Runald

Runald is Andersen's former Vicegerent and Jaehwan's sole Follower. A displaced boy who refuses to abandon the gods and worlds he chooses, he grows from a frightened low-grade Follower into the “Naked Saint,” whose faith, Stab, and sacrificed future help protect the world after Jaehwan's departure.

Biography

The Metaverse and its gods

Runald loses his hometown and family before entering the 《Abyss》: he remembers stealing bread, being chased by nobles after trying to protect his younger sister, and being taken by a Tower. Andersen, who resembles that lost sister, becomes the only family he has left. For two years they survive together as a weak god and her sole Follower and Vicegerent. When Belkain's Followers offer him safety through God Severance, Runald refuses. Andersen gave him a warm, fairy-tale Unique World when established temples would not accept people like him, so he insists that he—not divine rank or convenience—will decide which world he inhabits. (Chapters 101–103 and 118)

At the Blue Grove's hidden Fishing Spot, Runald and Andersen pull Jaehwan out of 《Chaos》. Runald activates Andersen's law-type Setting, 「Naked」, by stripping, and its Strength Enhancement transforms his slight body enough to help haul the stranger ashore. The rescue nearly destroys him: Jaehwan has absorbed Andersen, and the disruption of their bond sends Runald's World Power out of control as he begins turning into a Lost One. Andersen asks Jaehwan to accept the boy, and Jaehwan creates a new Thread. That link saves Runald, makes him Jaehwan's only Follower, and exposes him to the desolation of Jaehwan's Unique World strongly enough that he faints. (Chapters 103–105)

Runald follows Jaehwan into 〈Metaverse〉 while remaining emotionally devoted to Andersen. Feeling inadequate beside stronger gods and Awakened Ones, he asks Jaehwan to teach him Stab; the exact first posture moves him to tears, and he practices it daily. His loyalty then becomes action during the conflict with the Metaverse Six Gods. He charges despite fear, survives Galateon's attack because Jin Eunsae intervenes, and instantly understands Andersen's command to throw the Time Cube to Jihan. The gamble lets Jaehwan break out of the cube and rescue them, confirming that Runald's trust is not passive worship but a willingness to choose under pressure. (Chapters 117, 124–127)

War on the Metaverse floors

After the sixth-floor battle, a wounded Runald supports the exhausted Jaehwan while three Nebula warships prepare World Bombardment. Jaehwan lacks the World Power needed for a counterattack, so Andersen orders Runald to surrender the trust he stole from Alliance fighters. He gives it without hesitation, converting a small but necessary reserve into power for his god. When the bombardment begins, Runald shields Andersen's Moya Moya Crow Doll with his own body. Ethan's final Sanctuary protects them, and Runald climbs onward carrying the lesson that trust can become both literal power and the last act by which a dying god protects a world. (Chapters 129–134)

The Seventh Floor separates the party and traps passengers in cocoons that extract their World Power while feeding them idealized “Yesterdays.” Runald declares the dreams false and volunteers to wake a captive, believing a careful explanation of reality will free him. Instead, the emaciated passenger attacks Runald and crawls back into the cocoon. Repeated failures force Runald to confront a limitation in his moral certainty: recognizing exploitation does not give him the words or power to make its victims choose freedom. He nevertheless joins Rene's team, helps seize Plants, and runs as a candidate because leaving the machinery untouched would mean accepting it. (Chapters 137–141)

Runald's public role exposes him to a Prayer Flood Wave formed from hostile gods' messages. Accusations that he is unworthy of being Jaehwan's Follower eat into his soul until he apologizes and collapses, while his bond also lets him feel the loneliness Jaehwan hides behind the campaign's success. Jaehwan stops the assault, but Runald does not withdraw from the war. He spends all his World Power repeatedly using Stab at the front and tries to reach Jaehwan inside Arteina's Sanctuary until Jaehwan destroys Yesterday. The episode leaves Runald unable to solve the gods' dependency, yet more certain that companionship means sharing the pressure borne by his god. (Chapters 143–148)

Climbing the Branch, the Ancient Gods, and the Grand Auction

Runald continues practicing with Karlton and learns Hard Stab well enough to join the battle for the upper floors. He uses Stab against the stairway itself to propel himself forward and becomes the first ally to reach the Ninth Floor, collapsing only after securing one of its limited places. Chronos's manifestation still overwhelms him so completely that he vomits silver, and he panics over Jaehwan's injuries after Catastrophe intervenes. That fear comes from having already lost one god, but it no longer makes him retreat; he treats Jaehwan's wounds, regains control when promised that Jaehwan will survive, and elects to keep climbing. (Chapters 159, 162, and 164–167)

