Isekai Speedrun

One of the oldest tricks in psychological horror genre was the idea that by observing something you made it more real. You don’t want to look under the bed because the act of looking creates the monster. You don’t want to repeat forbidden words in front of a mirror because the self-created ritual creates the monster that appears behind you. And if you watch a movie where characters can summon real monsters simply by observing fictional images of monsters, the implication is that the very act of watching that movie helps in summoning those monsters in actual reality as well, which automatically makes the horror scarier.

Or if you glitch through the walls of a game world, that very act of glitching weakens the walls of reality. Or if you step on a picture of your religious idol or burn a national flag, the protective magic bubble around you breaks with the symbol. Or if you spit on the painting of a person, the person itself is hurt.

The apparition magic in Mu-Ur Quincunx is built on that premise, as explained in the fanwiki. If a picture is realistic enough, it becomes real; if the appearance of a magic ritual is believable enough, it triggers real magic.

I came to this world via neurogame with realistic graphics and I'm somewhat normal human. Sorry Man came to this world via motionless painting as an invincible apparition. We are both something different from everyone else in this world.

We are the other-dimensional summoned monsters – the fragmentary apparitions side-created via the magical ritual of creating a simulacrum of this world. We are the observers that have became the observed.

So don’t fail me now, stupid handwavy magic lore! Force a split where this observer lives.

---

So anyway, I died.

No. I’m still alive. Am I?

The Sparkling Source above me closed itself like an iris diaphragm. But these were not the normal color effects or shapes of the closing Source. Sparkling Source had two closing animations: the normal one, which meant that it would open again after a set time, and the final one triggered by Sparkling Staff, which meant that it closed permanently.

Tempclose or permaclose? This was something different. Definitely different.

By the way, Kraj and Bodhi, you can drop in anytime to save me.

Anytime is fine.

…

So am I burning to death or not? No, feels like it's not that.

When they threw in the first oil ball, I managed to swat it with the flagstaff like a boss. Most of the burning oil spilled outside the sarcophagus in front of the shamans, but I got the flag on fire.

Then I naturally followed the movement by shoving the flagstaff in the Sparkling Source. And then the Sparkling Source immediately closed.

No echoing sounds or rainbow sparkles like I expected.

It wasn’t the final disappearance animation when you throw in Stick Witch’s Sparkling Staff. It wasn’t the normal closing animation after a scheduled human sacrifice either.

Glitched closure.

The burning flag had disappeared, but the staff was still in one two-meter piece. The portal didn’t chop it like the teleportation circle.

World system routed around the paradox?

I remembered an old experimental video series where Sorry Man was forced inside the Sparkling Source. It turned out that indestructible and inconvertible are not the same thing: in the game version of Warehouse of Everything, Sorry Man was converted into different data format. He was still indestructible without his hitboxes, but he turned into something the video creators dubbed “Skinless Man” – a new apparition trapped in a pocket dimension.

In the second video of the series, they manipulated the code and managed to pull Skinless Man back to the main Mu-Ur world. This new apparition was a textureless humanoid strolling aimlessly around the frozen lake. It was like the old Sorry Man without attractors and skin.

Based on that, the video creators speculated (in an overly dramatic clickbait fashion, of course) that all apparitions in the Winter Forest, lore-wise, came from the asset warehouse of Sparkling Source one way or another. And to take the speculation further, Warehouse of Everything was like a bottomless item box full of everything: non-living things, living things, even absurd and contradictory concepts like ‘color of love’ or ‘truth-shaped non-idea’. If it’s really ‘warehouse of everything’, it should include literally everything.

The third experiment video was created to see what happens if Sorry Man or Skinless Man gets stuck in the middle of the Sparkling Source: uncuttable object meets all-cutting blade. In both experiments, hitbox invincibility won – Source couldn’t close itself, which lead to an overflow of Skinless Man variations spawning out and eventually crashing the game.

But that all happened in the game Mu-Ur. Not in this Mu-Ur.

Don’t get distracted now, Qwerty.

This improvised Hit-S glitch seems to have actually worked, somehow. And instead of crashing the system or cutting the flagstaff, I was still holding the complete two-meter flagstaff in my left hand (but without a burning flag) and Sparkling Source closed properly (but with abnormal effects).

The non-game Mu-Ur retreated in front of my skillz.

The world routed around the paradox as naturally as it breathed.

...Yep. Completely meant to do that.

Kurdt, are you watching my success in your dreams? Did this Chosen Champion make you proud?

Have I uncursed myself? What time is it?

Like a vampire from a coffin, I sat up and tested out the game commands to be sure.

