Starfish Mansion, ten days after Suleiman's death:

I finally decided to open the door of the Floating Islands room – the room of the original Mad Seer.

In the anime, Rain got triggered immediately when she saw Mad Seer and killed him before he could open his mouth. She couldn't give any coherent reason for doing it, and Mad Seer was never mentioned in the series again.

I wanted to hear what Mad Seer was so eager to say, so Rain wasn't with us. It was just me, Crys, Kimono and Dancer.

Floating Islands room was a wide and varied archipelago of flat, circular, skerry-like platforms floating in endless void. Some of the floating isles were connected by haphazardly placed cable bridges and ropeways, but most of them were too far from the door island to visit. Some of the islands were so high up that they were just small dots in the sky.

The void was bright as midday; diffused white light seemed to exude from every direction, giving no space for shadows. Gravity and breathable air were the same as in the main world and the islands were fixed in place instead of drifting around. It kind of made it feel like the bright void between the islands was frozen jelly instead of empty space, or the islands were like air bubbles in a block of cheese.

Additionally, far away on the left side of the door island, there was a massive oblong object exactly like the “spaceship piers” of Pier City, except this one was gold and silver in color. It looked brand new and floated in the void just like the islands.

“We could bring the airship here and explore the insides of that piership later, if anyone's interested. There's probably some interesting Strangers stuff there. It'd be quite an ordeal to disassemble and rebuild the airship again, but it's a possibility.”

“Despite all this vast space, there is only one inhabitant here?” (Crys)

“As far as I know, yes. Mad Seer lives in a gold-colored tower seven islands ahead.”

We crossed the cable bridges and walked through the floating archipelago. The larger islands were green with sparse trees, bushes and grass like carefully tended gardens, while the smaller islets were rocky with patches of white and brown sand.

Some islands had dilapidated, timber-framed houses with jettied upper floors – abandoned Tudor-style farmhouses taken over by nature.

When we reached the seventh connected island, Mad Seer rushed out of the gold-colored tower. He looked exactly the same as in the anime: an old man with long gray hair and gray clothes, probably around eighty years old.

We readied our revolvers, but Mad Seer ignored the danger and threw himself on the ground five meters away from me like a crazy cultist meeting a high priest. He was pretty fast and lively for a pensioner.

“Unbeliever, the Chosen One! You have finally arrived! Do you recognize me? It is I, Kurdemont Krurick, the one who guided you here!” (Kurdemont)

“Eh?”

Mad Seer was Kurdemont? I hurriedly looked at Crys and he nodded.

I leave it to you, if this encounter goes bad.

Now, let's remember the words of ancient wisdom: when someone asks you if you're a god, you say yes.

“Okay... I am the Unbeliever, are you the Ur-Master?”

“I am Kurdemont Krúrick! You are truly the Unbeliever, the Chosen One!” (Kurdemont)

“Speedrun is my name, nice to meet you. These are my party members, Crys–”

“Master Speedrun!” (Kurdemont)

“–Kimono and Dancer... Are you sure you got the right person? I'm not actually so sure about being the chosen one or anything, but let's say I am–”

“You are the Chosen One! Because, because I chose you myself!” (Kurdemont)

“Like, right now?”

“Before! I chose you before, a long time ago!” (Kurdemont)

I glanced at my party members. They folded their arms like saying they'll let me handle this. Yeah.

Mad Seer wasn't armed and looked like a harmless old man. He was just a bit too enthusiastic. Well, I'm not one who should complain about getting carried away by sudden excitement.

“How and why did you choose me to be the Chosen One?”

“Because you are the champion! Oh, how I've waited for this day! Day after day, year after year, I have sent my dreamlights outside, shined my name to outer worlds, into the dreams of auspicious beings everywhere, inspiring them to paint the tapestry of details beyond imagination, to guide and bring the Chosen One here! And you have finally arrived!” (Kurdemont)

“...Sounds legit.”

Kurdemont seemed to have some type of mysterious power to send dreams to people, rather than having the power to make people forget his existence, as we previously speculated.

“What if I say that I don't believe you?”

