Isekai Speedrun

With enough prep time, Batman can beat anyone.

But I’m not Batman and my time is limited.

When I first came to this world, I didn’t really understand it consciously, but every time the situation got serious, my body moved on its own. I could grab a gun and handle it like in a game, but only in a clutch when I didn’t think about it.

It took a while to get into the mindset that I have an advantage no one else in this world can attain: the difference in experience from dying ten thousand times. With all this xp, I should be that tryhard veteran comboing from one clipworthy trick-kill to another while checking the chat at the same time.

All I have to do is play like I used to and things works out. Trust the system and go for it, right?

Well, easier said than done. I can’t respawn here. One mistake and it’s game over.

Simulations and visualizations are not enough. To keep the pro edge, you need keep grinding.

Again, easier said than done. I’m a gamer, not a real-lifer.

Crys doesn’t understand my struggles. Crys has gained his xp without dying even once. He expects too much from me.

He thinks I’m going to get better at real life, but I feel like I’m just getting worse at the game.

This message brought to you by performance anxiety.

---

Go-time for Deep Basement was set for next morning after breakfast.

Steve informed me that he had delivered my message to the twins. Their response was that they would arrive to Starfish Mansion tonight.

While waiting, I went through my gear list multiple times. I spread everything on the floor like doing inventory management in the game.

- Revolvers and ammo for ranged damage. Check.
- Dagger for piercing damage and curved knife for slashing damage. Check.
- Firestarter sticks. Check.
- Card belt. Check.
- Waterskin, dried fruits, pemmican, dark bread. Check.
- Buff coat, fur coat and white camouflage cloak. Check.
- Warm blanket slash improvised sleeping bag. Check.
- Ear plugs. Check.
- Paper talismans. Check.
...

I’m trying to prepare for everything, but I can’t carry a whole warehouse. Winter gear only, leave summer shorts at home.

Preparation and planning, that’s what gets you through winter. Can’t survive without preserves.

This world doesn’t have changing global seasons, just zones of permanent seasons. In Winter Forest every day is winter, in Black Forest every day is fall. People here generally don’t need to look forward and prepare for environmental changes.

In wilderness areas, firearms are necessary equips for personal safety – just like face masks, earplugs and hi-viz vests are necessary equips for urban environments.

Speaking of safety, none of the Strangers vehicles have seat belts. I’ve been meaning to do something about that before someone gets killed in a road accident. Better to write safety regulations in ink before they are written in blood.

“Master, I will carry our food and supplies.” (T-Sub)
“Okay, use the Sultanate backpack. You’ve never been in negative Celsius areas with snow and ice before, right?”
“No, I have never walked on ice.” (T-Sub)
“Cold climate survival tip number one: multiple layers of clothing. Leave insulating air between layers. Tip number two: keep your waterskin under your clothes so that your body temperature keeps the drinking water liquid.”
“Master, are you taking the flagstaff?” (T-Sub)

I placed the Sultanate flagstaff on the floor with the equipment. I usually kept it under my bed so that no one would get any weird ideas.

For the people of this world, it was just a three-meter long metallic flagstaff decorated with garish carvings, but in the game it was the most powerful accidentally discovered cheat weapon. I had replaced the red Sultanate flag with Revolution Movement’s bluebird V flag for obvious reasons, but I still kept the original Sultanate flag rolled in my backpack as well – just in case I have to burn a flag.

“Lucky charm or totem for the road. A wizard’s staff. Since we’re going to the teleport trap room, I might as well try something freaky. Just to be absolutely sure it doesn’t work.”
“Yes, I look forward to it!” (T-Sub)
“At least one person is still excited about experiments after thousand failures...”

The trick with Sultanate flagstaff was based on the fact that spawn points and teleportation circles had a very specific boundary: an inside radius with a significant game-mechanical effect and an outside without an effect.

If you left an item partially outside the effect radius, there was basically four options: either the whole item was spawned/teleported with you, or the whole item was left behind, or the item was cut in half, or the spawn/teleportation was canceled.

The two last options were obviously bad game design, so those generally didn’t happen. The second option happened a lot in the early days because the devs didn’t want players to respawn with certain long or large items, but it was patched and changed after players complained that they kept losing items like pikes when they were holding them horizontally. After the patch, only the first option happened – well, mostly.

Sultanate flagstaff was a glitchy item even before the patch, but after the hastily implement patch, the Infinite Flagstaffs glitch was discovered. If you had an unnaturally sturdy long item that was incorrectly categorized (a three-meter long Sultanate flagstaff made out of Strangers metal) and you lighted a flag attached to the staff on fire, and then tried to insert the burning flagstaff into your inventory bag during death-respawn animation (accidentally or deliberately) while keeping part of the staff outside the circle, the game lost its marbles.

