Isekai Speedrun

I think it was summer season when the anime series Mu-Ur Quincunx came out in Japan.

It was an original story set in a post-apocalyptic, pseudo-byzantine dark fantasy world where mysterious aliens called Strangers killed half the human population and turned the other half into dungeon slaves.But then the Strangers disappeared from the world as mysteriously as they had appeared, leaving only burned cities, black deserts and eviscerated dungeon mines behind.

The main story of the anime started about hundred years after the disappearance of Strangers, following a ragtag group of revolutionaries that tried to overthrow the new human dictators, who immediately continued the great oppression started by Strangers, treating their fellow men with the same cruelty as the mysterious beings before them.And the revolutionaries themselves weren't exactly good guys either.

The anime became quite a hit for a while, and 60 episodes (five 12-episode seasons) were made in total, but despite the initial excitement about the large cast of characters with grayscale morality and tragic backstories, the viewers were ultimately turned off by the story becoming more and more heavy in its unnecessary grimdark edginess as it went on, and the weak final seasons ultimately ended the story in a pointless and unsatisfying tragedy, leaving several plotlines and sidestories hanging without resolve.

There was so much rage and disappointment after the final episode that the director made a public apology, mainly blaming himself for crumbling under stress and pushing through with filler episodes that mirrored his own personal problems.

The main writer and showrunner of the series, however, didn't apologize. Instead, he wrote a long open letter about how ”otakus are too stupid understand highly artistic visions”, how “my dreams told me to stay true to my dreams”, how ”happy endings are power fantasies for losers”, how ”the heroes should be as bad as the villains” and how ”showing the pointlessness of life is the whole point”.

Of course, the anime community made fun of the showrunners angsty letter for months.

Eventually both critics and fans came to a consensus that the series was a failed experiment that could have been great if it had been done right, and the series would be mostly remembered for the inspired choices of western rock music in certain elaborately choreographed action sequences that were included in every episode.

It also became common viewing advice for the series to watch the first two seasons and then some individual episodes from seasons three and four, and call it quits without streaming the fifth season.

A few years later they made a virtual reality neurogame version called simply Mu-Ur Quincunx: The Game.

The game flopped hard. It wasn't that bad, just thoroughly mediocre product in an already saturated neurogaming market, and the promised multiplayer mode was never even put on the design document.

Unsurprisingly, it was a vanity project started by the original showrunner. He tricked a reputable company into publishing it with empty promises and shady backroom deals. In the end, the company went under and the writer went to prison. There was a whole bunch of ”I suffered for my art, now it's your turn” image macros, portraying the writer sitting alone in a cell.

Despite being one of the most painfully mediocre virtual reality games ever made, it managed to gain a small cult following in speedrunning community because of its weird and funny exploits. For example, you could backwards collide with enemies to gain speed and bounce around like a billiard ball, crawl inside floors to bypass doors, wavetrigger enemies out of their vehicles, spawn infinite flagpoles and multiwield them as a single one-hit kill weapon, and so on.

In a virtual reality neurogame, where every input tricked your biological senses, these bugs were extremely hilarious, especially for speedrun livestreaming followers.

In my personal opinion, both the anime and the game were okay. They both told the same story, and locations and story arcs were turned into levels and missions practically one to one – except that one short epilogue bonus level that featured new content.

I, Qwerty Uozewe, was the untied world record holder of Mu-Ur Quincunx speedrunning in the full campaign any-percent category with unprecedented sub eight hour time 07:55:22.

Any-percent was pretty much the only popular category for full campaign runs because 100% runs in Mu-Ur were practically impossible. Even if you performed all known skips perfectly, the hard constraints of the game didn't allow more than 90% completion because some missions and events cancelled each other out – at least according to someone who did the math. The 100% run dream still lived, of course, but the game wasn't popular enough for serious attempts.

You could play as one of the seven main characters (except Sorry Man, who was basically a spectator mode) and each of them had different special abilities and quirks. I played almost exclusively as Ivorythief because of his special skill Feather Step that made double jumping a lot faster way to move around than running. His brother Reavertooth had the special skill Stealth Step that was faster on heavy RNG (Random Number Generator) levels, but unfortunately you couldn't change characters mid-game and the current meta was on the side that Ivorythief was faster overall.

Both characters also had secondary skills called Adrenaline Time that chopped time into segments and slowed some of those segments randomly during battle (which you obviously didn't want to use much in externally timed runs) and Serval Pounce skill that you could exploit and gain extra speed from enemies by changing ranged attacks into melee attacks with targeting.

In short, the twins were parkour ninjas with handguns. Rainwoman was my favorite character for casual play, but for speedrunning, it was Ivorythief or Reavertooth all the way.

Anyway, one day when I was livestreaming and trying to beat my own any% speedrun record again, I suddenly transmigrated into the world of Mu-Ur Quincunx.

Don't ask me how it happened. I'd like to know myself.

I tried to get an inconsistent glitch in the Black Forest level, where you can clip through a wall instead of using the door, and save about three seconds.

Maybe I somehow broke reality using the crappy game system, and universe decided to self-correct this once-in-an-eternity glitch by throwing me out of reality.