“Of course! Of course you don't believe! Because you are the Unbeliever!” (Kurdemont)

“Haa... I think I need a more detailed explanation about this Chosen One thing, so why don't we–”

“Exactly! The details are what matter! A long, long time ago, I was just a small child, when the Strangers came and took Krúrick Archipelago away. My father was the keeper of this lighthouse and guided ships through the treacherous rocks. When I came of age and started seeing prophetic dreams, people said they heard my name in their dreams, and that was when I realized what was my destiny! I had to continue my father's work, but not as a lighthouse keeper, but as a dreamlight keeper! I would guide people through treacherous shoals with the light of my dreams!”

“...Okay, that's kind of interesting lore, but I didn't really ask about your personal backstory. What's this Chosen One thing all about?”

“First you see a dream, a vision of a different world! Then you create a painting, with all details exactly as in the vision! If you do it well enough, the painting becomes a door! The champion comes through the most detailed painting– oh, how large and detailed must your painting be! Because if the painting doesn't have enough details, you may walk through and turn into an empty shell! There are so many empty forms you can become, if an important detail is missed! And even when the details are there, something may be disproportionate, and you may not be able to move like human anymore! How meticulous the painter must be!”

Hm. If I take Kurdemont's explanation at face value, the pieces kind of do fit the puzzle.

“Brother, this person is crazier than Speedrun.” (Kimono)

“A smart person often seems like a crazy person to a dumb person.”

“...What did you just say?” (Kimono)

“Sorry, no disrespect intended, Kim-chan. I'm just saying that let's not jump to conclusions so fast.”

“Kimono, let him speak.“ (Crys)

“...Yes, brother.” (Kimono)

The showrunner who created Mu-Ur Quincunx based it on his dreams. He was obsessed with getting the details right, almost to the point of insanity. According to voice actress interviews, he was a slavemaster who rarely let even the designers and animators make changes to his grand vision. And he ultimately paid for that obsession with his freedom and reputation.

He thought he sacrificed himself for his visionary art, but it was just Kurdemont sending instructions on how to paint a super-detailed picture. Like alien civilization sending instructions on how to build a faster-than-light spaceship in a classic scifi story.

“I didn't exactly come here through a painting in a traditional sense, but there's this other guy I know who did. His name is Sorry Man.”

“Not a painting, you say? How were you summoned, Chosen One?” (Kurdemont)

“Well, I was just running inside this... like, three-dimensional virtual world painted by algorithms and designed for fun and games.”

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“What?! A world so detailed you can move inside it?! Oh, how great a painting that must be! Yes, I knew there was one lesser champion, I saw him in my dream. One with a bone-white face, dressed in all black, sinking under cerulean ocean... But alas, he is not the True Champion!” (Kurdemont)

“Okay. Well, for the sake of argument, what do you expect from this chosen champion? Do I have to draw a sword from a stone or something?”

“Yes! No, not a sword! You must go to the heart of the Winter Forest and take the Red Staff from the White Witch, the matriarch of the Staff Tribe, and take it to the Green Source of the Source Tribe, and then–” (Kurdemont)

“Whoa, whoa, whoa! Hold up! Not happening. Nope. You lost me at Winter Forest.”

“...But, but you are the Chosen One! You are the Champion who must do this!” (Kurdemont)

“Nope. Stick With can keep his stick, I'm not touching that silly place even with a three meter pole.”

“...But think of the Strangers! The dark gods floating above forests! The slaves who dropped on their knees and worshiped them! And do you know what else?! Strangers even took my home archipelago, no, my entire home continent, and chopped and packed it into these rooms and hallways like butchers chopping living flesh!” (Kurdermont)

“Okay. And then?”

“...Are you not shocked and surprised?!” (Kurdemont)

“Well, I've heard that fan theory before.”

That really was one of the many fan theories: Strangers chopped Le Continent into blocks, airspace and territorial waters included, and compressed them into roomworlds of the Starfish Mansion. The planet Mu-Ur was small because the mass of the biggest continent was ripped out of reality and turned into a kind of ultimate form of Strangers slave segregation policy – instead of landwalls between areas, they separated slave populations into mini-worlds, and these pocket worlds could only be accessed from the central hub Starfish Mansion.

It wasn't that surprising that sometimes fan theorists hit the nail of the head and the tiger of the eye.

“Master Speedrun, Winter Forest is one of the lands sliced from my home continent, but it is a portion without walls. In such areas, where curtains between worlds become thinner and thinner, those who live in the shadow realm may come out and walk in daylight again, if certain forbidden rituals are performed!” (Kurdemont)

“Strangers?”

