…In the Black Forest, in the hidden mansion, in the kitchen, character drops an empty revolver on the floor. He stares at the side door, steps forward, then backwards, then forwards again, stomping the floor like practicing a strange tribal dance. He turns around, his back facing the door, and continues to take fast steps backwards and forwards until he suddenly disappears through the door like being sucked inside it...

Here I was again, in the Black Forest of Ur, in the Haunted Mansion of Cursed Forest sub-area.

There was just a narrow path in the forest leading to this Victorian-style three-story house, so we had to leave our airship at a swamp northeast and walk here. It was surrounded by dark, twisted trees with surface roots; all tree trunks divided in two, none grew straight. It looked like it had been abandoned long time ago.

The house was still a haunted mansion, but soon it would become the orphanage school of Revolution Movement.

It was called Inside Out School because most lessons were learned outside on missions, not inside classrooms. It was also called Secret Inner School because it was a secret known only to the inner circle.

Only the most talented street orphans were selected and trained in the arts of espionage, sabotage, infiltration, acrobatics, assassination and guerrilla warfare like shinobi – or that was the plan at least. It didn't work out that well in the original series, but with my help and knowledge, we could make it work here.

Let's not brainwash these kids to think and act like suicide terrorists. Instead, let's teach them how to protect the innocent and attack the baddies. Take from the rich and give to the poor like Robin Hood, defend the indigenous inhabitants and attack the corrupt governors like Zorro. Bring some vigilante justice into a world where legal authorities are biased jokes. Free the slaves and kill the slavemasters, kids!

I ignored the front door and walked at the southern side of the house.

I stopped at the side door leading to kitchen, and stared at the wall next to the door.

This was the place where my parallel world glitch happened. I glitched through this wall in the game and appeared at the east coast of Ur, hundreds of kilometers south from this place.

What an eerie feeling.

“What are you spacing out now?” (Kimono)

“Déjà-vu.”

“...Brother, order him to use normal words.” (Kimono)

“Klaatu barada nikto! Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra!”

“Speedrun, are we going in?” (Crys)

“Ah, please wait just a bit.”

This mansion was “haunted” by a crazy dude named Thor. He believed he was a ghost with a magical weapon.

In the anime, Ivorythief ended up here alone after he and Reavertooth decided to split in the Winter Forest when escaping from Caliph's troops. Without my tree glyphs, they would have surely done that.

When Ivorythief then went in the house through a window, he found Thor from the second floor and they had a long dialogue scene about burglars and so-called Ghosts of Strawberry Holocaust.

Thor believed he was one of the holocaust ghosts and his duty was to protect the house. He also believed that he had a magical hammer that came back to him when he threw it away, except that the hammer always returned in a different shape and form. Sometimes it returned as a stick, sometimes as a spoon, or as a pillow, or even as several pieces of cloth.

He went out, threw the hammer in the forest and when he returned to the house, the hammer had returned as a straw basket.

Yeah, did I mention Thor was crazy?

Ivorythief actually tried to prove to Thor that it wasn't a magical hammer coming back in different forms, which obviously triggered a fight scene. Thor was a tough mid-boss opponent fighting in his home turf, but ultimately Ivorythief won by shooting an arrow into his eye.

“Alright, let's start.”

In this world, I simply knocked the side door and then we waited.

When Thor eventually came down and politely opened the door for us, Rain immediately shot Thor in the eye.

No need to waste time listening his craziness.

Area secured.

“...Brother, now he's just dancing outside.” (Kimono)

When our party went in and started checking the house, I stayed behind because I had to check something else.

I tried to do the wall glitch backwards, through the side door from outside to inside.

It didn't work, of course, but it was worth a shot.

“I'm not dancing, Kim-chan, this is a glitch experiment.”

“...An experiment in foolishness.” (Kimono)

“Speedrun-sensei, are you going to tell us details about this place?” (Dancer)

“Oh, right, of course. First, don't go upstairs yet, the stairway to the third floor will collapse if you step of the ninth step. Secondly, there are some torture traps in the cellar–”

---

Slave Towers of east coast.

The young gang members ran outside with their weapons ready and their mouths open. Someone tried to start the “hunt is on” chant, but very few joined.

The shock and awe of a large flying ship with rifle barrels sticking out from all sides made them stay silent. They were clearly afraid, but since we didn't look like Caliph's troops nor Suleiman's troops, they weren't immediately scattering and hiding either.