“Status Open. Inventory Open. Main Menu Open.”

Nothing. I wasn’t back in the game confirmed.

“Blub blub blub blub, circle circle, recover password. A11y, repeat last dialogue.”

Action. Shake, shake.

Movement speed confirmed: real life. Quadruple-confirmed: I wasn’t in the game.

I stood up.

I was standing in the altar concave, but there were no flames. I was holding the flagless flagstaff in my left hand.

The shamans and tribe members stared at me in total disbelief.

I wasn’t sure what to do or say. Sometimes even I get surprised speechless.

“Ta-dah...?”

The shamans around the altar didn’t react. They looked like they had turned into statues with their mouths wide open.

Yeah, I can relate.

“...Is there something on my face? Is this a lucid dream? Somebody pinch my cheek.”

I patted my body with my right hand. Umu, all relevant appendages were still attached, but I was covered in blood and soot. My clothes looked like they had burned, but I felt completely fine.

In fact, I had never felt better. All the pain and confusion I had felt just moments ago was gone.

“So... That happened. Please clap.”

When I said that, the shamans suddenly snapped out of their frozen state and started shouting wild curses.

One of the warriors loosened an arrow at my throat – and before I could flinch, the arrow bounced off my bare skin. It felt like a small twig had scratched me.

I touched my throat and felt my laryngeal prominence. There was no wound. Defense stat overmax.

I pointed my staff at the archer.

“Go ahead, punk. Try to appleshot me again. Make my day.”

The warriors with spears were too shocked to step closer, but archers shot more arrows.

I could feel the arrows hitting me, but they didn’t penetrate my skin or the clothes under my burned outerwear. They simply scraped burned tatters off of me like removing dust from a computer keyboard with blasts of compressed air.

“Well, well, well. This ain’t your daddy’s vanilla Mu-Ur anymore...”

---

Come on now, for real? This was the quackin’ glitch mode unlock trigger the whole time?

If I’d known this in the beginning, I wouldn’t have avoided this silly place. I would’ve routed completely differently from the start.

Sparkling Source, you two-dimensional slut. You don’t even care what type of stick is shoved inside, do you? You just want to keep giving birth to apparitions from your bottomless pyramid.

So all it takes to trigger a glitch in this world is to become a low-health blood sacrifice during a magic ritual and insert a Sultanate flagstaff with a burning flag in the Sparkling Source. Elementary! Surely every player knows how to combine all these random elements the right way. Just point-and-click this random pixel while holding this particular item and everything works out. Obvious route is obvious.

Ceremonial altar – check. Blood sacrifice – check. Stars must be right – check.

It’s not enough to paint a picture in your mind, you need a correct medium in the Real-Mu – check.

Magic item, correct timing, purifying fire; true will and understanding; something given by a loved one, something stolen by a thief; a silver krúrick for the ferryman, a bruise turning deep blue. Correct magical ingredients thrown into a magical cauldron at the correct time.

Perfect setup.

Totally understandable. Totally meant to do that. Nothing special. Works every time.

Once again, I gave my best performance when fighting for my life in a desperate situation.

A fake magic stick in a fake inventory bag... But for an apparition, a picture of a pipe is a pipe; a cargo cult can call a plane to land; a talisman is what it represents; the appearance of a thing is the thing – motto of the Potemkin Party. Hyperstition gives birth to reality through superstition.

But as a person from a reality where magic simply cannot exist, there’s this feeling of –

“Ehh, come on bro, really?”

– when irrational magical ritual saves the day.

Was this magitech created by Strangers or did it exist before them? Rather than security through obscurity, Strangers architectured the world system to unlock magitech effects through obfuscated rituals?

Maybe Strangers were fans of those esoteric chaos wizards and elphyne witches of old Europe who had the bright idea that the rarer the material, or the rarer the verbal and somatic components of a magic ritual, the stronger the effects – which is why they performed strange dances in remote places while cursing and singing in weird languages and holding unknown objects from all over the world, and eventually moved to taboo skyclad sex rituals and heart-eating human sacrifices – because obviously if the weird rituals didn’t work, you just weren’t weird enough. You had to double down on depravity to get the spirit-senpais to notice you.

Strangers – those crazy magic-earthers – who took all the kookiest ideas of fascist conspiracy cultists and remade the whole world into their image by force-accelerating their lies into truths with ultra-technology... And this was the end result: edgy, grimdark cryptofantasy metaworld full of glitch pockets that eventually collapsed into a paradoxical imbroglio because they couldn’t keep their damn stories straight.