“All of them!” (Kurdemont)

“So, let me get this straight. You want to stop the Strangers by summoning a champion that goes to the Winter Forest and fights the Stick Witch–”

“The White Witch of the Winter Forest!“ (Kurdemont)

“...Fights the Stick Witch....”

“The White Witch of the Winter Forest holds the Red Staff and the men of the Source guard the Green Source! The Source contains the Warehouse of Everything and the Staff is the key to open it! The Source is the realm of true details! It is the most detailed representation! You must understand, Chosen One!” (Kurdemont)

“Do you need to shout all the time?”

Take the stick and put in in the source. The whole Winter Forest episode that happened when the twins escaped from Caliph's soldiers sounded like a naughty euphemism, as fans often pointed out.

The background lore was that spinning the Staff in the Source opened a portal to a hyperreal pocket universe called Warehouse of Everything. In the game, you could trigger the Warehouse of Everything, but it was just a decorative effect without any practical purpose. The hyperrealness of the sub-world was represented as CGI-rotoscoped glowing pyramid that player could see through a transparent wall.

Now, to entertain the idea further: how was it possible for a small sub-world to contain a more detailed version of the overworld? We were entering some Gödel-Escher-Bach territory here, although there was probably some very simple underlying explanation.

Maybe these strange worlds didn't have any strict hierarchy and every world contained the possibility to contain all other worlds. Maybe it worked like Indra's web: no matter which pearl in the web you chose, if you looked it closely enough, you could see all other pearls reflected on it's surface. And if you looked even closer, it was as if you entered the reflected pearl instead of the reflecting pearl.

Hmm, maybe mirror reflection was a wrong heuristic here – the worlds were not parity inverted like reflections, otherwise time would flow backwards, or... But then again, if you were inside a reflection, you wouldn't realize the world is inverted because you're inverted yourself...

Umu. I'm going too deep into esoteric metaphors.

Sorry Man came from a static, two-dimensional painting, so his body and senses were messed up. I came from a dynamic, three-dimensional neurogame, so I felt mostly normal here, but I couldn't use glitches. Maybe there was some strange rule of warp painting glitch summonings that when you moved from a lesser-detailed world to a greater-detailed world, something proportional to the gap in detail was lost in the conversion.

What if I had been a casual player instead of a speedrunner? I might have glitched here as a half-brained simpleton that takes only half collision damage or something, because I would have lost some normal mechanisms instead of glitches. Scary.

So then, if you moved from greater-detailed world – from the hyperrealistic realm of Warehouse of Everything – to a lesser-detailed world of Mu-Ur, did that mean you could still use some attributes of the greater-detailed world?

“Kurdemont, let's say I open the Source and enter the hyperreal sub-world that contains all the details of this world and more, and then I return back to this world... does that mean that I have been basically re-summoned from the hyperreal world, and this world has become the lesser world? In other words, does that mean that I have turned into an apparition like Stick Witch, which then means–”

“Yes! It means you can use the magic of the Source! You are able to bend the principle of the world!” (Kurdemont)

“...And by magic, you mean glitches?”

“If by glitches you mean magic! That is how it must be! Praise the Chosen Champion, he can see! There, in the soft places, where walls between worlds are thin and transparent like tears in my eyes, you can take the hidden steps!” (Kurdemont)

I've been actively avoiding all the silly places, and now I'm told that going to silly places would be a good idea?

“Sure, I'll try spinning, that's a good trick... You expected me to say that? Nope, not going.”

“...W-what?” (Kurdemont)

“We're still just talking hypothetically here, I haven't agreed to anything.”

“Bu-but the Strangers must be stopped! That's why you are here! This is the purpose of thy life!” (Kurdemont)

No, John. You are the demons.

“Look, I'm not really into these railroaded destinies and stuff. I mean, speaking seriously now – just bringing up the question of what is my purpose in life or what is the meaning of life is slave mentality from the start. Because you basically expect someone else to tell you what's your purpose, like a slave expecting a command from a master. I'm not a slave. I'm not going to risk everything I've accomplished up to now just because you happened to haphazardly choose me as your champion or something. That's such a cheap cop-out, you know. Why don't you go out and do it yourself, if you want to get it done?”

“Bu-but... bu-buh... only the Champion understands the bending of the principle... of the world...” (Kurdemont)

The old man looked like he might start crying.

