Isekai Speedrun

When the daylight started waning, I saw a spire of a small, half-collapsed temple and felt my confidence rise a bit. Finally a location I recognized, a space of peace and tranquility – relatively speaking.

For casual plays, these side-temples were nice and safe areas for resting recovery, but for speedrunners they were practically useless because exactly zero campaign missions required visiting them. There was nothing divine to these temples either, mind you – these places were managed by an armed religious group called Cult of the Green Mountain. War-gangs avoided these places because the cult held strong influence all over Ur territories, and if you were caught harassing the cultists, your whole gang became a possible target for 'purification' to these fanatics.

That aside, if this side-temple was anything like the side-temples in the game, there was at least three pieces of knowledge that gave me an edge:

First, since this was a small missionary temple in the middle of coastal wasteland, there was probably very few cultists inside and probably only one weak enemy guardian, an alcoholic priest or head monk. Larger temples in more crowded areas had large mobs of fanatics guided by high priests or arch priests with tricky combat skills, but low-level priests and monks were easy enemies. Looking at the rough state of the temple and its surroundings, this place probably had a hard time finding new converts to clean the trash and fix the holes.

Second, I knew the priests kept secret food stashes in secret compartments under the altar floor. That's where you found secret stashes in the game. Even if the gangs avoided the place, that didn't stop individual thieves getting in and stealing stuff like food and candles, or youngsters who pretended to be interested in their religion just to check the place in advance and break in later. Hiding precious stuff and leaving thrift store stuff on display was just common sense.

Third, these hobo-temples had architectural exploits that you could use to sneak in and hide. There was a stone wall topped with iron-spikes around the temple, but the spikes near the gate were in an angle that made it easy to use them as footholds and climb over the gate. Once inside, there was a hidden alcove near the ceiling at the back wall of the temple that worked like an optical illusion; you couldn't see the alcove from the temple floor, which made it impossible for enemy AI to notice you. That was the best place to rest, if you were low on health and surrounded by aggroed enemies.

When the diffused sunlight coming through gray clouds disappeared, I set my smartphone flashlight on low setting and used it to find my way around in the darkness.

I climbed over the iron gate, which created some nasty metallic sounds, but thankfully there wasn't any reaction.

I circled the temple and crawled inside using a crevice window that had been left open. The manager of this place was clearly a negligent monk, not a meticulous high priest.

I walked cautiously near to aisle wall and approached the altar. After waiting a bit and listening the wailing wind in the steeple, I sneaked around the altar, checked the floor boards and found a secret stash. Jackpot.

There was black bread, blood cake, edible roots and a small wine bottle wrapped in red cloth. I was hungry, so I just started gnawing everything. The taste wasn't the best, but you can't be picky in Mu-Ur. The wine was thin and watery, but at least it cleared the ferric aftertaste of the blood cake.

I don't know much about wines, so it could be just a myth, but I'd heard that if you picked grapes during rainstorm, the taste turned watery. Maybe this wine came from a farm in Loönois, the far north area with constant rain.

After devouring most of the food, I felt drowsy. It had been a busy day full of physical and mental stress. I pocketed rest of the black bread and climbed up to the hidden alcove to sleep in.

Hopefully I don't die for food poisoning or some parallel world bacterial disease... Oh crap, wouldn't that be exactly the kind of farcical development you'd expect to see in Mu-Ur?

I spent my first night in parallel world on an alcove of a cult temple.

I slept like a piece of driftwood on a concrete slab and my breakfast was a slice of black bread.

When I came down from the alcove, it was already bright outside. I heard noises coming from a room next to the altar and then saw a green-robed monk staggering out of the side door.

Crap. The safest thing yesterday would have been sneak-attacking him when he was at sleep.

But that was just common sense from the game, I lacked the nerves and courage to knife a man in his sleep in real life.

Running or negotiating, these were the realistic options.

“...Is someone there? Who's there?” (drunk monk)

“Uh, greetings, esteemed priest –”

“Heretic! Get out! You're not coming closer, I have not forgotten!”(drunk monk)

I bolted out immediately when the monk started screamed drunken gibberish. He pulled up his green robes and tried to get his concealed carry out.

Same as in the game, this monk carried a loaded black powder revolver under his robes. The higher-level green monks and green nuns were problematic enemies because they had random weapons and items, but these solo missionaries always had just revolvers.

A common fan theory was that the Cult of the Green Mountain was actually Cult of the Rukhkh Mountain, but the ancient elders accidentally got the wrong mountain and were too deep in the lore to admit their error. Ain't that an interesting piece of Mu-Ur trivia during combat?

When I got to the front yard, the monk fired his revolver from the window and hit a wall ten meters away from me. Just like in the game, these monks had a really bad aim.