The graphic showed only one glitched flagstaff (miniature), but when you took it out of inventory, the flag was burning and the flagstaff (miniature) in the bag didn’t disappear. And since taking the flagstaff out was practically instantaneous, you could launch the flagstaff from your bag like a three-meter long blunt ejector knife.

And that was just the best out of three possible glitches.

Overpowered effects aside, this world didn’t have spawn points (as far as I knew), but if the teleportation circle in Deep Basement actually works the same way it worked in the game, I can test the flagstaff glitch using the perimeter of the magitech ring.

What happens to the flagstaff in this world? Does it teleport completely, or only half of it, or none of it, of is the teleportation canceled? I don’t have an inventory bag in this world so there’s no way to trigger any inventory-based glitches, but I want to test the circle.

I’m grasping straws again. The game system logic of teleportation is probably completely different from the magical teleportation system of this world.

But gamers gotta game.

If this doesn’t work, maybe I’ll finally stop trying and concede that only glitchless runs are allowed in this wretched world of scum and villainy.

...Even if I say that, I’ll probably keep trying something for the rest of my life.

Glitch happened once, it can happen twice.

Now, is there anything else I need to bring with me? Explosives, maybe?

---

I racewalked back to Crys’ office. The door was ajar, so I entered without knocking.

Crys and Kimono were eating sandwiches. For a short moment, they looked like startled vultures feasting on a fresh carcass.

“Sorry for the sudden disturbance. Me and T-Sub were thinking that we should take a stick of dynamite from the emergency cache, one for each. This mission counts as an emergency, right?”
“No.” (Crys)
“No?”

Crys looked at me like I had asked something absolutely stupid just now.

“The twins are with you.” (Crys)
“...The twins are my dynamite?”
“Don’t throw a knife at feral child’s feet. They’ll pick it up to cut you.” (Crys)
“Okay. Fine, no dynamite then. Again, sorry for disturbing your meal.”

I guess attaching chainsaws to tigers might become a workplace hazard.

Back to backpack packing.

---

Krajannar Reavertooth and Bochicoirn Ivorythief, the twin brothers from Fireland, were my favorite playable characters in the game, but not in the top ten of of individuals I’d like to hang out with on my free time. Never meet your idols, as the saying goes. Even if your favorite characters in fiction are outlaws, pirates and criminals, you shouldn’t idolize criminals in reality.

Later in the evening, the twins arrived in the Starfish Mansion. I was waiting in the main hallway with T-Sub.

They hadn’t changed much since our first meeting. They wore their signature Caliphate highwayman gear and same half-masks as before. Kraj covered his eyes with Zorro-like domino mask and Bodhi covered his mouth with a kerchief like a train robber.

At least they had learned to leave their outside boots and cloaks in the foyer. The first few times they came here they just walked around dripping water and leaving muddy footprints on the floor.

“Bodhi and Kraj. Welcome back.”
“Good fortune to you, shaman master.” (Reavertooth)
“We are here.” (Ivorythief)

The twins had briefly visited the Starfish Mansion around ten times during the last two years, but never stayed a night. They were around seventeen years old at this point; lean, mean, young athletes in peak condition.

“Thanks for accepting the invitation. You can sleep in the living room. Hunt for great prey will begin tomorrow morning.”
“We accept and take part.” (Reavertooth)
“We take part.” (Ivorythief)

The twins already knew T-Sub, but I briefly introduced the newbie Pikatrate guardsmen who hadn’t seen the twins in the mansion before.

The guards took a knee and declared their continuing loyalty for the High Lords of the Hallways.

After that nonsense, I took the twins straight to the map room before they could see anyone else. Allowing them to roam freely in the mansion might lead to problems – they might interact with the Pikatrate handmaidens and their chaperones, for example.

For a moment, I considered asking the twins how their wives were doing in the Spyglass Tower, but refrained. I don’t want to pry into their domestic lives because I’m afraid that their answers would be something horribly misogynist and disappointing. Their high wanted-levels and reputation as high status members of the Revolution Movement were attractive traits to many local women, so they quickly found wives from nearby villages. Please treat them well and don’t act like villains, okay?

“Did you find lokhagi Kailaritai and his men, by the way?”
“All dead. Weak prey.” (Ivorythief)
“Good, well done. Every dead enemy helps the tribe, weaklings or not.”