I immediately felt sorry for him. He's been in this room alone for a long, long time, using his dream power every day and waiting for his chosen champion to step in and save the day.

“Fine. So if I get the stick and get the glitches, then what? What's the point? Cut to the chase and skip to the ending, what's the ultimate final goal of a champion here?”

“Oh, Chosen One! You must prevent the Strangers from coming back to this, and there's only one way to do that! You must go to Reignland... and kill Caliph Tze!” (Kurdemont)

I blinked a few times.

I think everyone else did too.

I blinked a few times more just to be sure.

“Um, we did that already. About two weeks ago. Caliph's dead.”

“...Eh...?” (Kurdemont)

“Been there, done that. He's dead.”

“...Caliph Tze is... dead?” (Kurdemont)

“Your prophecies are behind the times. You should go out more.”

“...Bu-but the Staff... to put it in the Source...” (Kurdemont)

“Yes, yes, but Caliph's already dead. If that's the final goal of your quest, we already cleared the mission without using any glitches.”

“E-exactly, you must– eeh?!” (Kurdemont)

“We already killed Caliph Tze, you old fool! Are you deaf? Caliph Tze is dead!” (Kimono)

Thanks for that enthusiastic support from the backseat, Kim-chan.

“We killed Caliph Tze at Rukhkh Mountain about two weeks ago. If his death is enough to stop the Strangers from reappearing, in your opinion, then there's no need to go to Reignland or to Winter Forest.”

“H-he's really dead...?! You saw his body and it was dead?!” (Kurdemont)

“Affirmative, it was dead. Your predictions are seriously behind the times. So, what now?”

“I... I don't know... I haven't seen any such dreams...” (Kurdemont)

“By the way, did you send your mystical dream beams to Rainwoman as well?”

“I have tried to sent dreamlights to all the Cursed Ones in the past, when I saw them in my dream...” (Kurdemont)

“I see. No wonder.”

“...It always depends on the person, sometimes it's blurred and gets mixed in their own hopes and dreams, it's hard to keep the dreamlight stable...” (Kurdemont)

Crys tapped his foot; a signal to hurry up.

Yes, we definitely need to go back before dinner. Mirim and Achlop are trying to make pizza using my recipe, and Test Subject is still tied to a chair in the kitchen because Mirim caught him trying to open a door without my permission.

“Anyway, you seem like a cool guy with mystical dream beams and stuff. Want to sign a contract with Crys? We're currently recruiting talented employees for our Revolution Movement. Our goal is to save the world for real, and with practical means, not by following some ancient prophecies. Save the horses and slaves, kill the aristocrats and slavemasters, that's our current revised motto, all specifications subject to change without notice.”

“...I, I'll think about it...” (Kurdemont)

“If you join now, I might consider visiting Winter Forest at some point in the future to check what's happening. I'm not ruling it out completely, you know. I just think we need to approach these things with caution.”

“Haa...” (Kurdemont)

Kurdemont Krúrick has joined the party.

A living, long-range, ultra-wideband dream beam communication system should be useful in spreading revolutionary propaganda all over the world, for example.

On top of that, if he's right about the Warehouse of Everything glitch trigger, and otherworldly summonings from detailed depictions are consistents, then there's still some hope for logging out of this world and returning home too.

Maybe I could paint an abstract aquarelle and skip out of this world as a silhouette of an autistic elf or something?

If it's detailed depictions that are needed for the creation of a warp hole, I do already have plenty of detailed pictures of my homeworld in my pocket. I just need to find some way to get photos and videos out of my smartphone's memory card.

But in this upside-down backwards world it might be easier to trigger the Winter Forest's time travel escapades than to get photos out of phone...

Just Mu-Ur things, I guess.

“By the way, Crys is the leader and CEO of Revolution Movement, I'm basically just a community manager.”

“See-io...?” (Kurdemont)

“It means he doesn't have time for losers, because we are all champions of the world. We deliver our product way ahead of schedule and under budget– oh, right, when you meet our chief security officer Rainwoman for the first time, you should stand back for a bit, she's probably not happy about you violating her private dreams with your mystical beams...”

Kimono rolled her eyes and let out a long fatigued sigh.

“What? Kim-chan, did you want the title of a security chief?”

“...I think you lost all your value as a human being when you glitched out of painting or whatever.” (Kimono)

So harsh!