Curiosity won over fear.

Our airship descended through the clouds and landed in the middle of a street.

I couldn't see the gang leader Shadowcut among the groups of kids gathering around the ship, but I saw Magic Word and Snowstone. I pointed my finger at Magic Word.

“I told you I'd be back.”

I didn't bother doing any gangslang choreys because I wasn't alone this time. I came back with the full force: Crys, Kimono, Mirim, Rain, Sorry Man, Dancer, Reavertooth and Ivorythief.

Do you feel lucky now, punks?

“Big brother... Stray Dog?” (Snow)

“You already forgot my name?! Well, just call me Speedrun. I came back to recruit new members for my airship gang and chew bubblegum. And I'm all out of gum.”

“You, who wish to see Caliph Tze dead in a deep hole, Suleiman's corpse hanging from a wire, and all worshippers of Strangers against the wall with a sack over their head, listen closely! We are the Revolution Movement and we want to see you and your deviant descendants in our unstoppable revolution army! Are you a talented thief of clothes, good at setting traps, or quick at thinking with your feet? Those of you who hold a deviant talent, no matter how insignificant it may be, we have work for you! You insubordinate sons and demonic daughters, come to north, and live and train in a majestic witch house! We guarantee free food, free room, free mask, and more firearms and ammo that you can carry! If you want to know more, ask me anything!” (Crys)

The opening speech I wrote with Crys caused quite a commotion among the gangsters.

I heard later that the gang leader Shadowcut had died in an accident soon after I left the area. The new leader was called Nightfire and he seemed far more cooperative.

After this preliminary door-to-door campaign visit to the Slave Towers, we left behind some marketing materials about our new, revolutionary startup company and continued our journey south.

Caliph's people were still in shock about his death, and the high hats at Rukhkh tried to to suppress the flow of information, but we made sure people knew: Caliph was assassinated and Revolution Movement did it. The ink was hitting the paper and both continents were waking up to the news: there was a new power player in town.

They expected us to hide and keep a low profile for a while now, but we wanted to move faster than spies and messengers.

The plan was to kill Suleiman even before news about Caliph's death reach Corelands.

Two tyrants in the same week. That should put some fear of French Revolution into wannabe dictators.

High-risk mission, but worth a shot.

---

Suleiman Onion Hat, the highest shahanshah and tyrant of Ur Continent, had a habit of standing in front of a wall-sized window in the top floor of his palace.

In the anime episode that showed Suleiman's point of view, he always stood there and enjoyed the scene of his warships leaving the harbor of Shikivan Om.

The thick glass of the window was bullet resistant to some extent, but it still should have been possible to headshot him through it. However, in the game it never worked; even if you tried to assassinate Suleiman with a Torch Gun, Suleiman survived and escaped to the Climbing Fortress of Te Csji Henne. Or even if you tried to blow him up with gunpowder or dynamite, Suleiman survived and escaped to the Climbing Fortress.

The game didn't want you to kill Suleiman at Shikivan Om palace, it wanted you to kill him at the Climbing Fortress.

But since this world didn't have glitches, it made sense that this world didn't have the limits of the game either.

I was pretty sure we could assassinate Suleiman at his palace here.

The actual problem was that Crys, Reavertooth and Ivorythief all wanted to kill Suleiman personally.

It would have been easy for Mirim to shoot him from the airship, but Reavertooth and Ivorythief wanted to use glider kites to land at the roof of the palace and hunt him through the hallways of the palace like a boss monster in a dungeon, while Crys wanted to watch Kimono torture Suleiman, then douse him with oil and set him on fire.

Rain didn't care about Suleiman personally, but she decided to join the mission when I told him the details of Suleiman's Quench Proclamation: The continued existence of diseased deviants is a threat to pure humans; thus, their existence must be quenched immediately, like a night guard quenches a fire ravaging his house...

Since Rain, Sorry Man and Mirim were counted as deviants, I indicated that it was necessary to adjust Suleiman's discriminating policies as a setup for the future. Suleiman's death itself wouldn't change the established prejudices, but destroying the legitimizer of those prejudices was a good start.

Fortunately, in the end everyone agreed to my compromise plan: we'll drop dynamite at drawbridges and gates to isolate the inner palace, land the airship in the small garden of the terrace courtyard, Mirim and Rain will shoot the palace guards, and Dancer sets up dynamite for send-off.

