You might be asking yourself: how did I end up in this situation?

Well, let’s flashback a bit. Previously in Mu-Ur Quincunx...

It is currently year 10,002 AT in my proposed new calendar system. The working title of the new calendar is After Tyrants and it starts from year 10,000. New year kicks off from Ganaghdul’s Night, the ritualistic masquerade parade held at Stray Dog City during every winter solstice. The calendar has 13 months and every month has 27 days.

I’m using the Strangers’ time card from Belt of Measurement Cards as the standard. Standards are important: universal time formats, measurement systems, ISO’s, kilometers, liters, piano tunings, and so on. Humans and machines speaking the same synced language is the backbone of global tech trees, productions chains and logistics – the foundations of a civilized society.

Unfortunately I’m the only one using this new calendar.

Exact chronologies and standards are not important for the common people of Mu-Ur world. I use it when I write diary entries in my exactly A5-sized diary.

If I were back in the modern world, corporations and nations would be throwing billions at me to get a set of Strangers measurement cards. Unerring magitech measurements system would be an overpowered cheat item – provided that the cards are actually error-free as advertised. I don’t know for sure, but I keep the cards with me at all times. Just in case I suddenly slip back to my world of origin.

I’ve also tried making the case that roads and streets should have names or numbers like in big Sultanate cities, but that system hasn’t become popular either. Crys wants to keep local roads and footpaths at Loönois moorlands anonymous and hidden, which is understandable, but I think we should at least give numbers to our main trade routes.

I guess we’re even because I vetoed Crys’ idea of using stacks of enemy skeletons as territorial boundary stones. They would certainly work as a deterrence against minor gangs and tribes, but I think it’d be bad PR for our cause.

Anyway, it’s me again.

Qwerty Uozewe aka Speedrun, the any% world record holder in Mu-Ur Quincunx speedrunning, your local single-game streamer.

Still isekai’d in a grimdark wild west fantasy world that imitates the game and anime, or contrariwise. Nothing new on that front.

I was 25 years old when I glitched and now I’m 27. A fateful age for artists and musicians.

Yes, it’s been approximately two years since I teabagged Caliph’s corpse. Two full years of this pervasive slice-of-life 4X larp in a crapsack world.

These two years have went by really fast. As you get older, time seems to move faster because your brains get slower. You start to appreciate things that felt slow and boring in your youth, like historical dramas that are mostly walking and talking.

Before I glitched into this niche franchise (just few weeks before, in fact) there was a rumor circulating in the webs that the original Mu-Ur showrunner was writing a new light novel sequel for the anime while serving his white-collar crime sentence. I didn't think much about that rumor back then; web is always full of wild speculation and baseless rumors, after all.

But when Kurdt stormed in the kitchen room to tell me about his newest prophetic dream, I suddenly remembered this particular rumor.

The tentative name of the sequel light novel was Mu-Ur Quincunx: Thiefmaster Chronicles, and according to the rumor, the sequel novel would would follow the small-scale adventures of the second and third generation members of the Revolution Movement – characters like Magic Word, Snowstone, Double Shadow, Woodeye, and Fox Laughing; the most prominent students of the orphanage school (aka Inside Out School aka Inner School in the Cursed Forest).

That used to be a common progression in live movie franchises before AI actors: original human actors got too old for their roles, so new generation of actors with CGI’d faces were shoehorned in for the younger viewers. But what's the point of doing it for animated characters in Mu-Ur Quincunx? Was the writer-showrunner just tired of looking at the same faces every day, or did he really think that bringing in a new set of characters would reanimate (sic) the waning interest for the niche franchise?

I mean, Rainwoman and Mirim were still alive at the end of the original anime. Surely viewers would want to follow what happens to them instead of following some minor side characters like Word and Snow.

Anyway, here comes the real crazy prophet with his real crazy prophecies.

“Seer Speedrun, Seer Speedrun! I saw it in my dream! Thiefmaster is on the move!” (Kurdt)

“Okay. Sure. Pancakes and salted roots for breakfast?”

“I saw it clearly in my dream! It was him! That bastard from Sylvania! It was definitely Renaud Kizaha I saw!” (Kurdt)

“Another dream sequence, huh. Cool, cool. But pancakes, do they work for you?”