Well, if you want to create fiction that looks detailed enough to be reality in itself, you need to know exactly how reality works, or you just get a scarecrow simulation with hidden holes.

Not inconsistent or far-fetched at all. Easy setup, easy explanation. This is my new headcanon.

Or maybe the world was full of magical plot holes from the start and Strangers just learned how to exploit them systematically. Maybe the colonization and destruction of this world, including the enslavement of all its inhabitants, was just a material component in some crazy blood ritual on a galactic scale. Maybe the whole world then glitched and unloaded Strangers as character archetypes altogether, erasing them from human history and memory.

Humans in this world roughly remembered what the mythical beasts called house cats were and how they looked, but no one remembered Strangers – their visage simply didn’t exist anymore.

Anyway, I finally triggered a glitch. My hard work has paid of.

Got it first try.

I’ll take it.

It finally feels like something in this stupid world makes sense. After scratching million lottery tickets upside down with my lucky 5-yen coin, I’ve finally hit the jackpot.

Praise the Random Number Gods, I might be able to finally turn this grimdark into hopepunk.

I wonder what type of crazy ceremony setup is needed to go out of bounds...

...No, this is not the time to start speculations about weird cosmologies, Qwerty.

You’re still standing in the altar recess like a jack-in-the-box. Move your feet.

---

I snapped out of my esoteric meditation when the shamans started screaming and violently waved their ritual staffs.

Collect yourself, Qwerty-boy, you’re not 100% indestructible. Time to slip out of this silly place. Check the dentures of this glitch horse later.

More arrows were shot, and some of the tribesmen threw bones and rocks. I felt like getting hit by soft tennis balls; the velocity of objects got canceled by my glitched avatar.

Projectiles couldn’t deal any meaningful damage. The bone fragments in my pockets were probably tanking most of it.

Right. Worst choke point cleared. I’m mostly immune to damage as long as I hold the flagstaff?

Let’s keep holding the staff.

“Hey, skidoo gang. That gum you like is coming back in style. And this time it possesses properties of both rubber and gum.”

Their projectile attacks just kept bouncing when they touched my glitched body. What an unreal yet familiar feeling.

“Welcome to my world, casuals. I’m the Stick King now.”

Should I tell them that I’m their god?

No, don't get too cocky now, Qwerty. You're a pro, act like a pro. Working glitch is still a new discovery.

...Sorry. I can’t help it.

New Title: Extreme Legend Senior! The Bumbling Flower-Like Struggles of a Certain Virtuous Peerless Ph*ntom!

Alternative Title: Extreme SSS-Class Star Pupil Dungeon Duchess! I Suddenly Became a Senior Legendary Hero & Glitched Into Another World That Was Almost Like The Game & Also Obviously Became a Harem Genius CEO Talent & Got Sacrificed In Unbelievable Ritual & Glitched Again, Wowow~ I’m A Merchant Farmer!

I stepped on top of the altar edging and raised the flagstaff over my head like a raider.

“Welcome, gals and gyarus, it’s another beautiful winter night! Qwerty Uozewe coming at you live from the world of Mu-Ur! Yes, it’s time to speedrun some Quincy any-percent! We have some new faces from the Source Tribe raiding today, absolutely fantastic! Thanks for the arrows and snowballs, you’re the best community, so nice to have you guys on board! Spam ‘blasphemy’ in the chat, if you haven’t already!“

Yes. This is how it should be. This is just right.

I jumped down from the altar.

“But first I’d like to talk about my new sponsor, the Revolution Movement! They are definitely the most elite armed group of rebels on this side of the continent. Honestly, I would be part of this recalcitrant – that’s the word of the day, folks! – movement even if they weren’t my sponsors. They deliver fantastic service every time, so I think you guys should become part of Revolution Movement. Go visit their site for a warm welcome using this code and start your free trial and subscribe to their excellent newsletter to get the latest buzz on the streets right in your neck hole. Okay? Okay, the first thing we’re gonna do tonight is walk over here and kill this dude...”

I walked casually towards the nearest shaman. The shaman tried to back down, but fell down on his backside in confusion. I held my flagstaff with both hands and stabbed the shaman in the throat with the dull end – well, both ends of the staff were dull, though.

“This guy is banned... for being off-topic. So, the next thing we’re gonna do is this–”

I quickly teabagged the corpse.

“Everybody in the club say hell yeah!”

I straightened my back, grabbed the dead shaman’s head and posed like a big game hunter.

“Witness me, my droogs! This doesn’t do anything, but it’s funny, so we’re doing it!”

Gotta go fast, Qwerty, come on, you need to get out of here...Not yet, I answered to the small voice in my head; just wait a minute.