In the meantime, the twins will use glider kites to land at the roof and hunt Suleiman down to the courtyard, and they'll leave the last hit for Crys and Kimono waiting there.

And I'll collect a ceremonial flagstaff from the long gallery.

“Flagstaff?” (Crys)

“Future-proofing. If glitches ever start working, we don't want anyone else to have the SPIF pole.”

It's a low-probability high-impact wild card. I don't want to face an enemy that can use Spawn Point Infinite Flagpoles glitch.

---

“What is that...?”

“A hot air balloon? Why is it so weirdly shaped?”

“Rather than that, why is it so high?”

“Look, they dropped something.“

BOOM

“Attack! Protect His Highness! Caliph's balloon is dropping gunpowder from the sky!”

“It must be Caliph's deviant plan! Shoot it down, shoot it down immediately!”

“How dare that dog-king send his balloons to attack His Highness?!”

“Was that really gunpowder?! Take His Highness to safety immediately!”

---

In the long gallery of the palace, a young flag-bearer servant stood in an alcove like a statue, holding a three-meter long ceremonial pole with a red Sultanate flag attached to it.

I used long ladders of a secret passage to get down to the long gallery, walked up to the flag-bearer and pointed my revolver at his face. He was already sweating and his legs were shaking, but he wasn't allowed to move even in the face of death.

“Excuse me, I need that flagpole.”

“H-huh...?” (flagbearer)

“That. Give.”

“Y-yes, you c-can have it...” (flagbearer)

“Wise choice.”

I tapped the ornamented metal pole with my fingers. This was definitely the right one.

If you planted this pole to a player spawn point, set the flag on fire and then placed the setup in your inventory, magic happened.

The flag-bearer looked at me strangely. Are you jealous or something?

“I'm not giving this back, you know.”

“Y-yes...” (flag-bearer)

“You're worried about the gunshots upstairs?”

“Y-yes...” (flag-bearer)

“It's Suleiman and his cronies dying up there. No one is going to come back here to check if you're still following orders or not, you know. You should go to undercroft and shut the door tightly, if you want to live. We're going to drop some nasty poison gas here when we leave. Tell that to your friends, and tell them Revolution Movement was here.”

“S-sure...” (flag-bearer)

I let the flag-bearer run away. I didn't have any gripe with unarmed servants who were forced to play the role of a statue.

Suleiman's courtesans in the neighbouring wing… they'll die, I guess. Such a waste.

When we get back home to Loönois, I have to change the Suleiman's red flag to Revolution Movement's bluebird flag. Crys would hate to see a Suleiman's flag in the house.

Now, getting back up to the terrace courtyard was more problematic than coming down here, for a simple reason: I couldn't fit the three meter pole to the secret ladder passageway.

I had to sneak back up through normal hallways and stairways, but judging from the gunshots, explosions and panicked screams coming from above, the twins were cleaning the route ahead just fine.

And so it was: the stairways were littered with corpses of guards and servants.

Oh, there was the corpse of vizier Mannaki. He was one of the hard mini-bosses.

And there was Small Giant, a melee mid-boss that was counted as pure human, even though he was clearly a deviant. Well, hypocricy was the name of the game here: if deviants happened to be strong, stupid and obedient, Suleiman simply classified them as pure humans and kept them as his secret palace guards.

Suleiman's Palace was a hard mission in the game because you played it either alone or with just a few NPC companions, and it was full of surprisingly tough and varied enemies. But now we were taking the area full of mini-bosses and mid-bosses with the whole crew.

Easy difficulty.

After another stairway, I saw Suleiman's multi-tiered crown lying on the floor. Someone had stepped on it and crushed the boning that kept it rigid.

A few steps further, I saw the corpse of Suleiman's brush boy. This young servant had a one job: brush the decorative fringes on Suleiman's clothes.

I heard Suleiman's screams echoing in the hallway ahead.

Yup, we're probably done here soon.

We still have to visit Seitheargnagh to kill Lucranah on this round trip, and then pick up Test Subject from Crumbling Shores on the way back.

On our second promo tour, I'd like to visit the Green Mountain's main temple to pick up the Knocking Gun, and visit the west coast of Ur to kill Thiefmaster before he gets too curious about Revolution Movement.

Just dotting the i's and crossing the t's.