Isekai Speedrun

Mirim was the best main character for ranged one-hit kills – clicking pixel-sized heads in the horizon – because in her true form, she had three special skills: Auto Aim, Scope Eye, and Thermal Night Vision. She was like a tool-assisted sniper specialized in night fights.

In the speedrunning community, Mirim Runs were their own different category, or more specifically, two different categories: Mirim-human category and Mirim-machine category.

Mirim-human was hard difficulty mode with slow campaign times and Mirim-machine was a medium difficulty mode with some fast splits, but relatively slow overall times as well. The main problem when speedrunning with Mirim was that her passive Auto-Aim skill targeted enemies all the time and slowed you down – even if it was just a second here and second there, it added up in a multi-hour run.

Mirim speedrunners had to develop a whole different set of routines to avoid autoaiming, which meant keeping their field of view on floors and ceilings most of the time, and watching that kind of run wasn't very entertaining in livestreams – which was the reason why I didn't run those categories. I went for the fastest times, attempted neat tricks, explained the lore and entertained the subscribers with jokes and memes because my income depended on it.

Now, the problem with Mirim in this world was that her true skills were not active yet, and activating her skills was somewhat uncomfortable move. Her body healed normally, if it was a minor wound, but when she acquired permanent status damage, her body “healed” the damage by turning her blood vessels, bones and organs into machine parts.

In the game, this meant that Mirim-human speedrunners wanted to avoid status damage as much as possible to keep her human, and Mirim-machine speedrunners wanted to damage her as fast as possible to trigger her class change metamorphosis.

In the anime, Mirim's final form was activated after she and Rain had their first direct battle against Caliph Tze at the top of Rukhkh Mountain. My plan was to eliminate Caliph Tze before Mirim goes full appliance, so Mirim-human run it is for now.

Small parts of Mirim's aiming skills are already active at this point, though, and even if it's one fifth or less of her true power, it's enough to make her the Hawkeye of our Avengers team. In other words: we can work with sub-optimal Mirim, but everyone should be on the know about the future potential of her fully optimized machine form.

“In short, the bad news is that Mirim needs to die to gain her full power.”

“You want to kill her...?” (Rain)

“No, no, I don't want to kill her, far from that! I'm just talking about the possible future, what her death would do to her in theory. Sorry for telling it bluntly like that.”

“...Explain.” (Rain)

“Just like you, Mirim is one of the Dark Children aka Cursed Children. Just like you have a curse, she has a curse. Right now she probably wears an eye patch to hide her mechanical eye and she's is very confused, I assume, about how the world looks with that eye. With some training, she can use her eye like a night vision scope and shoot targets far away very accurately even in complete darkness. However, her final form doesn't activate until she dies.”

“...Haa.” (Rain)

“Haa exactly. It's a troublesome trigger. She doesn't need to die any time soon, of course, but you guys need to know that if such a time comes, you don't need to protect her with your own life or anything because her death will make her stronger. There's a price to that power, because she turns into an automaton, but it will still be okay. She looks the same, she just loses a chunk of her emotions and her inner organs turn to mechanical crystals. She knows she's one of the Cursed Children, but she doesn't understand her specialty skill, so we should tell her what will eventually happen and let her make her own decision.”

“...Automaton?” (Rain)

“It's a machine that looks like a human. Furthermore, and I know this sounds a bit cruel, it's probably better for her to die when she's young and healthy and turn into an elite five star automaton, instead of dying as an old woman and turning into a decrepit three star automaton. She's still a teenager, so there's no hurry. Dying around age 27 or so should be ideal.”

“...” (Rain)

I'm infodumping like crazy, but it should be okay. Rain is listening attentively and seems to understand the general idea without getting unnecessarily angry about her sister's death trigger.

Since she's being a good girl, I should also make sure that she doesn't use her berserker skill too much. Rain is not consciously aware of her own specials either.

“Rain, you should also take better care of your own body. I know you can take more beating than normal human and tolerate the pain, but your stats will take permanent damage eventually, if you run into fights without thinking your health.”

“...” (Rain)

“Basically, don't go into berserk mode unless it's absolutely necessary. And you definitely shouldn't take drugs to keep yourself going. If you get wounded, or you are in pain you can't handle, you need to rest and heal properly. Drugs are bad, okay? I know they force-fed you all kinds of drugs in the facility, so don't start using those same drugs voluntarily. Your sister will be sad if you start using drugs.”

“Haa...” (Rain)

I guess it's a bit hypocritical for me to talk about saying no to drugs since I used cognition-enhancing nootropics regularly when I kept making world record runs in rapid succession... which was a bit meta when I also used copious amounts of in-game boosters to go fast.

However, the boosters and painkillers in this world were dirty and grimy in comparison to real world designer nootropics. The main effects were weak, the side-effects were terrible and addiction developed pretty quickly.

“Well, that's what I can think of right now. My mouth is getting dry. Sorry about all this one-sided talk. I'm just worried because bad things happened in the future and might happen again. And I'm afraid that I might drop dead for some stupid reason, like slipping and hitting my head at any time. I want to leave all my knowledge behind for you guys to use, even if I disappear through the floor.”

“...Thanks.” (Rain)

Wait, wha–? Did she say thanks? Rainwoman thanked me?

That's so out of character!

Did I break her? Was she actually tsundere all along, but never reached dere-mode in the anime?

Rainwoman in the anime was a ball of violence and rage fueled by drug addiction from episode one, so I guess we just never saw her gentler side in action. This is some major character development, or is it character restoration?