“This is a dance battle now, folks. Mow it, rake it, bale it, load it, haul it, unload it–”

I waved my staff like a royalty addressing his servants.

The tribesmen kept launching projectiles at me: men used bows and stones, women grabbed their spears, children threw chunks of ice.

But every time I turned and walked toward them, they quickly stepped back.

“No worries, mates, I’m used to trolls slinging anonymous baits! Whoa, another accidental rhyme there, I’m on the roll tonight! As you can see, this glitch is truly overpowered, so obviously we're going exploit the hell out of it. This is the bread and butter of speedrunning, don’t get in the business if you can’t master the basics!”

They couldn’t understand anything I said, but I could see the hate and fear in their eyes. Good, good, let the disappointment flow through your veins.

Some old women went on their knees and put their hands behind their head in prayer – probably desperately praying to their ancient gods to banish this new frolicking stick demon that was born out of their sacred flames.

“Yes, it is I, the true outsider monster from your worst nightmares: a hardcore gamer!”

I was so excited that my whole body was shaking.

Finally. Finally I was living the full isekai power fantasy. No more half-assed pseudo-measures.

“You must be asking yourself: how is such a thing possible? Well, it's a little trick of the trade courtesy of my fellow runner CubePusher. All props to the OG.”

More arrows were shot, more spears thrown. One of the shamans tried to throw another oil fireball at me, but failed and set himself on fire.

“Hey, that’s a fire hazard, dude, don’t get too excited! You’ll burn down the whole village, read the room.”

Should I just kill all of them?

I could do it now. I could burn down their whole village, even the women and the children.

I’ve done it several times. Multiple times in multiple games. Just to see what happens.

What if I kill every NPC in the area? That’s an experiment worth trying.

If this were still a game, I wouldn’t hesitate, but…

But it sure feels like I’m back in the game again...

Kill ‘em all? Let's do it.

No, don’t wear the ring, Frodo! Don’t get corrupted by power.

Umu. Let's not. I’m not evil boss like Caliph Tze.

People make bad decisions when they are under stress, like starting useless wars. I remembered speculations about how many battles and wars in the past might have started from a king or emperor having a bad toothache and running amok because the untreatable physical pain caused a mental breakdown.

The world definitely became much more peaceful when proper pain medication was developed.

And if you follow that trail, modern wars perhaps start from policy-makers living so long that they became senile and lost grip on reality.

...Ouch, that one arrow suddenly pinched my neck a bit.

Some of the thinly distributed damage must be getting through.

Yeah, let’s skip this place. I’m not in the game, I can’t be sure how long this effect lasts. You’d expect it to last as long as I hold on to the flagstaff like in the game, or as long as I have enough items on me to distribute the damage, but there’s no certitudes.

“Folks, I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed.”

I ran at the edge of the high island while still taking arrows and rocks to my back.

One confused warrior standing on top of a snowmobile pointed his bone spear at me. I responded by pointing him with my staff.

“I'm the keymaster, are you the gatekeeper? No? Off you go then!”

I just ignored the bone spear stabbing my ribs and pushed the confused warrior off of the snowmobile. He immediately got up and tried to attack me again, but my gamer instincts kicked in and I used the flagstaff to trip him while his spear hit my stomach.

He dropped face first on the icy ground.

“I need your boots, your jacket, and your snowmobile.”

I don’t actually want or need this guys smelly wolfskin jacket because cold damage is distributed as well, but I do want his snowshoes and his aerosani.

Also, I’m defaulting to canned quotes because these people don’t deserve any original commentary.

“Merry Christmas, you filthy animals. I shall now take my leave.”

One hand holding the handlebar, I rode the fully fueled snowmobile out of the village.

---

A few dozen kilometers after leaving the frozen lake area, the snowmobile suddenly stopped.

As expected, I had reached the southwestern limit of Sparkling Source’s wireless power area of effect.

Heading straight toward south would have taken me closer to the forest’s edge, but then I’d have to travel through Staff Tribe territory, and I don’t want to aggro Staffers on top of Sourcers.

I could’ve also tried to return to the area where the twins and Stick Witch were heading, but tracking them in a hostile area is not my jam – especially in this weird, unexplored condition.

I just want to get the hell out of Winter Forest as soon as possible.

Since Caliph Tze’s troops don’t sponsor any military training exercises on the western side of the forest anymore, it’s the safest route out. I just need to find the nearest Revolution Movement affiliated gang members keeping watch on that side.

I looked back and listened for a while.

No sounds. The warriors weren’t following me anymore.