“Thiefmaster is heading to Winter Forest! I saw it in my dream!” (Kurdt)

“Really? Hmm. So that's his plan now. He's getting desperate after we've made his life difficult.”

Yeah, this was the exact moment when the old rumor about a light novel sequel entered my mind.

Thiefmaster Chronicles, huh…

Why would it be called that when Thiefmaster died in the anime? Was it supposed to be a spin-off prequel?

Was there a copycat Thiefmaster, or maybe Thiefmaster’s secret son coming for revenge?

Whatever it was, I wasn’t worried.

Crys had exposed Thiefmaster's heinous criminal acts to everyone using the deep insider information I provided, so Thiefmaster (aka Renaud ‘Arnaud’ Kizaha, former count of Sylvania; the game and anime actually used different names for him, but both were apparently canon) had already lost all his noble titles, lands and possessions, including his collection of Strangers artifacts.

Ever since then, Thiefmaster had been on the run from the local authorities, bounty hunters, assassins and revenge-thirsty nobles. And those other parties chasing him didn’t even include the elaborately detailed wanted posters our Revolution Movement associates kept gluing in bat-wing doors of taverns and saloons, offering a considerable reward in krúricks for Thiefmaster's head.

Wanted dead. Not dead or alive, just plain dead.

It brings us Thiefmaster’s ugly head in a canvas sack and it gets enough krúricks to fill that sack in return.

Yep, good old randomly spawning mid-boss Thiefmaster. Still alive and still at large after two years.

And since he was one of the most difficult (read: most annoying) boss enemies in the series, it would certainly be nice to confirm his death before our Big Huge Plan goes into motion.

And with that, let’s return to pancakes.

“These are ready entirely.” (Achlop)

“Okay, I’ll take care of the rest. Princesses can sit down and eat.”

Princess Achlop from the Pikatrate roomworld hung around in the Starfish Mansion kitchen pretty often. She was currently helping me by flipping the nearly burning pancakes with a spatula while I was spacing out in my pre-isekai memories.

Most Pikatrate citizens had adopted our way of speaking and stopped using their traditional vaguespeak because they wanted to follow the customs of the ‘High Lords of the Hallways’, but since Achlop was the highest royalty and highest representative of Pikatrate court outside their roomworld, she kept using traditional speech patterns.

Mirim was setting the table. She was still flesh and blood, except for that old mechanical eye under her eye patch. She hadn’t received any significant damage during these years, fortunately.

A nice, homely slife-of-life morning scene in the Starfish Mansion hubworld.

“Mirim, is Rain coming for breakfast?”

“I'll take her meal to the garden.” (Mirim)

“Again? Rain has turned into complete hikikomori. Tell her that she must absolutely come for our next strategy meeting in the living room.”

“I’ll tell her.” (Mirim)

Rainwoman spent most of her days in the Petrified Garden with Sorry Man doing whatever. It’s understandable that she likes staying there – it’s one of the rare locations in this world where she can see a clear sky 24/7 and feel perfectly calm and safe. And since Petrified Garden is one of Sorry Man’s main attractors in this world, he doesn’t try to wander outside the garden on his own. A perfect home for an odd couple.

The last time Rain stepped out of the Starfish Mansion was during our Mandarin River mission few months ago. After I told her what happened in the original timeline, she was inspired to save the enslaved women from the Slave Dome of the fishing village (mostly because they fished Sorry Man out of the river in the OG timeline) and kill some Caliphate soldiers on the side.

Crys was also happy to pick up some more Command Poison from that trip. Kimono had already incorporated that nasty hypno-poison into her new fighting style: she threw poisoned darts at enemies and then (instead of calling her special moves aloud) she yelled them “kill each other” or “mutilate yourself”. The reaction faces of the men who became victims of Kim’s hypno-darts were, in a word, disturbing.

That was multiple months ago. Time runs fast.

Well, Rain being a gloomy hikikomori is better than Rain being a violent junkie. In the anime, Rain was a battle addict on top of being a drug addict, and those two addictions were intimately linked.

Or maybe she just grew up and decided to leave worst teenage mood swings behind.