I’m fully aware that I’m compartmentalizing their unsavory activities because they are too valuable as allies and too dangerous as enemies. Raw geopolitical considerations.

---

“Have a seat, gentlemen, and take a look at the map. I will now explain the details of our hunting trip.”

As expected, the twins didn’t use chairs but perched on top of empty water barrels like crows. I ordered these barrels to be prepared in the map room specifically due to their Slav squat habits.

T-Sub stood silently next to me. Usually he asked lot of questions, but not when the twins were around. He focused on their movements like a laser beam.

“Thiefmaster is our main prey again, but this time we are pretty confident about this whereabouts. You’ve seen his wanted posters, but I’ll draw you some new variations. He might disguise himself as a Staff Tribe member, for example.”

I tore out a page from my notebook, dipped calligraphy pen in the ink bottle and started drawing simple pictures.

“Let me reiterate the main point when hunting Thiefmaster: don’t use your Serval Pounce skill against him. Don’t turn a ranged attack into a melee attack. Or in even simpler words, don’t shoot first and then suddenly jump forward to stab, because that’s how Thiefmaster can use his magic eyes against you and gain an upper hand. If you don’t remember anything else, remember this one point and you have the advantage.”
“We cannot eat Thiefmaster’s eyes?” (Ivorythief)
“Yeah, that’s a nope. Don’t try to eat his eyes before he’s dead.”

Thiefmaster’s eyes were the source of his hypnosis skill. Avoiding getting close and meeting his gaze was the most basic strat.

“Green woman.” (Reavertooth)
“Yeah, the Green Witch aka Stick Witch is there in the Winter Forest as well. Around these map squares here. But we’re not going to hunt her this time, not actively at least. She’s not a required enemy.”

The twins looked disappointed. You wanted to hunt Stick Witch so much? Aww.

“Well, Stick Witch moves around a lot, so we might be forced to fight if she appears. So, just in case, let me explain the best strats against her... You know, now that I think about it, Stick Witch might mistakenly believe the disguised Thiefmaster is a member of Staff Tribe and support her. I don’t know how Stick Witch recognizes tribesmen from each other, so the worst case scenario could be a dual boss fight.”

The words coming out of my mouth immediately felt like a new death flag. There’s an actual small chance of double vs double happening; ranged boss battle on one side, melee boss battle on the other side.

“We hunt both.” (Reavertooth)
“Let’s do one white whale at a time, okay? We don’t want to split our forces, four versus one is the easiest and fastest solution. Thiefmaster is the main prey, Stickly Witch secondary.”
“When you shoot them, they stop moving.” (Reavertooth)
“Keen observation, Kraj. A very good rule of thumb.”

These two think Thiefmaster is easy prey because they haven’t encountered his skills in this timeline. Their mental image of Thiefmaster right now is a “coward who avoids battles”. And they don’t have any personal grudge against him because I prevented the whole brainwashing arc from happening.

I should remember that I can’t project emotional baggage from the original timeline. In the anime, Ivorythief was betrayed and poisoned by Thiefmaster during the castle invasion two-parter and then brainwashed during a follow-up one-shot bottle episode episode called Gentes on season four. Bodhi was basically forced to learn a new identity as “Brother Fairy Whiteness” and become part of prison-master’s freaky family cult.

During the brainwashing, another form of “slave therapy” was also described by one of the guards: a procedure where depression was treated with slavery training (“a slave with a purpose is happier than a freeman without”, said the guard). And then there was the third cult ritual of Dervish-like hypnotic spinning and jumping, which sounded similar to both Thiefmaster’s hypnosis skill and the hypnotic suggestions of the Knocking Gun.

Making the conceptual connection of “fellow hypnosis users” between the family prison cult, Thiefmaster and Cult of the Green Mountain was left to the player. No matter which area boss you cleared first, you could follow the clues to the other two hypnosis boss areas.

Thiefmaster aside, the twins had encountered Stick Witch’s mystical powers first hand in this timeline too. They didn’t know how to fight against a half-incorporeal enemy and had to ran away.

That’s why hunting Stick Witch excites them more.

Fine then. I guess it’s time to teach them how to fight against half-ghost apparitions in general.

By the way, Stick Witch and Green Witch are both lore-accurate names.

“Stick Witch is basically a dryad-like magical apparition. Dryad is like a tree spirit, but that’s not important info on her character sheet. As you know, she looks like a tall albino woman wearing tattered, half-transparent green tunic and carries a long straight stick called Sparkling Staff, or Red Staff as Kurdt likes to call it. It’s a redwood staff with a red pennant at the top. She – or it, or whatever pronoun you want to use – is a tricky prey because she can turn herself partially intangible. But there are multiple ways to even the odds, if you can recognize which parts of her are phasing out and which are not.”