Some of them followed me over the lake, but most gave up after I made an U-turn and threatened them with my flagstaff like a jousting knight.

Well, well, well. A man can leave the forest, but forest does not leave the man... Thank you, subconsciousness, for bringing back that nonsense locution.

It suddenly occurred to me that the strange tribal rituals performed under the Sparkling Source might be failed, altered versions of ancient rituals that actually worked and activated magic. Maybe the knowledge of working magic had been handed down by the ancient tribes, but it got corrupted over time and the current rituals were just empty stunts that didn’t activate anything. The snowmobiles were recharged automatically, but they kept making useless sacrifices.

...But going back to the real questions: how long can I keep this glitched state going?

What are the actual ON/OFF triggers? What are the trade-offs?

It seems that the glitch works outside the Sparkling Source’s area of effect at least, so I’m not bound to this area. Would’ve been pretty bad trade-off if I had to stay in the Winter Forest forever.

If I cancel the glitch, can I trigger it again? If the answer is yes, can I trigger it only at the Sparkling Source, or is it possible to use any possible pocket space?

If silly things like Sparkling Source and Strangers Cube are “hotspots” that radiate pocket universe power that allows glitches, are locations like Starfish Mansion and Spyglass Tower “coldspots” sucking magical energy and prevent glitches?

Have I been doing glitch experiments in the wrong places all this time?

What other places are hotspots? Is Valkross Fortress a hotspot? Are all dungeons hotspots, or just some of them?

If I keep holding the flagstaff, does it stay connected to the Source? Is there some other cut-off point outside Source range?

Do I dare to let go of the flagstaff and test if I can retrigger it? Do I dare to take the flagstaff inside Starfish Mansion? Proc chance one out of thousand?

If I can keep this stiff shaft erect 24/7... I should stay perpetually glitched…?

I just have to take my chances.

It’s like how going out-of-bounds worked in older games: if you fly outside, you can’t return inside. You’re stuck between worlds.

Or like in the reverse case of hard pause buffering: if you do it even once and fail to separate your character model from the world, you are eternally paused with the rest of the world. There’s no way back to the world of the moving characters. It’s the good old Undead Universe Existential Risk scenario: with a single press of a button, everything is in suspended animation forever. You’re not dead, but you’re never going to live again either, so it’s practically the same as dead.

If I let go of the stick now, I might never be able to enter the glitched state again.

If I hold on to the stick, I will continue my life as a meta-character like Sorry Man.

I have now truly become one of the yōkai of this world.

Speaking of adverse effects, the temporary painlessness boost of the pseudo-opiate should have worn out at this point, but I wasn’t feeling any pain or withdrawal effects at all. This glitch seems to nullify both cold damage and drug addiction status damage.

Yep. Totally expected side effects.

Hmm. When you used battle drugs, you got a temporary stat boost for the price of a permanent reduction to your max health. And on top of that, every use event included high chance of getting Cursed/Addicted status, which started eating your maximum HP at increasing rate, if you didn’t use the same drug again within a certain time frame.

Yeah. Hopefully this glitch keeps negating permanent status damage in the future as well.

Turning into a non-human character is not bad in itself. I’m not particularly attached to my human form with human problems. This is not a body horror situation. If I have to treat the flagstaff from now on as a permanent part of my body, that just how it is

People live with prosthetic replacements or orthotic supports all the time.

This flagstaff is my left hand from now on. I will work and sleep with this flagstaff. It is part of me, and I am part of it. It’s my overlong prosthetic limb.

What is there to complain? I’m alive.

Deal with it.

It’s not like it’s a chainsaw replacing my hand or something. That kind of weight imbalance on one side of the body would cause backstrain.

Adjust to the fact. You’re a metahuman now, dog.

My new superhero name is Flaming Flag.

...On a second thought, let’s not choose that name.

I took the leather straps of my empty revolver holsters and wrapped tight bindings around my left hand and the staff.

Now I can’t let go of the staff accidentally.

I checked my pockets and shoulder bag. Still full of bone pebbles. Some of the pebbles had cracked or split.

If I lose the glitch state and have to trigger it again, I should fill my pockets with metal parts. In the game, it wasn’t possible to replenish damage absorption later by collecting more stuff after the glitch.

I have glitched twice now. You can win the lottery twice and then get hit by a lightning. Anything can happen over strange aeons.

What do I do next?

When you get one working cheat, you use it to get another cheat, duh. This glitch opens doors. 

It opens a whole tech tree of other possible glitches, including the dangerous pseudo-immortality save point at Sun Palace. Project Reignland just leveled up.

I checked my compass card again.

Long hike out of Winter Forest ahead.