I suddenly had a feeling I had made a terrible mistake. We had a bit of a Lord of the Flies situation going on and I was Piggy's glasses.

“So you're the old brother from Stray Dog City the scouts talked about. Is Fourixar still the leader there?” (gang leader)

“Yes, brother, Stray Dog himself still controls the Stray Dog City Gang.”

The leader of the Slave Towers gang carried a firearm. As expected, it was the so-called Messenger Blunderbuss: short, muzzle-loading, double-barreled shotgun. These were the kind of simple firearms elder gangster characters used in the game.

The leader stared at me like an enemy. He was around twenty years old veteran of psychic wars – meaning that he looked like a heavy drug user. Thin, tall, pale, red-eyed, and ghastly – a true vampire in the making.

The leader descended from the upper floors when the kids chanted the hunting alarm long enough, immediately noticed my presence, and started waving his weapon and asking questions.

Did he realize I was lying about my origin? I don't want to get shot, please.

“Stray Dogs, huh? You must know Horsefly then.” (gang leader)

Horsefly? Was there an NPC named Horsefly in Stray Dog City? Give me a break, I can't remember the names of all minor characters!

No, wait. Is he just going for a basic interrogation bluff? Does he think I'm a novice in this game?

“Sorry, brother, but is Horsefly known by some other street name by chance?”

“No, there is no Horsefly.” (gang leader)

I guess I passed this vampire's test. Good thing we are in a hurry and he doesn't have time to ask more trick questions.

“My name is Qwerty Uozewe, brother. I'm glad to work for my stay.”

“I'm Shadowcut, the leader of this lousy bunch. It seems you've been taking good care of my little brothers and sisters.” (Shadowcut)

No, the leader was still in aggressive mode. It must be that, right? I'm older than him. He needs to maintain his status. I might be here to take over the leadership of the gang, he sees me as a threat to his authority.

I have to show submission and fast.

I went on my knees and put my hands behind my head like I was being arrested by a police officer. This ridiculous pose was seen in the anime during a scene where a smaller gang surrendered to the authority of a bigger gang. Hopefully it's appropriate in this situation.

“I'm glad to be of service, big brother Shadowcut.”

The gang leader was taken aback by my sudden submission pose. Should I continue all the way to dogeza to drive the point home?

Shadowcut looked around a bit, and seeing the surprised and confused reactions of the younger members around us, he sneered and tapped my head with the gun barrel.

“That's right. Work like a slave, little brother.” (Shadowcut)

And that was that. Basic enemy aggro manipulation.

With such extreme act of submission, the younger members now looked at me with pity instead of respect, but that didn't matter. Yeah, completely owned this dude with my massive cowardice. Wimpy protagonist for the win.

Arrogance is an unnecessary monster magnet for underpowered protag. Kowtow per day keeps the sandworms away. Run over renown, time over style.

I massaged my forehead while trying to hype myself up with internal pep talk. Shadowcut didn't hold back when he tapped my head with the gun barrel. He wanted to leave a mark.

I should probably acquire some personal body armor here. A helmet would be nice. In the game, I always tossed protective gear to go faster, but I had a hunch it might be a bad idea in my current position.

The soldier convoy, our target, had set up night camp at open ground just outside village ruins. There was around fifty to hundred Suleiman's soldiers, but most of them looked like young recruits.

The soldiers-in-training had pitched their canvas tents in tight and straight lines with an wide path in the middle leading to the mining vehicles arranged in half-moon formation. The commanders of the platoon had tents and campfires inside the half-moon.

The setup reminded me of the one time I visited a historical reenactment convention and accidentally wandered on the fantasy cosplay side-event. British Colonial era uniforms with far eastern decorations, Wild West era weapons, pseudo-modern mining vehicle platforms – exactly the kind of anachronistic mishmash of styles and eras you'd expect from a Japanese RPG.

There was around thirty Slave Towers Gang kids circling at the edges of the night camp, in hiding, looking for an opportunity to run in and steal some food or supplies.

The gang leader ordered me to go with the youngest gang members, probably to humiliate me more.

We had already waited several hours for the sun to go down and the fog to arise. Fog and darkness were enemies of our enemies, so we treated night and fog like allies. Unfortunately it seemed like our night fog cavalry would arrive late and with diminished force; thin strands of fog drifted in the area already and softened the view, but I could still see details.