I don’t even have to put Rain’s food in metal bowls anymore because she has learned to eat neatly from bone porcelain plates like a normal person without breaking them.

Mirim usually takes Rain’s meals to her. Mirim is a good girl, taking care of her sister.

Speaking of strong women, the character designs in Mu-Ur were criticized for being sexist in some form or another. For example, all the smart and educated characters were said to be men, while all the simple, uneducated characters were said to be women. But there was a clear in-universe reason for it: Mu-Ur world was a patriarchal, backwards society. Women didn't receive much education in the first place, so they had to survive with street smarts like Kimono, or with raw strength and special skills like Rain and Mirim.

Then again, Mu-Ur was also criticized for making the main female characters more powerful than the main male characters. Mirim, Rain and Kimono together formed an overpowered triangle of damage-dealing: Mirim was the best at dealing long-range damage, Rain was the best at dealing mid-range damage, and Kimono was the best at one-versus-one close range.

On the third hand, that was the Hollywood subversion cliché: the thinking process of a clueless movie producer whose idea of equality is to depict women as brutal, violent muscle-heads instead of as strong, independent individuals.

Such critics conveniently forget that the twins Ivorythief and Reavertooth are the strongest characters in general. They are main characters too, even if they don’t participate in every spicy anime episode like the MC’s who live together in Starfish Mansion.

Speaking of spicy, the main crew is getting used to my spicier foods. I’ve been slowly adding more and more spices to get the taste to the level of recipes from my origin world.

“Hmm, should I prank Rain by adding spice to her pancake…”

“Lord Speedrun?” (Achlop)

“Did I think aloud? Bad idea, forget it.”

I’ve visited Petrified Garden semi-regularly to check that the undead skeleton-gardeners stay down in their hole. And during those checks, we (meaning me, Rain and Mirim) often drink some green tea from cabinet cups under a petrified cherry blossom tree, just enjoying a sublime moment of stillness.

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Well, if I really need Rain to step out of the house and do something productive with her life, I have some ideas in my pocket on how to convince her. She can leave Mirim in the garden to babysit Sorry Man.

Speaking of Sorry Man, he’s still the same. A slowly moving statue surrounded by non-moving statues, enjoying a non-changing island of respite in a world that moves far too quickly for him.

I once suggested to Rain that if Sorry Man steps outside Starfish Mansion, she should make him wear a pointy hat and a long fake beard in public, to flip his image from an indifferent zombie into an eccentric elder wizard.

That proposition was quickly rejected.

Sorry Man’s current image as the leader of Revolution Movement was a complete fabrication created by me and Crystal Pencil. In that fake outside reality, Sorry Man was a shadowy Dragon’s Head who lived in a secret underground base or hidden fortress, talked only to his closest subordinates (the so-called core members, also known as Seven Keys of Revolution) and showed himself only in rare special occasions for the few and privileged revolutionaries who got a rare invitation to visit the secret main base.

Crys was enamored with the idea of being an evil mastermind behind the curtain pulling strings and Sorry Man was the natural pick for an eternal leader-elder because he would stay the same until the heat death of the universe – well, assuming that this strange isekai universe even has heat death awaiting in the endgame. For all I know, this gamified world might be some kind of sickly non-Euclidean manifold that dies before local stars go full nova, or some type of immortal universe that just keeps going when weaker neighbor-verses drop dead.

But that’s in the far, far, far future. Only Sorry Man (and possibly machine!Mirim) will be around to see the end.

Unless… Unless I can get one of those lesser immortality cheats that exist in this world. Then I might stay around a bit longer too.

What’s the point of winning, if your win isn’t permanent, right? Gotta keep that world record in the house. If you stop running, you’re moving backwards. Gotta stay at the top forever.

...Now wait a second, Qwerty-boy. That’s the kind of hubristic thinking that kicks you down into an early grave. Don’t go ruining your cozy isekai life by doing crazy stunts.

So that is why Kurdt’s prophetic dream was the first trigger that kickstarted my quest for immortality – sike!

Did you really think I would risk it?

I’m not hunting anything at this point. I’ll just stay in the kitchen and make pancakes.