I took out the paper talismans I had made beforehand.

“The first and foremost secret of deceiving apparitions, pretty much any half-ghost that haunts Winter Forest and No-Lands, is this: apparitions tend to take everything literally. The apparitions that are smart enough to read ancient symbols are also stupid enough to think that words and things are the same thing. In their half-ghost minds, they think that a symbol that represents a physical item is a physical item in itself; a painting of a pipe is an actual pipe you can smoke. So if you write ‘eye’ on a piece of paper using ancient logograms from the era before Strangers and stick the paper to your forehead, covering your real eyes, they see you as a fellow apparition with one big eye in the middle your forehead. You just need to make sure you don’t look at the apparition directly with your real eyes or the illusion breaks. Are you following so far?”
“Paper is trap.” (Reavertooth)
“Yep. But if you write, for example, ‘dead’ on a piece of paper and put that over your face, they might see you as a moving corpse for a while – as long as you don’t speak or breathe or do anything living people do, which is obviously kind of hard, right? So you don’t want to write things that are difficult to imitate. It’s always a bet with these apparitions, but it doesn’t cost much to make a paper slip, so you can always start with that bet. If the talisman is readable enough, and the apparition is just stupid-smart enough, and the winds are favorable, you can get the first move in a fight. So, in brief: paper slip talismans with moonrunes are a camouflage you can use to lure non-aggroed Stick Witch into a trap. If you get lucky and it works, you can deal good amount of damage to the parts that hasn’t turned intangible. Obviously you need to avoid her elemental magic–”
“Strange paper is trap. You write trap talisman?” (Ivoryteeth)
“Yes, I’ll draw the protective talismans for everyone.”

Reavertooth and Ivorythief glanced at each other and nodded.

“We accept. Hunt together.” (Reavertooth)
“Green eyes.” (Ivorythief)
“Yeah, Green Witch has green eyes. But don’t get too excited, she probably doesn’t drop any loot and her corpse despawns. You probably can’t eat her eyes either. Both prey this time have somewhat inedible eyes.”
“We eat if stare us when dead.” (Ivorythief)
“...Ee, sure.”

Two years in and the twins still haven’t bothered to master the common language. They listen fluently, but don’t care to speak or write normally. Learning any skills beyond ones related to hunting is not a priority for them. Hunting and women, that’s what they’re interested in; they believe in running, climbing, swimming, sneaking, vaulting, fighting, trapping and expanding their tribe with new members. If I frame the topic in a way that relates to these things, they listen.

“Okay, let’s talk about tracking Stick Witch. Finding out the places where Stick Witch has been is quite easy: look for areas where snow has melted and icicles have dropped from trees. If you see a large sunken concave, like a bowl of ice and snow, Stick Witch has probably stood there. If she stands in the same place for a long time, you eventually see the muddy ground beneath the snow. And if she stays in the same area even longer, the place turns green and flowers grow. This is the reason why Staff Tribe worships and follows her, she’s like their fertility goddess or tutelary deity. When she moves away, everything starts freezing again and new snow falls.“

Before I knew it, I had spoken in great detail about of how to avoid Stick Witch’s elemental magic, how to see the patterns in her intangibility, how to keep her from running away when she takes too much damage, and how to deal with Staff Tribe warriors when she summons them.

“She has six basic attack patterns and she– or let’s call it it. It uses these patterns semi-randomly and the problem is that it’s kind of hard to tell which pattern is coming from any cues because it can change form instantly and slide around without any leg animation – or at least that’s how it used to move; I’m not sure if that animation gap holds here. Anyway, don’t be surprised if it rubberbands around without moving its legs and then attacks without any windup or preparation. It can levitate slightly above the surface of the snow layer, so we are at disadvantage in deep, soft snow. We want to keep it in an area where we have solid footholds: fallen trees, packed ice. In your case, you want to stay at melee distance, bullets rarely wound it. Where was I? Yes, the six attack patterns–”

I was teaching my favorite characters and they were attentive listeners.

“...That’s about all the basic attack vectors. Should we take a break?”
“Tell more Stick Witch.” (Ivorythief)
“Okay, let’s go ahead and talk about advanced strats. First, stunlock blocks, and what’s the difference between magic cancel and magic interrupt. And you should also know the backup strats in case you fumble–”

I got too excited and kept talking game deep into the night.