When the Leader dismisses Metaverse relationships as virtual ties, Runald answers beside Jaehwan. He drives an accurately practiced Stab into the Tenth Floor's ceiling, rises after collapsing, and spends trust with the other allies until their combined attacks open a route beyond the Tower. He recognizes the Dolls' sponsorships as prayers left behind by living souls, connecting Ethan's dead village to their present resistance. At the summit, he uses his one wish not for himself but to restore Rachel Young, Andersen's former Vicegerent. Returning the warmth Andersen once gave him completes his movement from a child protected by a god to a Follower capable of answering that god's oldest grief. (Chapters 168–171)

Runald adds his World Power when the allies sever the Metaverse's supply Links and survives the Tower's collapse. As he trains afterward, Jaehwan observes that the boy's World Power has stabilized and matured unusually quickly; he is no longer the helpless Follower rescued on the lower floors. Jaehwan consequently tells him to choose proper equipment, and Runald selects a nameless black longsword that he calls Solitary Child. That new confidence does not erase his vigilance. He distrusts Maiad before Jaehwan does, survives the Grand Auction conflict, and helps Karavan carry the defeated Jaehwan toward the Great Forest after Andersen sacrifices herself to hold Maiad back. (Chapters 174–181 and 192–195)

The Great Forest and the Rift to Only One World

In the Great Forest, Runald learns the Longevity Clan's language, witnesses Jaehwan's training, and presses him to explain the meaning of Clothes rather than accepting mystical slogans. The journey also deepens their bond after Andersen's disappearance. Runald talks through their shared grief, reminds Jaehwan that Andersen protected her world as long as even one Follower believed in it, and refuses an offered escape from Jaehwan's dangerous path. Jaehwan warns that being his Follower may bring hatred and unhappiness; Runald chooses to follow anyway. Their relationship therefore becomes an explicit mutual commitment rather than the emergency Thread that first kept Runald alive. (Chapters 196 and 199–206)

Runald's growth becomes visible upon the allies' return. His World Power is bold enough to surprise Yu Seolha, and he helps Karlton and Sirwen Armelt confront a Great Lord even though they remain badly outmatched. He also reads Jaehwan through the Follower bond: when Jaehwan approaches a changed Seoyul, Runald stops Sirwen from interrupting because he senses that this encounter is different from an ordinary battlefield reunion. These moments establish his intermediate state before the final war—still a child with far less raw World Power than the Abyss's rulers, but a combatant and Vicegerent able to judge when to attack, protect, or stand aside. (Chapters 208–218)

During the war for the Seventh Site, Runald watches Barcant overwhelm the older powers and concludes that someone must stand in for the absent Jaehwan. He activates 「Naked」, tears away opponents' Clothes, and moves quickly enough to disrupt a Great Lord's Gigantes. Even after his World Power proves insufficient, Yoonhwan's attempt to sacrifice himself recalls Andersen's teaching that Followers protect a god's world. Runald locally manifests 「The World After the Fall」 and imitates Jaehwan's Cognitive Dissonance and Destruction. The explosive growth consumes the potential of his past, present, and future, but it lets Solitary Child and his final strike break the Gigantes and defeat Barcant. He survives only because Jaehwan's Cognitive Dissonance and Chunghuh's care repair part of his shattered soul. (Chapters 228–230, 233, and 236)

The victory leaves a permanent scar from Runald's shoulder to his left thigh and an injury considered nearly irreversible, yet he becomes remembered as Naked Saint Runald and serves on the new Committee. He challenges its attempt to reduce a Follower's happiness to a score, arguing that judging another person's inner world merely recreates the System. When Jaehwan departs to confront 《Big Brother》, Runald stands with Yoonhwan and Sirwen between him and the Committee, accepting that the world may be destroyed. A year later, he helps defend the Assembly Hall and alone recognizes Jaehwan's distant intervention through their link, preserving his faith even when that god is no longer physically present. (Chapters 236–237 and 248)

The First Nightmare and Revision

In the First Nightmare, the therapist who believes Jaehwan's stories says that he might be Runald because he is now Jaehwan's only Follower, but refuses the idea that belief requires a proven identity. He returns Jaehwan to the companions' names and insists that their world remains whole within the person who remembers and tells it. The scene does not establish that the therapist is literally Runald. Instead, it carries forward Runald's function: belief in Jaehwan's world becomes something another person can choose, even in a reality where gods, Threads, and World Power cannot demonstrate it for them. (Chapter 261)

In the New World created after the System falls, mortality and aging return to every existence. Runald survives long enough to become an old man, outliving Chunghuh, Karlton, and many companions but remaining recognizably stubborn and afraid. In a hospital bed he admits to Sirwen that death frightens him because it will be his first and last experience, and asks whether memory, soul, and body truly end. His breathing and heartbeat slow as he falls asleep, and the chapter subsequently says that Sirwen is left alone after the people who dreamed with her disappear. Runald's death is therefore conveyed through the scene's transition rather than an explicit declaration. (Chapter 262)