The two nigh-immortality cheats that exist in Mu-Ur world are only marginally better than Rukhkh’s Egg, still highly dangerous and susceptible for horrible RNG. I’m not going to go anywhere near the silly places with unknown Strangers dangers and weird magick. At least not without good backups and odds stacked heavily in my favor.

Which means not now, or in the near future. I’ll start going for risky, experimental life-extension methods when my health starts to deteriorate, or I get cancer or something.

I need the correct risk-reward ratio to take action.

“Lord Speedrun, is the last one ready somehow?” (Achlop)

“Oh, sorry, it’s done! My internal monologue got weird again. Let’s eat, let’s eat! Kurdt, don’t worry about that Thiefmaster nightmare, it’s fine. Sit down, breakfast is ready.”

I sat down on the breakfast table and handed out pancake plates to everyone present: first to myself, then to Mirim, then to Kurdt, then to Test Subject, then to Achlop, and finally to Sera, the quiet brunette sitting next to me.

Achlop’s guards and handmaidens standing at the doorway and hallway didn’t get plates.

I wanted to keep things casual, but Achlop’s servants and guards always looked at me weird when I went with “women first” instead of “lords and ladies of the hallways first”.

In this table, me and Mirim were basically the elite ruling class because we were part of the core group, the founders of the Revolution Movement; elders and chiefs of the Starfish Mansion tribe; the high rulers of the hubworld. So it was better to deal pancakes in that order.

Didn’t really matter to me, but if it matters to them… whatever. As long as everyone gets their food.

Oh right, let me introduce the quiet brunette sitting next to me. Her name is Sera Pioria.

Sera is one of princess Achlop’s court ladies, a maid-in-waiting around the same age as me, or maybe few years older than me (it’s hard to say when years in Pikatrate roomworld do not match outside years). She has symmetric proportions, good manners, and honest and gentle personality.

In the anime series, Sera was just a minor background character who didn’t have any lines – which I now think was a shame because she has a surprisingly pleasant ASMR-ready voice.

I guess it was last year when princess Achlop noticed that I kept throwing meaningful glances at her maid Sera instead of her. So she did what tribal princesses do and sent Sera into my bedroom for an obvious reason: it would be a convenient political deal for princess Achlop if a lady from the Pikatrate court marries one of the Seven Heavenly Kings (or eight, or nine, depending on which one of us you want to count in), even if that lady happens to be a mere handmaiden.

From their point of view, I am one of the key figures of a powerful neighboring tribe who rules over Strangers hubworld with hot weapons, while they are a primitive tribe living in a single roomworld using cold weapons. They understandably feel that they are in a precarious position, even though I solemnly promised to princess Achlop that we would never shut the door to her face.

Sera probably saw herself partly as an arranged marriage partner, partly as a sworn virgin sacrificed to a dragon. I mean, we did interact multiple times and got along, and there definitely were romantic sparks from the start, and many funny misunderstandings happened between us before Achlop noticed what was going on and decided to push the goal in the middle of the field, so to speak. But telling about those embarrassing episodes is not interesting. I mean, how many anime or manga about a boy and girl misunderstanding each other’s feelings and hemming and hawing backwards and forwards endlessly without resolution are there? Two?

During our first night together, I kept telling Sera that she is free to do whatever she wants, and she doesn’t need to break her vow of chastity or anything, and she can return to her roomworld at any time without any repercussions, but she just smiled and whispered that she’d like to stay in my room.

Obviously we had to have a long, serious discussion about this – or more like a one-sided lecture about implied consent versus informed consent. Anyway, since she didn’t really understand these modern concepts, she mostly just nodded and smiled to my explanations.

When I finally told her that I probably need to at least tie her up if she stays in my room because I’m afraid she might assassinate me in my sleep, she again said yes immediately, removed her clothes and sat down on the carpet with her hands behind her back.

Yeah. Yikes. Problematic.

I know I can trust Achlop and her retinue after we purged all the known villainous characters from the Pikatrate court, but I can’t know everything about every background character and their possible hidden motives.

You can’t be too careful in this crazy world.

Another problem is that we might accidentally summon a new human in this world because the concept of contraception doesn’t really exist in Pikatrate culture. Did you know that forbidden sex magick summons a new person into existence in about nine months? Now you know.

