no respect for dragons who were of mixed heritage.

History

Eons ago, Antares fought alongside the other Monarchs, including the Shadow Monarch Ashborn, in a devastating war with the Rulers at the behest of their creator, the Absolute Being. As the war progressed, Antares grew fearful of Ashborn's powers and ordered Rakan and Baran to take him out. However, this proved to be a big mistake, as not only did Ashborn easily defeat them both, but he also killed Baran as punishment for his betrayal. Shortly after this battle, Ashborn suddenly disappeared, allowing the Rulers to finally win the war and forcing the surviving Monarchs all into hiding.

At some point after this, Ashborn returned and asked Antares if he could rejoin his forces. As two of the Monarchs (Baran and Legia) were lost and the rest were still greatly weakened from their defeat against the Rulers, Antares gladly accepted his request.

Centuries later, when the war with the Rulers began its second phase in the human world, Antares discovered himself to be in the same pickle that Ashborn was in and could not find a human vessel strong enough to withstand his powers. As a result, while the other Monarchs found vessels for themselves without much trouble and were able to travel between worlds whenever they wanted, Antares was forced to remain behind until a proper vessel for himself could be found.

Final Battle Arc

Shortly after Jinwoo killed the three Monarchs who came after him in Korea, Antares learned from Yogumunt that the Shadow Monarch had turned against them and annihilated most of their forces. Undaunted, Antares decided to deal with Ashborn's vessel himself and ordered his army of dragons to prepare for battle.

Several days later, Antares descended into the human world through a gigantic gate in Canada and was met by the Canadian S-Rank Hunter Jay Mills. Realizing that Jinwoo was not present, Antares burned Jay to cinders with his breath attack and gleefully unleashed his army onto the landscape, cutting a wide path of destruction across the country and massacring millions of people, including Adam White. However, even with all the desolation that Antares left in his wake, the Shadow Monarch still failed to show up. As a result, Antares eventually grew bored and started to wonder if he would show up to fight at all.

When Jinwoo finally appeared on the eastern front of the battlefield, Antares went out to confront him and ordered his army of ten million to corner him, believing that even the Shadow Monarch couldn't handle so many enemies at once. This led Jinwoo to use Dragon's Fear to counter his attack, immobilizing every single one of his minions, including Yogumunt, and then proceeded to drag Antares with him to an remote island in Japan using Shadow Exchange. The two then began to fight and despite Jinwoo's efforts, Antares easily countered his attacks one after another.

Although Jinwoo's attacks simply bounced off his skin, Antares was still impressed by his sense of strategy. As a result, he halted his attacks and offered to spare humanity from extinction as long as Jinwoo helped him defeat the Rulers. However, Jinwoo refused to accept the offer and mocked him for pretending to play nice, prompting their battle to resume. As the fighting continued, Antares grew more and more annoyed with Jinwoo's refusal to submit, especially since the latter's attacks still had no effect on him, and eventually lost his temper entirely, threatening to rip him to shreds and turn him into drake food if he didn't give in. However, in his anger and his arrogance, Antares failed to notice that Jinwoo wasn't just attacking blindly and accidentally left himself wide open, enabling the latter to slice him almost completely in half using his father's dagger.

Surprised that the Shadow Monarch had actually been able to hurt him, Antares suddenly noticed the Rulers' armies in the skies and finally understood that Jinwoo had been aiming for this from the very beginning, as their battle had distorted space to such an extent that it allowed the Rulers to enter the human world in their raw forms. Now completely cornered, Antares attempted to attack the Jinwoo one last time, but was thwarted by the Rulers, who fatally stabbed him with their spears. Realizing that he had lost and that the Rulers were victorious once again, Antares admitted that he never had a chance of winning from the start right before he succumbed to his wounds and died, leaving his body to break up into pieces and float away in the wind.

Epilogue

After the Rulers used the Cup of Reincarnation one last time at Jinwoo's request, Antares was revived with his memories of the original timeline intact. As he was the strongest Monarch, Jinwoo decided to save him for last and went after the other Monarchs first, massacring them all with little trouble. Although Antares was aware of their deaths, he did nothing to help them and waited patiently for the Shadow Monarch to arrive at his doorstep.

27 years later, when Antares was the only Monarch left, Jinwoo finally appeared inside his palace, intent on killing him and finishing what he'd started. Delighted that he'd been given the chance to fight Jinwoo again, Antares decided to hold nothing back and activated his Spiritual Body Manifestation as soon as their clash began. However, despite his best efforts, Jinwoo killed him in the ensuing battle without too much trouble, only suffering a severe burn on his left hand in the aftermath.

Ragnarok

Due his son Suho's desire to become the next Monarch of Destruction, Jinwoo made a deal with Antares in which he'd be brought back to life in exchange for helping shape Suho into his successor through the System..

Abilities

As the strongest and oldest Monarch, Antares was one of the most powerful individuals in existence, with only Ashborn rivaling him in strength, and even then he was still slightly superior to the Shadow Monarch in raw power.

• Immeasurable Strength: Antares possessed a tremendous amount of physical strength that was far superior to that of nearly all other beings in existence, even the Shadow Monarch himself. This was shown by how he was able to easily hold his own against Jinwoo during their first fight and eventually overpower him.
• Immeasurable Speed: Antares could move at nearly unparalleled speeds, as displayed when he was able to almost effortlessly keep up with Jinwoo's movements during their first fight and react in time to almost every attack that the latter ever made against him.
• Immense Durability: Antares possessed almost unparalleled toughness and durability, and was virtually immune to physical trauma. As a testament to this, he was completed unharmed by most of Jinwoo's attacks, which forced the latter to resort to using unconventional tactics in order to cut him.
• Dragon's Fear: Antares was able to release a mana-infused shout from his soul that would drive those weaker than him into a state of intense despair and panic.
• Breath of Destruction: Antares was able to spit devastating torrents of fire from his mouth. This attack was so powerful that it was able to instantly reduce the average S-Rank Hunter to ash, easily negate most of Jinwoo's attacks, and permanently destroy any shadow soldiers that were unfortunate enough to get in his way.
• Spiritual Body Manifestation: Antares was able to turn into an enormous red dragon, as well as transform into a human-dragon hybrid. While in his hybrid form, his eyes would become snakelike, his armor would become more reptilian in appearance, and his head would be mostly covered by a white helmet with four brown dragon horns, leaving only his face and hair exposed.
• Telepathy: Antares was able to communicate telepathically with his fellow Monarchs.

Trivia

• In a dream sequence that Jinwoo has in the revised timeline, it is heavily implied that due to having successfully grown strong enough through the System to harness Ashborn's powers, he could have done the exact same thing with Antares and served as the latter's human vessel without any trouble.
  • Strangely enough, in Jinwoo's dream, he was pictured with the exact same stats that he had as an E-Rank Hunter and yet Antares was somehow able to fight at full power without causing any kind of blowback to Jinwoo's body.

External Links

• Antares on the Villains Wiki