Before we left Sothyr town at noon, I heard the merchants at Tiktos gossiping about an unlucky accident that happened last night.

In a certain downtown tavern, a man had apparently slit his own throat in his bed, climbed on the roof of a tavern and jumped down on a paddock fencing behind the tavern.

...How is that an accident, Kimono?!

Furthermore, a local sheriff knight (yep, that's what they called them here) had been apparently called on the crime scene. It seemed that Kerllekan's prostitute girlfriend was the prime suspect.

...Kimono, you framed the prostitute for murder?

I felt a bit bad about that.

“Hey, Mary, did you wear the whore's clothes when you killed the dude?” (Dancer)

“Tch.” (Kimono)

“Lord De Fault, it's not polite to talk to women like that, prostitutes or not.”

“Really?” (Dancer)

“We have to spend a lot of time together in this confined space and you're making things awkward for the delicate lady, milord. Please choose more neutral conversation topics.”

“You're not one to talk about discretion.” (Kimono)

“Oy, you whiteface hag, I always speak politely to ladies!”

Hearty banter aside, the time of sleeping in a comfortable bed was over again and a long stretch of sleeping in the coach was ahead.

Crys flashed our passport for the gate guards and we cruised out of Sothyr like bosses.

---

Next day we had an unexpected random encounter on the road.

A group of settlers going same way had stopped their wagon at the side of the route. They were already setting up tents for a night; they weren't in a hurry like us.

I recognized a neutral NPC woman with short, red hair in the middle of the group. In the light of the setting sun, I saw her familiar face clearly. She looked exactly the same as in the game.

I probably looked like a creep when I stared her all the way while passing the group.

“Crys, can we stop for a second? I want to speak with those settlers and convince them to settle to a different location.”

“I assume you will explain the reason later.” (Crys)

“Yes, of course.”

Crys stopped the coach and I jumped out. I was still wearing the Bayonet Boots when I jogged back to talk with the settler group.

The men of the settler group seemed wary of me, so I stopped few meters away from them.

“Greetings, fellow travelers!”

“Greetings...” (settler man)

They had simple farmer outfits and straw hats. I was taller, healthier, and wore better clothes than them, so I looked like a rich, successful merchant to them. My sudden approach probably made them suspect I wanted to sell or buy something from them.

“You were ordered to migrate to the east coast by a noble, am I right? Move to the other side of the continent and start a new farm?”

“Yes... Why are you asking?” (settler man)

“Oh, so my guess was right? Good, good. I'd like to warn you about an area called Sharp Mountains, and especially about a sub-area called Lupio Valley. There's a bad case of highway robberies going on there, so you probably want to settle elsewhere.”

I went straight to the point. And now all the settlers looked troubled.

“We were ordered to go to the Lupio Valley... May I ask who are you?” (settler man)

“Oh, I'm just a traveling merchant, don't mind me. I felt like sharing free advice for fellow travelers out of good will, nothing more. It's hard to make money, if your customers are dead, right?”

I heard some of the women whispering about fleshmongers. I looked back to our coach and saw Dancer stepping out to stretch his legs like a ballet dancer.

I probably shouldn't have talked about pointe technique and pirouettes to him, but our conversation naturally went to ballet dancing when I pondered how to use the Bayonet Boots efficiently.

“...Are you after our women?” (settler man)

“No, no! I'm not a thief or slave trader of any kind. As I said, I'm a simple merchant and I offer you honest advice. Please take this advice and live a peaceful life at Visarion area instead of Lupio Valley. That is all.”

“You're not trying to trick us away, sir?” (settler girl)

“I speak only truth, young miss! Lupio Valley is a nasty place. It looks pretty, but that's exactly why highwaymen and other bad guys ride there. Honestly, it's the worst place for new settlers. You should definitely settle at Visarion area instead, it's much more peaceful there. The hills are green and emerald, the zones are marble –”

In the middle of my improvised advertising speech, I accidentally clicked my heels together and the blades came out.

Oh crap. The settler men took out their swords, spears and clubs.

“Uuh, this is not what it seems…! Anyway, that's all I have to say! Please have a safe trip to Visarion area!”

