"Surname," "family"... From what Punk had seen and heard over the long years, these two terms generally carried considerable weight in the traditional cultures of the Multiverse's many intelligent races. Most professionals of noble birth below the Legendary tier possessed an indescribably strange familial attachment to their families, and surnames were something many Legendary professionals would not treat carelessly.
For example, among the Legendary-tier powerhouses Punk knew, Kane's surname, "Bisadas," was an unremarkable and uncool third-rate noble surname. In the dialect of Kane's homeland, the word merely meant something as boring as "someone skilled at riding horses." Just hearing it made it obvious that it had to be a noble title bestowed upon Kane's ancestors by some uneducated little lord.
Even now, from any perspective, it sounded rather embarrassing for a powerful Legendary professional—especially someone with the Mad Knight's loud and flamboyant personality—to bear such a tasteless surname. But in truth... the Morningstar Knight had never, in Punk's memory, voiced a single complaint about his surname. Nor had he discarded that rustic name merely to look cool or for any other reason.
Perhaps it was because of the vastly different cultural upbringing he had received. Punk was destined to never understand the serious attitude those "nobles" held toward their "surnames."
But not understanding did not mean he could not grasp it in theory. In fact, Punk knew perfectly well that for many commoner professionals, something as seemingly impractical as a surname still held a certain ritualistic significance and special meaning. Many professionals from commoner families, even after achieving great accomplishments or entering the Legendary tier, would not casually invent a surname that had never existed and attach it to themselves. Perhaps to them, "having no surname" itself represented a particular class concept?
In fact, up to this day, the only