Word, Snow and a few other youngsters were hiding in the same place with me – inside the foundations of an old, ruined farm house. Ruins were the most common scenery in this area which was basically the front lines of the war a decade ago.

The soldiers had seven six-wheeled mining vehicles that looked like flattened black trucks, and one four-wheel vehicle that resembled a black Humber Pig. In the game, you could drive several vehicles, but they were quite hard to steer – which, of course, made driving them fast a perfect challenge for speedrunners.

These vehicles were officially called Ore Transport Vehicle (OTV) and Slave Master Vehicle (SMV), but players just called them Flat Truck and Humber Pig. You could shave several minutes from RNG-heavy segments, if you mastered driving these vehicles in unexpected ways inside dungeons and fortresses.

Getting that Humber Pig would be big help in moving around. Self-powered vehicles were valuable in this world simply because there were so few of them in existence, and pretty much all of them were owned by military forces. No one knew how to build them, people just kept using the ancient vehicles left behind by Strangers.

The Strangers left behind a whole bunch of vehicles, weapons and machines that helped this pseudo-medieval world jump straight to World War One in less than a century. You didn't need gas or electricity, these vehicles moved with the power of "magic" – or so it seemed to the majority of the people in this world. Only the more educated knew that the power source was black crystal mined from dungeons. One piece of pure crystal was enough to keep a vehicle going for centuries, so people believed them to be perpetual motion machines.

We still waited. I ate my last piece of black bread. At first I was scared and tense, but then the waiting made me feel sleepy. I had heard about soldiers in my world that could fall in sleep anywhere because they were so used to marching for hours, shooting enemies a few minutes and then just waiting for something to happen for days.

Waiting is boring. Waiting is boring. I said it twice because it's boring.

In the darkness illuminated by campfires and gaslights hanging from the mining vehicles, my eyes could still follow some of the soldiers standing in guard. They were barely older than the gang kids.

These young and poor men were collected from southern villages by Suleiman's knights, trained and conditioned under iron boot, and then sent to the front lines. Old nobles camped in their safe cities and fortresses while kids fought their wars rushing and crawling in mud.

This was the big dictatorial system of oppression that war-gangs emulated on a smaller scale.

Maybe we could approach the soldiers with our hands up, like “we come in peace”, and make some advantageous trades as brothers and sisters in hunger? Yeah, I didn't think so either...

Suleiman's armies had a two-pronged relationship with the local gangs. In theory, war-gangs were enemies and undermined Suleiman's authority by keeping his territories in constant state off chaos and anarchy. But when boots were on the ground, commanders actually had to pay protection money for the local crime lords.

If they didn't, they would find their march through these areas quite slow and dangerous due to trees felled on roads and rotting bodies catapulted to their night camps, for example.

The law of the land said that war-gangs had to be put to death, but the soldiers on the front lines knew it would take too much time, money and effort to enforce that law. It was better to tolerate the small wastage and throw some old food rations at gangsters to keep them away.

Of course, the soldiers knew that the gangs tried to steal more and more every time. And the gangs knew the soldiers knew they knew. It was basically a test of courage for the younger members to sneak into their night camp and bring back something of value.

An annoying unskippable mission. Ugh, I'd really like to have Stealth Step skill right now.

Is it enough, if I run there and grab one pack of dried food? They probably expect more from me... I'm the successful older brother from Stray Dog City, after all.

Word and Snow seemed calm as expected, but some of the young kids nearby were fidgeting nervously. The youngest girl in the group looked at me like she expected me to take the lead. Well, I was clearly the oldest, but...

...Huh? Are we waiting because they expect me to go first? Am I the reason we're wasting time?

“Little sister, how old are you?”

“Ten.” (girl)

“Are you scared?”

“Brother, I'm worried they'll shoot me when I go take something.” (girl)

“Well, it's definitely a natural reaction to be worried about in this situation.”

“If they notice me, I can't take anything.” (girl)

“Then you should run away and prioritize your life over resources.”

“But I get scolded, and I won't get food tomorrow. I have to take enough for the leader.” (girl)

It's a harsh place, this world. I feel like crying myself. Forcing little kids to steal from soldiers and punishing them for not being able to do it is just pure cruelty.