I forced the blades back inside the boots with a pointe work and dashed back to our coach.

Another careless mistake. I should have changed back to my own running sneakers earlier. It was too easy to inadvertently prick yourself in the leg with these boots.

“Dancer, get inside! Crys, start the engine!”

“What's the hurry?” (Dancer)

“...Ah, huh? They're not coming after me...?”

I looked back and the settlers were still standing where I left them. I ran away for nothing. I was so used to aggroing enemies that neutral NPC behavior seemed strange.

“Ah, well, I... Faux pas happens. The spice must flow.”

I sheepishly climbed back in the coach muttering random filler phrases and we continued our journey.

If the redhead is at Lupio Valley two years from now, a group of Caliph's knights will take her as a hostage and eventually kill her. I can only hope that the settlers follow my shady-sounding advice and settle at Visarion area.

If so, I just cleared a hostage side mission before the hostage situation starts. No one wants to suffer through a pointless autoscroller that ends in a forced hostage death every time. For now, I'll mark it down as a new single mission world record with total time of negative two years, give or take few months.

“Speedrun. You called us Dancer and Crys back there.” (Crys)

“Oh... crap. I panicked. Sorry, Phileas.”

“It is fine.” (Crys)

“Is it? You're not going to go back to kill the settlers?”

“It doesn't matter. We will leave this route when we reach the Reignland border, no?” (Crys)

“That's right... so it doesn't matter even if they mention us to gatekeepers.”

“I don't think they will talk.” (Kimono)

“Why so?”

“A madman came to give them a warning, suddenly threatened them with boot knives and then ran away? What a foolish story. A tedious joke. You're a bag of wind. A licensed buffoon.” (Kimono)

“So you're telling me there's a chance?”

I ignored Kimono's insults and changed back to my lucky sneakers.

Right, about the Bayonet Boots. Of course they didn't work as I hoped.

During a caravanserai stop, I tried hopping and kicking with the blades out, but no dice. I tried hopping down a slope and almost went head first into a mud pool. I tried hopping down stone stairs and hurt my ankle.

All I gained from that were weird looks and derisive comments from my party members, and laughs from random onlookers. Even Crazy Horse looked at me like I had lost my mind. Guh.

The boots didn't look so hot anymore. From my point of view, the main functionality had been stripped out.

Damn realistic laws of physics. Every time I try to bend the engine and break the boundaries like I did in the game, I can't help feeling that I'm moving with a straitjacket on, with chains on my feet, with limiters in my body.

The walls of this world... are too hard and solid to zip through.

Yosh, let's do more glitch experiments when we have more time! If you have the time to sulk, you have the time to click New Game. You need to accept harsh letdowns and get accustomed to repeated failures in the speedrunning business.

I came to this world, so there is one real example of a world-breaking glitch that actually happened.

I refuse to accept that Mu-Ur works like a real world. There's too much strangeness going on.

Speaking of strangeness, the mousetrap-like spring mechanism inside the Bayonet Boots seemed quite interesting, but I was afraid I wouldn't be able to put it back together if I take it apart, so I decided to leave it for now.

The mechanism was made out of Strangers black metal rather than normal iron or steel. Maybe the origin story was that Kerllekan found some items that worked like springs and customized them into hidden blades?

File Bayonet Boots under category Further Research Is Needed.

---

Several days later we reached the Desert of Rooms, a sand desert immediately north of Reignland area.

Big sand dunes, large rock formations, petrified forests and eroded landwalls between uninhabited sub-areas. Halaxy Desert and Desert of Rooms were pretty much one seamless desert on the world map, but where Halaxy Desert was mostly flat and hard sand, and trade caravans routinely crossed it, Desert of Rooms was a rougher area with soft sand, and trade caravans avoided it.

It wasn't avoided only because of the difficult terrain, but because it was rumored to be a cursed zone where many cities and villages existed in the past, but disappeared in massive sandstorms, and because there were also rumors about mystical rainstorms striking out of nowhere.

Of course, I knew the sources of both rumors: the person who destroyed the ancient Set City with a sand typhoon was dead, so we didn't have to worry about walking into sandstorms, and the person who created the mysterious rain in the desert was the exact reason we were going there.