“Abbess knocks five times! The sound of the wooden gun commands you!”

“...Huh?” (drunk monk)

The monk stopped and looked profoundly unsettled and confused. Yes, chew on that flavor text while I climb over this gate and run away. I just shouted out deep secrets of your cult. Only another cultist that has entered the central temple at the Green Mountain should know about abbess and her wooden artifact. If you're a missionary, you've met the abbess of the Green Mountain and experienced the Strangers artifact known as Knocking Gun at least once.

It caused a lot of trouble in one of the anime episodes where a group of cultists was sent to the Inner School. Even if I were acting suspiciously right now, I must be in the inner circle to know high-level stuff like this. No need to shoot a fellow Green Mountain devotee, right?

Luckily my canon knowledge bluff worked. I didn't hear any gunshots when I ran away.

By the way, the in-universe reason for these monks stormtrooper-level marksmanship surely was the fact that they were all ritualistic drunkards. I guess your mind turned gloomy pretty quickly when you tried to spread the Green Mountain gospel alone in these war-ravaged gang lands.

So, I was stealing stale bread from lonely monks and drinking their ritual wine. This was truly the crapsack world of Mu-Ur Quincunx.

My cheat ability was the fact that I was a healthy guy with a habit of wearing my lucky sneakers while neurospeedrunning. It would have sucked to run around wearing only socks.

Well, my second cheat ability on top of good running shoes was my Canon Knowledge. I wasn't sure how accurate my knowledge was, but it seemed effective enough.

I watched the whole anime series only twice – first time when it came out and the second time when the game was published – but I recognized some landmarks already after walking around for a while. At least the basic geography was the same, and the secret food stashes were the same, so I had that going for me.

I was surely in one of the war-gang city ruins at the western coast of Ur continent. This area wasn't playable in the game, but you could see the ruins and the Slave Towers built by Strangers as backgrounds in the Black Forest level.

The area looked like an European city right after World War II, with some oriental influences added on top. There were buildings that had only one wall standing like a set piece for a theater play, rubble and trash on the streets, shacks and bonfires in the alleys.

Very few normal people lived here. Most had fled to other territories as the front lines of the long continental war pushed through.

The sky was constantly covered by a sheet of gray clouds. The air reeked of smoke and smog, which was completely different from the game. I mean, who would play a game that smelled bad? I should probably breathe through a wet cloth to avoid black lung.

There was no background music; just wind, distant clangs of metal, stray dogs barking somewhere, and occasional screams and gunshots. I hadn't put much thought to the music and sound effects when playing the game, but somehow the silence here was the creepiest thing.

I was playing the Black Forest area missions when I transmigrated here, so going out of bounds and ending at the coast kind of made sense in a weird way. It was a crappy place, but I guess it was a positive point that I didn't end up in the middle of The Desert of Rooms or inside the Winter Forest.

Definitely better than Fireland or any of the dungeon mines. Yep, I started from a relatively normal area at least.

Stay optimistic. Make a plan. Let's think of this development like a major update that fixes all bugs and explorun it.

First, the basic needs: water, food, clothes, shelter, Internet. The last, and the most important one, doesn't exist here, so I have to settle for the others.

Secondly, I need to find out exactly how similar this world is to the anime and game. If it's the same, I need to get to a safer area, or at least to an area I know.

Slave Towers, no?

In the anime, at least two of the side characters of The Revolution Movement lived in the Slave Towers before they moved to Black Forest and started their cliché anime school days in the Inside Out Facility aka Old School Manor.

This area looked eerily similar to the anime episode where those two side characters started their journey.

According to the backstory, the youth gangs here used the derelict Slave Towers as their home base and worked together to collect food and steal supplies from soldiers and slavers, or even from other gangs, but they had constant fights about leadership.

In the Strangers Era, the Slave Towers were basically vertical concentration camps built by overtechnology that resembled magic.

Right, enough hemming and hawing. Those side characters were orphan siblings Magic Word and Snowstone.

Their real names were never given in the story, just their street names. This was a common theme in the series; the writer insisted there was a deeper meaning to the names than just making them easy to remember to viewers, just as he claimed there was a deeper meaning to the face masks the children used, other than making the characters easier to draw and animate.

Well, the easily memorable naming scheme extended mainly to major characters and recurrent side characters. There were tons of needlessly complicated names for minor characters, villains and locations.

The orphan siblings joined the Revolution Movement when they were around 15 year olds, after one of the main characters started recruiting gang members to use them as cannon fodder.

Right, I should first check if the siblings are in the Slave Towers. I'd at least know for sure if the characters of the franchise live in this world, or if the story of the anime and game campaign is happening now, or is it even going to happen.

Because if the Slave Towers are the same, and the side characters are still there, and if they are still children or already teenagers with crack masks –

– I know what time it is.