"Now tell me what you were doing here."

I paused.

"And while we’re at it..."

A smile slowly spread across my face.

"Tell me again who was worse-looking than a chipmunk."

The moment I asked the question, the old man visibly flinched and then he began muttering something under his breath.

"Speak louder!"

I barked at him like a senior hazing a newly recruited junior in some mafia gang as the old man’s eyes immediately became watery.

"T-This great personality was speaking about himself, oh great sir." He hurriedly bowed his head. "How could someone as glorious as you ever be compared to a mere chipmunk? Your radiance is comparable to the sun itself. I was blinded by your overwhelming brilliance and mistakenly misunderstood a few things at first."

He nodded repeatedly.

"But your majestic presence awakened me from my ignorance. How could your beauty possibly be compared to that of ordinary mortals?"

His voice grew increasingly emotional.

"It would be like comparing the moon to the stars, the heavens to the earth, a dragon to an ant—"

"Enough." I raised my hand. "There is no need to tell me facts I already know."

The old man froze.

"Now answer my question. What were you doing here?"

He looked as though he wanted to continue praising me but I stopped him before he could because as enjoyable as it was to bully arrogant people and listen to them sing my praises, I didn’t have all day to waste.

"T-This great personality was waiting for a descendant to arrive one day and..." The old man swallowed nervously. "...impart some knowledge to them, oh great sir."

He somehow managed to say all of that while looking completely terrified.

"Heh. Imparting knowledge, huh?" I let out a short laugh. "You are terrified of your own descendant and yet you want to impart knowledge?"

I shook my head.

"How truly laughable."

The old man visibly shivered.

"What I truly don’t understand is this..." I narrowed my eyes at him. "How did someone like you end up with a title like the Butcher of the North?"

It was a question I genuinely wanted answered.

I already knew this Holy Empire and the few visible continents nearby were filled with idiots who believed the Transcendent Rank was the pinnacle of existence.

They had no idea that entire continents existed beyond their borders divided by the Great sea barrier where Transcendent was merely the beginning.

But even knowing that didn’t help me understand this situation. How had this coward managed to earn such an absurdly cool title?

I had accumulated a few impressive nicknames myself despite being weaker than countless monsters throughout my life but at the very least, I wasn’t this pathetic.

The old man tilted his head with a blank expression.

"Butcher? What are you talking about, oh great sir?"

I frowned.

"Weren’t you called the Great Butcher of the North?"

The old man’s eyes widened in alarm.

"What kind of terrifying title is that, oh great sir?" He shook his head immediately. "Throughout my entire life, I was only ever known as the Great Botcher of the North."

A small smile appeared on his face.

"I used to make a mess of everything back in my village, so everyone started calling me that."

He looked at me curiously.

"Haven’t the Runbringers preserved my stories?"

For a moment, my brain stopped functioning.

What the hell?

An ominous feeling crept into my heart.

"Runbringers?" My voice sounded strangely hollow. "Don’t you mean Ruinbringers?"

The old man looked even more confused.

"Another terrifying name, oh great sir." He waved his hands frantically. "How could we possibly be Ruinbringers? Our family used to spread fake warnings about wolves attacking sheep."

He smiled proudly.

"People would panic and start running everywhere, so eventually they began calling us the Runbringers."

"Holy shit..."

The words slipped out of my mouth automatically. Every story, legend and every glorious tale surrounding the founder had been complete bullshit.

Or perhaps a misunderstanding so severe that it may as well have been a lie.

This wasn’t something I had known even in my previous life and honestly, I would have preferred to remain ignorant. I knew history tended to distort things over time but wasn’t this taking it a little too far?

"Then how did you become a Duke? How did you reach the Transcendent Rank?" I asked, genuinely curious now.

"Oh, that?" The old man waved his hand dismissively. "I simply stumbled upon a psychopathic old man living inside a cave near our village. He gave me candies every day and made me run and trained me relentlessly. Before I knew it, I somehow reached high enough strength to run even faster. The old man called it the ’Enlightened’ stage back then."

The old man puffed out his chest proudly.

"This great personality was the first person in the village to reach such a stage." He pointed at himself. "As a reward, the villagers gifted me that strange sword lodged inside the meteorite our village had guarded for decades. Though I stopped growing in strength after that."

I stared at him silently.

The old man continued.

"And then one day, one of my childhood friends, the chief’s son, decided to call our village a Holy Empire."

"...What?"

The old man nodded.

"He was trying to impress the daughter of a priest from the Church of Love and Passion."

My expression froze.

"So he declared himself Emperor, called all of us childhood friends Dukes, and started introducing our village as a Holy Empire."

The old man scratched his cheek.

"It worked for a while." The old man smiled nostalgically. "And after we grew up, all of my friends started growing stronger through the method that old man had taught me. I shared it with them and before long, we formed a party and traveled the world together."

He puffed out his chest.

"This great personality served as the storyteller while the others handled the fighting." For some reason, he looked proud of that. "I kept their spirits high as they defeated one monster after another, and before we knew it, we had become incredibly influential."

The old man’s smile widened.

"In the end, Auremont unified the many races scattered across Veloria beneath the banner of the Holy Empire of Goddess of Love and Passion and because of all the resources even I, who was considered talentless, was able to reach the rank of Transcendent with help of my friends."

Damn.

So this entire empire had been founded because some lunatic wanted to impress a priest’s daughter. Not only that, I wasn’t even a Ruinbringer but was a Runbringer.

The terrifying bloodline that was dominating the whole north, the ones who shook nations and the clan I had personally destroyed was a family named after making villagers run around in panic because of fake wolf sightings.

I stared at the old man.

The old man stared back.

And then I thought about what I had just learned as I couldn’t hold it in anymore.

"Hahahahahaha!"

I burst into uncontrollable laughter.