We took a pit stop in a caravan village to collect food and water. I just waited in the coach with Dancer while Crys and Kimono went out to do shopping.

I rubbed my sweaty forehead with a towel and stared at the daunting desert we would have to cross. I had seen too many disaster movies where people died of thirst in a desert.

We had plenty of water and rations. I had a game map in my head. I had a compass card. Crys knew how to navigate using stars and he had my hand-drawn world map. We'll survive.

We just have to find the only place in the desert where it rains, break into a fortress asylum full of soldiers and release the most dangerous woman in the world.

No pressure.

Light clothes for the day, warm blankets for the night. Stick to the rule of threes: you can bleed for three minutes, survive in extreme heat for three hours, live without water for three days, live without food for three weeks, and abort a baby in three months... Hmm, was that last one actually a survival heuristic? Probably not.

After Crys and Kimono returned from their shopping round, our coach headed to a small, less traveled road going northeast.

Before the end of the day we saw the first border castle of Reignland.

Calling it a castle was a bit too much – it was just a three-story tower with a stone wall around it, but a worrisome black flag with a silver sunwheel was hoisted high on the flagpole at the top.

Silver sunwheel with seven beams on black background was Caliph Tze's heraldic symbol and coat of arms. As a former student in visual arts, I had to commend the elegant simplicity of the design.

The flag spoke to us clearly: we were near the heartland of Caliph Tze's power. If we would follow the route forward, we'd eventually reach City of the Sun – the home base of the final boss, an area full of mid-boss level enemies.

All roads in Mu lead to the City of the Sun, the hardest unskippable level in the game.

But since Reignland wasn't a required stop in this run, it was better to just route around it and move circuitously outside the northern border all the way to the Sharp Mountains. Or to put it simply: cross the Desert of Rooms diagonally like a bishop instead of hopping along the perpendicular roads like a knight.

“You don't get much soldier encounters in areas north of the border, so it should be fine to use the old roads leading to the non-existent villages. If we encounter a knight patrol, showing our Letter of Trade and saying we got lost works only as a distraction, so keep weapons ready, boys and girls...”

When the night fell and the small desert road disappeared into soft sand like the village where it had led to in the past, we collected our stuff and abandoned our coach.

Like a rehearsed ceremony, Dancer and I set our horse free.

“Goodbye, Crazy Horse. We can't take you with us because we don't have water for you and you might accidentally divulge our location to our enemies.”

“Farewell, Crazy Horse.” (Dancer)

“Run free, try to be kind, don't do drugs, and don't take candy from strangers. Remember that it's better to travel alone than with a fool.”

Save the horses, kill the nobles – that should be the motto of the Revolution Movement. I'll recommend it to Crys.

Crazy Horse just stared at us without its harness, waiting for orders. Dancer whipped it once to make it run away in the opposite direction, but it just ran about dozen meters and stopped to stare at us again.

“Just leave it.” (Kimono)

I took the role of navigator and shoulder bag carrier. Dancer took the place of a work horse and pulled an improvised travois-rickshaw we had built on the way. Crys and Kimono carried guns and ammo, ready to hand down damage to enemy patrols.

When we had walked over the first sand dunes, we noticed that Crazy Horse was following our tracks.

“No, you silly horse, go the other way!”

“Go west, Crazy Horse!” (Dancer)

“Kimono.” (Crys)

“Yes, brother.” (Kimono)

Kimono dropped the load she was carrying and started walking back.

“You're not going to... aw, not the horse...”

Kimono casually shot a bolt into Crazy Horse's neck with her mini-crossbow. Crazy Horse ran away bleeding, but soon collapsed from the poison.

Kimono collected her bolt and returned.

“Sand ants will hide the carcass.” (Crys)

“Yeah...”

So much for saving horses.

In the horizon ahead, I could see a familiar landmark – a black rock formation resembling crashing waves. We were heading in the right direction.

Out there in the middle of the desert, behind all these sand dunes and strange rock formations, the secret research facility Bone Dune Station and two new party members were waiting for us.