When the sunlight disappeared, we stopped at an abandoned homestead to spend a night.

A full day sitting in a coach with only small stops on the way took its toll on my tailbone, but it was still way better than hiking through ganglands.

Kimono cooked food in the fireplace of the dilapidated farm house and rationed it to three of us without showing open hostility towards me. It seemed she had accepted my presence at least. Our food was the staple of Mu-Ur: black soup made of dubious ingredients, eaten with hard black bread.

After the meal, I asked again to do some shooting practice with Crys and he accepted my request.

Before we went outside, Crys showed me how to clean and load a revolver using his own gun as an example. This task made me suddenly realize there was a nice sequence break I could do.

“Crys, I have another suggestion. We should get the weapons that Rainwoman and Mirim will use in the future, so that they don't have to waste time collecting their best equipment later.”

“The women who are in the Mu Continent and who will become our allies?” (Crys)

“Yeah. If the east cost crime lords don't stock the weapons yet, I'm not sure where we might get them here easily. If it's alright, I'll draw pictures and describe the weapons to you, and leave it to a professional to acquire them?”

“Sure.” (Crys)

I couldn't remember the exact names of their best equipment from the game, since they were unnecessary for speedrunning and I didn't play with their characters that much. Speedrunners like me mainly used regular blunderbuss trench guns as main weapons and simply pushed mooks out of the way with its knockback effect, or if it was necessary to kill enemies, getting a single-hit melee assassination with a dagger or spamming explosives on bosses were usually the fastest strats.

I had to go with memories of how their weapons looked like in the anime. According to gun otakus on the Internet, the designs were mostly based on World War I firearms.

“We'll need three revolvers and a rifle for Rainwoman, and two revolvers and a rifle for Mirim. It might be good idea to get a few spares as well, Rainwoman has a habit of using firearms like one-time use items...”

“Show me the gun you carry.” (Crys)

“Oh, right...”

I took out the revolver I had put in my messenger bag and presented it to Crys.

“This is my boomstick.”

Crys ignored the movie reference and checked the gun with experienced movements. Give me the specs, doc. What's the frame rate, does it run Doom?

“A single-action messenger revolver for Suleiman's army.” (Crys)

“Yeah, there was a Suleiman's messenger in the wastelands trying to arrest me or something. I don't know what he was trying to pull. I had to kill him.”

“Probably a chain messenger waiting for another messenger.” (Crys)

“Oh, yeah, makes sense. I really don't know much about real guns. Is this a good revolver?”

“It's a common six-shot cap-and-ball. If you have to shoot an unknown gun, use your weak hand. You don't want to destroy the fingers of your dominant hand.” (Crys)

You're teachings are scary, sensei! I might get too scared to pull the trigger. Also, you're not going to comment on me killing a messenger at all?

“The revolvers Rainwoman uses are kind of like this, except the barrel is longer, and the–”

“Did you take the messenger's letters?” (Crys)

“Right, yes, but they were written in code. Can you decipher them?”

“Sure. Later.” (Crys)

“Okay. So, the gun Rainwoman uses, the barrel is longer and– “

“You seem obsessed with doing things quickly. Is that how you got your street name, Speedrun?” (Crys)

Another sudden topic change. His questions made me lose track of my thoughts. He's probably doing it on purpose.

“Well, something like that, yeah. Time is the most valuable resource; a motto of the Ancient Ones.”

“What is your birth name?” (Crys)

“Qwerty Uozewe.”

“A name from the future.” (Crys)

“Yeah. And I'm really not a noble, it's a commoner's name in the future.”

I gave my account name again. Wait, why did he asked my name now? Do names matter suddenly? You're the one contradicting yourself, Crys!

Well, he seemed to be thinking about something profound, so I decided to draw pictures of the weapons instead. I had a vague recollection that gun otakus talked about New Model Army or something that looked similar to the revolver used by Rainwoman... or maybe the name just stuck to my memory because of the rock band? No, was it actually Crimean War Colt... something? I have to think very carefully.

After cleaning and loading my revolver like Crys taught me, we went at the backyard of the farm house and walked to a nearby rocky area to start shooting.

Kimono followed us outside without saying a word. I'm not going to suddenly shoot your brother, you know!

Crys placed a log on top of a nearby boulder and told me to shoot it down.

I put on my gloves and took a shooting stance imitating something from the game, and Crys immediately corrected my posture by punching my shoulder.

“You have never been in a real gunfight?” (Crys)

“No. Never.”

I experienced the Great Neuromeme War, but maybe spamming virtual cats doesn't count as battle experience.

“Go ahead and shoot.” (Crys)

“Shouldn't we wear something to protect our hearing?”

“What do you mean?” (Crys)

“I mean, I know protecting your ears isn't a big thing here and wasn't a big thing back in ye' olden days in general, but in the future we know that repeated loud noises will lead to permanent hearing loss. Also, you should know that long exposure tobacco products and fumes will lead to permanent lung problems.”

“You need to know the sound and pressure of the gun.” (Crys)

“Future firearms instructors might disagree with you on that...”