This was an overused trope in Japanese light novels, but I didn't meet gods or goddesses (I don't believe in such things in the first place), I wasn't summoned as a hero (I was alone in a half-collapsed building) and I didn't have any cheat abilities or cheat gear either (I was wearing my casual home clothes). I just blinked –

…In the Black Forest, in the hidden mansion, in the kitchen, character drops an empty revolver on the floor. He stares at the side door, steps forward, then backwards, then forwards again, stomping the floor like practicing a strange tribal dance. He turns around, his back facing the door, and continues to take fast steps backwards and forwards until he suddenly disappears through the door like being sucked inside it...

– and here I was, in the Mu-Ur world.

Of course, I considered the possibility that I had simply gone insane, this was all just a hallucination and I was actually staring a wall in a mental hospital now. Or maybe I fell to coma and this was a very realistic dream. It was also a possibility that I had died in the real world instead of just disappearing.

Well, I was 25-year old unemployed art school dropout and my only hobby was neurogame speedrunning, so I had no life to begin with. What doesn't live cannot die, no?

Whatever happened, my livestream viewers were probably freaking out.

But what if I was just copy-pasted here as a doppelganger and the original me kept playing in the real world like nothing happened? That was certainly a possibility as well.

I touched my neck and it was smooth like that of a non-gamer. I tried to force a logout by pulling the non-existent neural link from my neck and nothing happened. I couldn't even feel the neurolink socket cover. How was the neuroware taken out of my skull, did it just disappear during transition? Was my whole body reconstructed on the fly? I might really be a duplicate item glitch.

Speaking of glitches, this world definitely wasn't the game. There was no menu or inventory. None of the glitches worked. I tried, obviously.

I probably looked like a madman when I tried to wallrun and clipcrawl in the small, abandoned three-storey building I first found myself in. The glitches I tried didn't have a real chance of killing me, so I felt it was safe to try. No way I would try a glitch like Squeezy Launch where you can end up hundreds of meters in the air and die from fall damage, if you don't have a glider kite.

This world had weeded out all the exploits. You know, like reality.

Nothing is real, everything is permitted; walls are just suggestions, laws are just settings; death is temporary, damage is an illusion; rules are meant to be broken, errors exist to be exploited; do what thou wilt, all can be rebuilt...

Yeah, Gamer's Orison didn't work here.

Never mind the freedom of the game world, this wasn't the anime series version of Mu-Ur either. The homeless people in the alley behind the house looked and smelled real. There was none of that 2D anime world purity and elegance.

I was convinced about the weight of the situation when they tried to attack me immediately after noticing my presence.

“Whadda you looking at?! Come here!” (homeless guy)

“Sorry, I'm just in a bit of a hurry...”

“Come here now!” (homeless guy)

I tried to avoid triggering random dialogue by sneaking next to the wall. It was a habit from the game, don't judge me. I'm not a shut-in NEET or anything, I just don't like speaking to people who use burning trash in a barrel as their central heating solution.

“Come down here! Stop! Give up your krúricks!” (homeless guy)

Crap, horde incoming! Abort mission! Disengage! Cancel cutscene! Split split split! De-escalation! Greater Cancellation: Nope!

The sensory data got too realistic fast, but I managed to escape through the rubble. They were shoeless, weak and malnourished, and probably drug addicts and mentally ill as well, so it wasn't too hard actually. You have no chance in a footrace against a true speedrunner! I've timed and optimized my shopping routes in the local grocery store aisles, you know.

Long story short, it took a while to accept this absurd situation, but it was clear that I had to roll with it.

I sat in a daze, hiding from my pursuers, waiting this persistent lucid dream to end. My cell phone had zero bars, no harisen and 22% battery left. I turned it off for now.

I wish I could turn to spectator mode and take a look around without fear of getting assaulted. Give me an intro to this area or something at least! I could hear my anonymous foes spew insults and curses at me, and suddenly realized they were speaking English, not Japanese.

Why? I could even read the throw-up tags painted on the building walls. They were written in localized gang slang instead of archaic kanji as in the original game. Strange, but convenient.

I was actually accustomed to playing the game in Japanese because it was timed to be few minutes faster than any translated version, but English was OK too.

I felt thirsty. Without even thinking, I got up to find a rainwater barrel, just like in the game when you started to lose health when your character didn't drink or eat regularly.

The water tasted like mud, but there was no bottled water or drinking fountains here. Yeah, this must be a real world; a game where you have eat mud-tasting mud wouldn't pass product safety tests.

After taking some more distance from the aggroed hobo-zombies, I looked for something longer than my arm to use as a weapon. The best I could find was a short wooden stick. Standard starter equipment, I guess. I also collected some sharp-edged rocks in my pockets just in case.

Now I'll just find the local adventurer's guild and start leveling up as a manga harem protagonist, hahaha!

Yeah, right. There's nothing like that in Mu-Ur.

I have to play in ultra-hard mode, is that it? Beat every enemy on first try or you're dead. Only one life, no weapons, no health packs, no save points, no menu, no heads-up display, no item glow, no system messages, no zooming, no third-person view, no resting recovery, no doublejumps, no wallruns, no slidehops – just hidden values, inconvenient bodily functions and bad hygiene.

I'm accustomed to running underpowered and with minimum achievements both in games and in real life, but my normal damage boost approach is worse than useless here.

Reality is a crappy game, but parallel reality is crappy to the max.