In the anime, these kind of sad and cruel things were mostly pushed to the background, but you knew they were happening everywhere in this crapsack world. Well, dark things happened everywhere in the real world as well, and those things were still pushed in the background as well. Nothing new there. I'm just one of the lucky ones born in a first world country without constant war, slavery and starvation.

And this isn't even the worst situation. At least these gang kids have friends looking after them and they don't need to break their backs in open-pit mines. The great-grandparents of these kids were mining slaves under Strangers and forced to destroy their own homeland until the end of their existence.

Do I really need to take the lead here because I'm the oldest in the group? They expect me to plan this? Hum. Hm...

I did notice that one of the six Strangers vehicles looked familiar, nostalgic even. I could see that the vehicle had a gas lamp with a hexagon-shaped crack on it. This small detail reminded me of the Flat Truck that was used in the Noh Dungeon in the No-Man's-Land level. Maybe, just maybe, this was the convoy that originally took this vehicle in that dungeon?

And speaking of tests of courage, Suleiman's soldiers from southern territories were quite superstitious and cowardly lot compared to northern kids who were born in these dark – hm?

What's this? Did I just get an idea?

In the game, it was customary to throw a krúrick to distract a guard and sneak behind his back. What could I do to distract a whole platoon? Throw a bag of coins?

Avoiding large groups of enemies was just common sense, but there was one required mission in Mu-Ur where you had to move between front lines and simply avoid getting shot by snipers from both sides. The safest way to run that mission was to distract the snipers by setting up “ghosts” that moved in empty trenches – uniformed skeletons on sticks tied to a rope pulley system. There was even an obvious in-game hint to solve that routing puzzle: a short cutscene where soldiers talked about a ghost of half-invisible man floating in the warzone and scaring soldiers out of trenches.

“Ahem, listen up, ototos and imoutos. Instead of not getting noticed, how about we get noticed a bit?”

“Older brother, what are you saying?” (girl)

“Shh. It's a diversion, you know. Distraction. You know, if you take something small like a single food pack and run away, they might take a few steps after you, but they'll give up. Because who cares about a single ration when you're just a hungry little girl? They don't want to risk it by following you into the scary darkness. They won't care to waste their minié balls for something like that either. During that time, I could, maybe... take something really good.”

Wait, what am I saying? Why exactly am I imposing such dangerous challenge to myself? I'm just trying to survive here, don't run in front of a firing squad, me!

I'm thinking this mission in terms of running between gate guards into a music festival area. In terms of grabbing a sixpack from a supermarket and running through the checkout.

But it's an army camp, not a music festival or a supermarket.

Diversion. Music festival. Ghosts.

It was a crazy risky idea.

I took out my smartphone and turned it on. Only 20% battery left. Better make it count.

The kids around me looked at the phone screen light with their mouths open. They had painted their faces black, although a few of them used cloth masks. I had put some splotches of makeup on my face as well, but I was a bit worried about the ingredients they used here to make the paint. I hope it wasn't poisonous in the long term.

“Yes, young ones. This here is a device left behind by Strangers called Smartphone. We can use it to create a diversion that confuses the soldiers in the camp, or so I hope.”

After casually saying that, there were suddenly several kids who wanted to take part in my plan, whatever my plan was.

“Word.”

“What?” (Word)

“Want to be the one that takes this phone over there? See that ruined three-story building on that side, where fog is gathering? Take this to the third floor and leave it there, then come back here. No need to do anything else, just leave it there and run.”

“Why?” (Word)

“I just told you, it's a diversion.”

“That thing?” (Word)

“It's a sound device called Smartphone. I'll set this device ready to play on a timer. You just have to leave it there on the floor or table, and after a while it will play really loud music. That's all.”

“Why don't you take it there yourself?” (Word)

“You want to crawl and run to the soldier camp instead? I can take it there myself, yes, but then you have to find something valuable from the camp. Small job or big job. Your choice."

"Just go there, idiot!" (Snow)

“Shh... Whatever, I'll take the Smafou then.” (Word)

As expected from Word. In the anime, Magic Word was a character who always tried to find the easiest way out of everything and succeeded surprisingly often. If I hadn't offered this option for him, he might have just stayed back and stolen some other kids food pack when they returned.

Now, let's see... Favorites playlist. Korean girl groups and industrial glitch. Full volume. Full screen brightness. Set alarm, hmm, half an hour from now.

I bet you guys have never heard anything like this.