“...What?” (Rain)

“It's not like I'm happy or anything, baka... Did you mean to say something like that?”

“...Ha?” (Rain)

“Nothing, nothing! You're welcome.”

It's like gates to a whole new world have opened suddenly. I wish I had Internet so I could report this for the community.

Dancer was wiping tears from his eyes. Eh? What's with this awkward atmosphere?

“You're a really good guy, Speedrun.” (Dancer)

“Really? I think we need a few more episodes to decide. There are people here who think I'm just annoying geek.”

I looked at Kimono and she made a disgusted frown.

Crys had his normal amused expression. Are we going to do a group hug scene? I guess not.

“Ahem, hey, since we are sitting in a circle already, we could all introduce ourselves to Rain and talk about our hobbies or something. Maybe some team-building improv? I'm Speedrun, my hobbies are going fast and saving the world. Kimono, you next.”

“...I am wordlessly impressed about the devotion you put into spouting nonsense.” (Kimono)

No, no, Kimono, it's not nonsense. I honestly care about your well-being.

And that line sounded like Magic Word's dialogue from the fourth season.

Try to stay in character, people!

---

Next morning Kimono looked like she hadn't slept at all. I tried to tell her that there was no immediate dangers in these empty parts of the world map, but she didn't drop her guard.

Well, I can understand where she's coming from. Just when she had finally started to trust me and Dancer, and stopped micronapping on the reins, two new main characters had joined the party. She had to go right back into her insomnia habit.

A peaceful full night's sleep was a rare luxury in this world.

As expected, it kept raining when we left the Petrified Forest area and continued our journey northeast using old, faded caravan routes along the rocky desert.

I chose routes that avoided all inhabited areas because Rain had a habit of getting into random fights with locals; when dark clouds gathered, peasants took their pitchforks and started collecting dry wood to burn the Weather Witch and her golem companion.

During the times we camped in caves, I repeated my infodump about a Cursed Children to Rain – the same info I had previously dumped on Crys in the ship.

“The seven Dark Children aka the Cursed Ones. First there's you, Raingirl aka Rainwoman aka Weather Girl. Your passive curse is that rainclouds follow you everywhere, but you can also create rainstorms with extreme emotions. You've created big storms in the past, but you don't remember those because you kind of lose your mind when you go totally berserk. The other thing is that you are, well, really good at dealing damage to enemies, but you have to be careful when you get too much into it and forget to wind down, because you don't notice the damage you're taking and how much constant strain your abilities cause to your body.”

“...You've already told this.” (Rain)

“It's important, so I tell it twice. Anyway, the second Cursed One is your little sister Mirim aka Death Machine. Right now she's a slave in the Wineep Dungeon, which is a large open pit mine type dungeon at Wineep Isthmus. Oh, the reason she wears an eye patch over her right eye is a certain slavemaster that poked her in the eye with a stick as a punishment.”

“...I will kill that slavemaster.” (Rain)

“Sure, sure, we'll kill 'em all. The third Cursed One was your brother called Shaper of Darkness. He created shadows with his blood, and then he could dive into the shadows and travel within them. He died while escaping from Bone Dune Station together with Mirim soon after they were brought there. I don't know much more than that about him.”

My info about the Cursed Children came from the anime cold open flashback and an introductory cutscene that played before the mission selection menu when you selected Rainwoman or Mirim as your player character.

Strangermaster Tze descended into an unnamed dungeon (anime fans had dubbed it Magma Dungeon) and found a heptagon-shaped machine coffin – or incubator or cultivator – and there were seven children inside the seven cusps. Tze forced the coffins open, which was probably the reason why their special skills were half-baked and more like supernatural curses than superpowers.

“The fourth one was your sister Sandgirl aka Blade of Sand. She created sandstorms when she cried. She cried herself to death when she was forced to destroy Set City with a sand typhoon. You've heard the story about the lost city of Mu in Desert of Rooms? This is how Set City and the surrounding villages disappeared from the map.”

“...Haa.” (Rain)

“The fifth Cursed One was your sister Locust aka Scourge of Locusts. She could call vast swarms of locusts when she was pregnant. She died while giving birth and her children soon died as well, but I don't know the details. Sorry.”

“...” (Rain)

“The sixth one was your brother Sarcophagus Artifact VI aka Lightburner aka Indate Master. I know his codenames, but his powers and triggers were kind of vague in the lore... He was referred to as The Master Of The Art Of Falling Down From Great Heights Without Suffering Injuries. I think it was a natural paragliding ability of some kind. He's dead too. Considering his ability, I'd assume he died during a falling experiment when he failed to trig or decided not to trig.”

“...” (Rain)

“The seventh one was your sister Sarcophagus Artifact VII. She was called second Lightburner after her brother, but I don't know her actual codename. Her unofficial name was Hollow Girl because her power was to turn her body hollow and she could allow others inside her, like wearing some weird hazmat suit. Her trigger was blunt damage, getting green or yellow bruises in her body or something like that. And she's dead.”

Rain listened attentively, just opening her mouth and nodding. Every time I said one of her siblings was dead, I could see hatred for Caliph Tze growing in her eyes.

“It's not like it's entirely sure that all of them are dead, my knowledge is far from perfect... I mean, if I could have jumped further back in time to save everyone, I would have done it. Not just because they are interesting characters with massive prequel trilogy potential, but because, you know... they're family too.”

“...Speedrun.” (Rain)

“Yes?”

“You said you want to assassinate Caliph in his sleep as soon as possible. Why are we heading further away from Reignland?” (Rain)

“Right, you're not up to speed about current world events yet...”