Pikatrate’s main focus is the continuation of the royal bloodline, which means producing multiple offspring to make sure that at least one survives to adulthood.

You got baited, bro! Gold digger fruitcake wants your world-record seed!

Who said that?! Which one of you toxic trolls just came up with that scandalous slander in the chat?! Yes, I’m talking directly to you, imaginary channel subscriber!

I’ll tell you right now that Sera is not like that. She’s an elegant lady trying her best. She isn’t like those extravagant prostitutes who stroll around the neighboring moorlands in flashy carriages looking for Sorry Man and other Revolution Lords like crazy fans stalking celebrities and hanging around the general area where someone spotted a movie star drinking coffee.

I’ll permaban you if you harass Sera.

I’d also like to put in the record that I’m not under any delusion that this current master-servant arrangement with Sera could develop into a serious relationship. Our base stats are too far apart to form a properly balanced two-player party, if you get what I mean.

But enough about my troublesome isekai sex life. File this under ex-streamer’s overreactions for entertainment purposes only and fillerspeak for imaginary audience.

“Master, may I ask what are you plans for today?” (Sera)

“The usual routine. Wash my teeth, suit up, check what’s happening in the world. I think I’ll head to Map Base with T-Sub today, I visited Moor Base day before yesterday. Anyway, you should relax and do what you want. I’ll be back for dinner.”

“Yes, master.” (Sera)

After spending months together, I was already used to Sera’s presence. She currently worked as my personal assistant slash maidservant instead of attending to princess Achlop.

In the beginning, she kept calling me lord Uozewe or Seer Speedrun, but I told her that doesn’t sound right and she should just call me Speedy or Qwerty or whatever she wants. So she started calling me 'master' like T-Sub.

Kurdt was staring at the pancake on his plate with a pained expression.

“Elder lord Krúrick, is this food not to your liking somehow?” (Achlop)

“Ah, yes, but...” (Kurdt)

“Eat your pancake, Kurdt. You’re being rude to the ladies, they helped me to make them.”

“But Seer, my dreamlight–” (Kurdt)

“Don’t worry about it. If you see that dream again, we’ll talk about it in detail then. Okay?”

“Yes…” (Kurdt)

“Perhaps we should talk about something that concerns our alliance. Elder lord Krúrick, since this is a rare opportunity, may I ask about your family lineage somehow?” (Achlop)

Hou, Achlop’s going into full princess mode and trying to change the topic into relationship gossip.

“My family? I, I don’t have much memories from my childhood, except living in the lighthouse with my father. But then the Strangers took the archipelago, and the dreams, the dreamlights... Where was I? Yes, as far as I remember, I’ve been alone in that place and lived as a dream-guide, seeing the dreams from outside, the dreams from the outside… Master Speedrun! I must guide the Chosen One! My dreamlights–” (Kurdt)

“And we’re back to the topic of dreams again. Nice try anyway, Achlop.”

“Thank you, lord Speedrun.” (Achlop)

I used to be more worried about backstabbings and other common dangers of this world (including food poisonings and contaminated water), but when you keep living in less-than-ideal conditions over a long time, your standards naturally start to drop. It’s like the initial culture shock when you visit an undeveloped country where you can’t drink tap water, but then gradually get used to the fact that you have to keep buying bottled water like a filthy peasant.

Speaking of culture shocks, let’s talk about one of the Big Questions: if I could glitch back to my own world, would I do it? And what type of crazy ritual would I need to perform to glitch back to reality? Do I need to reverse all the steps that brought me here?

The real answer is: I don’t want to go back that much anymore. I’m so used to this world already. And there are people who rely on me, and need me to stay here.

This is my home now.

I’ve seen much less nightmares since Tze’s death and I’m sleeping better in general. You could say it’s because Kurdt has stopped sending his ‘dreamlights’ around, but I’ve been sleeping better in my Starfish Mansion than in my previous life.

Living in this world has gradually changed me as a person. Even if I were to randomly return some day, I can’t see myself going back to the same streamer life I lived in my small apartment before. If I returned right now, I’d probably become a crazy prepper carrying semi-autos, solar chargers, multitools, textbooks and technical manuals just in case I get suddenly pulled back to Mu-Ur world again.