Revision gives that mortal ending another form without claiming to reverse it. Jaehwan reconstructs his lost history in prose, using Doubt, Understanding, Proof, and Editing as methods of writing. Within those sentences Runald fights, cries, and laughs beside Chunghuh, Karlton, and Sirwen again. His latest state in the corpus is therefore double: the New World's human Runald has reached the end of an ordinary lifespan, while the remembered Runald continues through Jaehwan's revised story. That persistence fulfills the principle Sirwen attaches to her Tower—what is remembered does not disappear—even though the text does not present it as a literal resurrection. (Chapters 262 and 264)

Appearance and personality

Runald first appears as a beautiful boy of roughly seventeen or eighteen, with delicate skin and bright features fine enough that he could be mistaken for a girl. 「Naked」 changes his slight body dramatically, producing pronounced muscle and golden World Power when active. He remains physically childlike through the wars of the Abyss, later bearing a severe diagonal scar from his shoulder to his left thigh after his soul explodes in the fight with Barcant. In the New World he finally ages into a white-haired, deeply wrinkled old man. (Chapters 101, 104, 230, 236, and 262)

He is affectionate, candid, and easily frightened, but he does not treat fear as a reason to surrender a chosen relationship. He clings to Andersen because she is family, worries openly whenever Jaehwan is injured or absent, and often supplies the questions that older characters have learned not to ask. His naïveté can be comic—especially around nakedness, food, and the customs of the Abyss—but it also exposes exploitation and hypocrisy with unusual directness. He can be stubborn, smug, and sharp-tongued, particularly toward adults who invoke rank or procedure as substitutes for responsibility. (Chapters 101–103, 139–141, 179–181, 199–204, and 236)

Runald's central virtue is loyalty exercised as judgment rather than obedience. He disobeys the expectation that a weak god should be abandoned, accepts Jaehwan only after Andersen entrusts him to that world, and later chooses the same bond again with full knowledge of its danger. He also challenges Jaehwan, comforts him, and opposes the Committee when their rules reproduce System logic. At his worst, devotion makes him reckless and willing to consume his own future; at his best, it lets him protect a world whose god cannot be present. (Chapters 102–105, 143, 170, 196, 229–230, and 236–248)

Powers and limitations

Follower and Vicegerent bond

Runald begins as Andersen's sole Follower and Vicegerent. The bond lets him draw on her Worldview and Setting, feel his god's emotions, convert trust into World Power, and understand urgent commands with little explanation. It is also a condition of his continued existence: when Andersen becomes incorporated into Jaehwan and their connection is disrupted, Runald's World Power runs wild and he begins becoming a Lost One. Jaehwan's Thread stabilizes him and makes him the only Follower linked to 「The World After the Fall」. (Chapters 102–105, 121, 127, and 132)

As Jaehwan's Follower, Runald can sense the god's condition across distance, supply him with trust or World Power, and share access to the same Unique World. The connection does not equal Jaehwan's personal combat strength. Early on, Runald is exhausted after basic engagements, harmed by hostile prayers, and unable to withstand the World Pressure of high-ranked beings. Training and repeated acts of trust steady his World Power until his aura surprises Yu Seolha and he can remain linked even when an effect expels Jaehwan's other companions. (Chapters 132, 143, 147, 167, 178, and 214)

Vicegerency ultimately lets Runald stand in for an absent god. Against Barcant, the Eye of Destruction shares Jaehwan's perception with him and he locally manifests the Sanctuary 「The World After the Fall」. World Power flows through the shared Unique World, increasing his force and accelerating his psyche. The Sanctuary remains small, and even with it Runald holds less than five hundred million World Power against Barcant's several billion. Its importance is functional rather than limitless: it creates a place from which the Follower can protect the god's world when the god is elsewhere. (Chapters 229–230)

Naked

「Naked」 is a law-type Setting inherited through Andersen's Worldview. Its earliest activation requires Runald to remove his clothes; a golden force transforms his thin body, enhances his strength, and lets him perform physical feats beyond his normal build. The Setting descends from the naked philosophy associated with Gestalt, but Runald receives it through his god rather than discovering that philosophy independently. By the final war, the Setting is described as innate to him, and its output rivals major Abyss powerhouses while active. (Chapters 103–104, 197–204, and 228–230)

Runald's mature application extends beyond strengthening his own body. As he crosses the battlefield, opponents' Clothes tear away, disarming and distracting Vicegerents while creating openings for Sirwen's Gigantes. The effect also provides unusual compatibility against a Gigantes, helping him survive exchanges that should annihilate a much weaker Follower. It does not erase differences in World Power: Barcant's blows break his body, and Runald recognizes that another direct hit may kill him. The same Setting is vulnerable to conceptual counterplay, since forcibly imposing “Clothes” can suppress its enhancement even when the user is physically unclothed. (Chapters 193–194 and 228–230)

Stab

Jaehwan teaches Runald the first posture of Stab as a precise, honest line rather than a shortcut to power. Runald repeats the movement every day, first without a meaningful target and later with Karlton and the Metaverse allies. He progresses from an imperfect Normal Stab to Hard Stab, uses repeated Stabs in combat, and discovers that striking the Metaverse stairs can propel him forward at high speed. His ceiling strike on the Ninth Floor is praised for perfect accuracy, showing technical development even while his raw power remains far below Jaehwan's. (Chapters 117, 159, 162, 164, and 168)

Stab is limited by Runald's available World Power and experience. On the Seventh Floor he exhausts himself through repeated use without breaking Arteina's Cocoon, and against Great Lords his ordinary attacks are easily evaded. Its greatest results occur in combination: many allies stab the ceiling together, trust becomes World Power, and Jaehwan's stronger techniques open the final breach. Runald's version is therefore a disciplined combat foundation and a way to align his action with his god's, not evidence that he independently possesses World Stab or Jaehwan's complete Stab system. (Chapters 147 and 168–169)

Inferior Cognitive Dissonance and Destruction

At the brink of defeat by Barcant, Runald accepts a supreme-grade God Complex and wagers all of his unrealized growth. The resulting “Runald-style Inferior Version” of Cognitive Dissonance imitates realizations reaching him through the shared Unique World, explosively raising his World Power and letting him continue after 「Naked」 and localized Sanctuary Manifestation prove insufficient. He follows it with an inferior version of Destruction, concentrating black power in his fist and driving it into the exposed Gigantes cockpit. The attack defeats a Great Lord where his normal techniques could not. (Chapters 230 and 233)

This development is neither repeatable nor a stable new tier. The borrowed power consumes Runald's future potential and tears apart his soul; he ends the battle at death's door with damage described as nearly irreversible. Jaehwan's Cognitive Dissonance and Chunghuh's treatment allow him to survive, but leave a permanent scar, and the corpus never shows Runald reproducing those inferior techniques afterward. His later defense of the Assembly Hall relies on his existing abilities and allies, while his decisive contribution remains the one battle in which he offers the adulthood he might have had to protect Jaehwan's world. (Chapters 230, 233, 236, and 248)

Power progression

Relationships

• Jaehwan: Jaehwan saves Runald from becoming a Lost One and becomes his only god. Their emergency bond develops into a chosen relationship in which Runald supplies trust, shares emotions and a Unique World, learns Stab, and ultimately acts as Jaehwan's Vicegerent. Runald also comforts and challenges him, making the bond reciprocal rather than merely devotional.
• Andersen: Andersen is Runald's first god and substitute family, resembling the younger sister he lost. He refuses to sever their bond for safety, inherits 「Naked」 through her world, and spends his Metaverse wish to restore her former Vicegerent. Her teaching that Followers protect a god's world guides his stand against Barcant.
• Karlton: Karlton becomes Runald's training partner and fellow practitioner of Stab. They climb the Metaverse together, survive its collapse, and later defend the reformed Abyss. Karlton's death from aging precedes Runald's own final years in the New World.
• Sirwen Armelt: Sirwen fights beside Runald and tries to protect him during the Rift war. She witnesses the cost of his growth against Barcant and, after most of their generation has died, remains beside the elderly Runald as he confronts mortality.
• Jin Eunsae: Jin Eunsae saves Runald from Galateon on the sixth floor, becoming both a standard of strength and a peer he wants to thank. They later climb together and defend the Assembly Hall side by side.
• Yu Seolha: Yu Seolha first notices the maturity of Runald's World Power and later recognizes him as the hero who defeated Barcant. Runald nevertheless confronts her Committee policy when it attempts to quantify his happiness, arguing that such judgment repeats the System they overthrew.
• Kim Yoonhwan: Yoonhwan's willingness to sacrifice himself for Jaehwan's Vicegerent recalls Andersen's example and triggers Runald's decision to protect their shared world. Together they later stand between Jaehwan and the Committee when he departs for 《Big Brother》.
• Karavan: Karavan helps carry Jaehwan and Runald away from the Grand Auction. When he asks why the boy would accept such danger, Runald answers simply that Jaehwan is his god, a declaration that helps frame his later renewal of the bond.

Items

• Solitary Child: A black longsword chosen from Ignel's workshop after Jaehwan decides Runald needs proper equipment. It was originally nameless; Runald has the chosen name engraved on its scabbard. He carries it into the Barcant battle, where it channels the cry and World Power of his localized world. (Chapters 180–181 and 230)
• Moya Moya Crow: Andersen's crow-shaped Doll and later vessel. Runald protects it during World Bombardment, carries it after Andersen's disappearance, and treats the warmth associated with it as part of his continuing bond with his first god. (Chapters 132 and 196)