The constant fear of suddenly glitching between worlds would become my whole life.

Killing the Big Bad didn’t glitch me back. And killing the Big Bad didn’t automatically solve all problems in this world either.

Caliph Tze and Suleiman Onion Hat were dead, but their followers doubled down on crazy. The deadlock trench war between Caliphate and Sultanate at Corelands of southern Ur was still ongoing. The most fervent followers of Tze and Suleiman didn’t even believe their leaders were dead. Instead, they believed that some grand plan was put in action, that Caliph Tze and Suleiman had faked their deaths and they would soon stage their triumphant return.

The fateful date of that predicted triumphant return kept being pushed forward, but cult leaders assured cultists that it would surely happen any day now.

Just like in my previous world, the True Believers would rather die than admit that they had wasted their whole life on a lie. Escalation of commitment is a helluva drug.

So here I was, happily eating improvised sugarless goat milk pancakes like they were the greatest delicacy in the world. And in a way, they actually were the best pancakes in this world.

Even with my improvised amateur chef skills, I was basically the local Escoffier when it came to kitchen hygiene, presentation and herb sauces. My cooking was 100% based on recipes I remembered from a certain fast-and-easy recipe app on my phone, but as you would expect, even the simplest modern cooking was superior in comparison to the base-level food culture of this backwards world. I sourced my fresh ingredients from local roomworlds, not from slave farms or gutter oil peddlers outside.

By the way, when we get the roomworld farming kickstarted on a larger scale, we can start exporting safe, healthy foods outside.

It’s a lucky hit wrapped in a catastrophe that Strangers didn’t poison all the roomworld lands and waters by strip mining like they did with Mu and Ur continents.

But I shouldn’t get complacent even with my OP cooking skills and Canon Knowledge cheat. The reason I’m surrounded by trustworthy people now is solely because I have selected them so carefully. Without my strict vetting process, Starfish Mansion would be full of teamkillers and scheme-dealers like in the original anime.

Yet even now, despite all my safety measures, some Pikatrate guard in this very kitchen might be playing a long con and planning an insurgence in the future – maybe decades from now, when the main characters start dying because of hereditary illness called aging.

However, we also have a solid wall preventing future betrayals: Mirim’s eventual transformation into a machine lifeform.

Long after we meat-based beings are gone, machine-Mirim will continue to follow the orders given to her and advance the mission of Revolution Movement, taking over everyone else’s roles and titles in the movement as the High Queen of Hallways.

That’s how it always goes: a single intelligent machine takes over all of our jobs.

And that’s alright.

“Mirim, you’re heading to orphanage school after this?”

“Yes, I’m going.” (Mirim)

“Let's go partway together, come with me and T-Sub. Celal, I’m done eating.”

Another one of Achlop’s silent handmaidens, blue-wigged woman named Celal Nony, was in charge of cleaning the table and washing the dishes. Sera used to do it before, but Achlop insisted that it would be better to leave this task to someone else at this point. She wanted Sera to keep up appearances as the ‘lord’s chosen one’ for the Pikatrate court, and for the rare new members I allowed in the house.

Kurdt still looked sad eating his meager share of pancakes in silence. Ever since I told Kurdt about the original timeline in detail, he had become convinced that this world was sick and wrong, and I was the Chosen Hero from a higher world who had come to put all things back in correct order.

I can agree with the former part of this world being sick, but not the latter part about me being some specialest little shonen hero.

I’m just a world record speedrun streamer doing what needs to be done to stay alive in this crazy world. I don’t do heroics for the sake of heroics or suddenly awaken my ancestral powers. More likely (if my speculations are correct) I’m not even the original me – I’m just an approximate simulacrum copy of the original human; a counterfeit human haphazardly dupe-glitch-copy-pasted into this world.

I’m not much anything, really.

Sorry for bursting your dream-bubbles, old dream-lighthouse keeper Kurdt Krúrick. I’m going to keep ignoring your quest-giver dreams full of obvious death flags. And I'm going to forget the Internet rumors about a sequel novel. Not happening.

I’m just going live my slow isekai life in peace and harmony.

...I’m not triggering some ultra-rare hidden death flags by ignoring visible death flags, right?