“You wanted me to teach. Did you change your mind?” (Crys)

“Uh... I guess I'll survive.”

I can't expect Crys to know everything. We don't wear safety glasses either. Soldiers here don't wear patterned camouflage and very few wear bandoliers. And most people smell bad, but it's not polite to complain about every little thing.

Well, I can't listen my favorite bands here anyway. Everyone has to make sacrifices.

Wait a minute... is this the in-universe reason why the anime characters yelled at each other all the time? They all had hearing problems. It also explains the scenes where characters are “whispering” to each other in regular voice and a third character in the same room can't hear them somehow.

Electronic earmuffs are out of the question, but I should at least popularize basic ear protection in this world. A start-up company for earplugs, in partnership with Crystal Arms Inc!

What can I use to make earplugs? Beeswax? No, bees are pretty much extinct. Candle wax? Maybe I should look into something like cloth-cushioned earpads...

First shot.

Yet another reminder that this world was not a game: instance audio that hurts players ears would never pass product safety tests.

The recoil, the sound and the smoke were pretty bad, but I dropped the log. Got it first try. Nice. Good knockback effect.

Weapon proficiency +1, auditory perception -2. Revolver equipped successfully.

“Interesting.” (Crys)

“Interesting?”

“It seemed like you were firing a gun for the first time, but when you finally pulled the trigger, you reacted like a veteran.” (Crys)

“Ah, well, maybe because I've watched lot of... training. Hits should proc 20 percent of the time for starters, although it shouldn't work like that now, I think...”

I was a beginner in real weapons, but there was a sense of familiarity, a strange feeling just like when I killed the messenger with a dagger.

The feeling of playing a game was still bubbling underneath the sense of reality.

Did my hidden gamer powers awaken for a split second when I pulled the trigger, or was it just my chuunibyou evil arm throbbing?

“Proc?” (Crys)

“Oh, it means the effect triggers with some probability, in this case hitting a target with a weapon one out of five times even without the associated skill... but that's just a rule of thumb from, uh, future statistics. Actually, no, forget all that. It probably doesn't mean anything here... But really, hearing protection should be a thing. You'll lose your hearing permanently if you keep shooting like this.”

“It is temporary.” (Crys)

“No, ear hair cells don't regenerate, the–”

Wait, what if it's only me? Crys has been shooting all types of guns since he was a child and his hearing seems fine.

I was a different type of human from a different world. Maybe people in this world actually had regenerating hair cells. Does that mean I'm the only one who needs hearing protection? There goes my start-up idea.

Is it the same for eyesight too? Resting recovery actually works for humans of this world, but not for me? That's so unfair!

Resting recovery was a thing in the game because blindness, deafness and other permanent damage to senses would turn the game into a disability simulator. If you were blinded in the game, you just saw pleasant whiteness for a moment and then your sight gradually returned to normal.

...Or does it work for me here as well? My feet did feel a lot better after sleeping in a soft bed, but was that normal human recovery, resting recovery from the game, or was it just placebo effect? If my body was somehow restructured to fit this world when I glitched here, then maybe –

No, I'm still getting earplugs for myself.

“Wait a moment, Crys, I'll at least cover my head with the cloak before the next shot. My futuristic ears are kind of extra sensitive to loud noises...”

“Lucranah, then. Tell me more about him.” (Crys)

“That's the next topic? Well, as I said, Luca is a crazy powerful guy who eats human skin. In the future, our main man Reavertooth traveled to Seitheargnagh and got captured by him for a while, but after a hard boss battle, he killed Lucranah. His followers went completely cuckoo after that, but they are only problematic in large groups.”

“How did Reavertooth kill him? No, how would you kill him?” (Crys)

“Hm, personally my first reaction would be to run away, but well, that would be like trying to run away from a hungry tiger. Reavertooth's basic strat in the battle was to stunlock Luca with level geometry and ad hoc weapons, and just keep hitting until he stops moving. It takes a lot of muscle and blade to pin him down, so I'd prefer to trap him in a small room full of explosives and be done with. Kill it with fire, it's the only way to make sure.”

“I see. And Reavertooth is a powerful person who will become our ally in the future.” (Crys)

“Yes, the twin brothers Reavertooth and Ivorythief, as I've already told you. Anyway, we should simply avoid Lucranah in every way possible. He's just a side quest boss and not related to the main campaign, and his cult only becomes a real problem about three to five years from now.”

“Lucranah cannot become an ally, I presume.” (Crys)

“Not going to happen. Too insane, too untrustworthy. Taking in unknown variables always mess up runs. That's a hard nope from me.”

I knew Crys kept questioning me over and over because he was trying to find plot holes from my backstory. I don't think I've left out anything important or lied about important stuff... Oh crap, what if there's a plot hole in the source material, but this world doesn't have that hole?

No, let's not think about esoteric things like that. Focus on the mission, focus on the mission!

I should be more careful with my mouth, but what I really need to avoid is the idiot plot where one character knows what's going on, but doesn't tell anyone else for some stupid reason. That is the true path to great two evils known as Stupid Misunderstandings and Filler Drama.

I need to infodump all necessary stuff for Crys now and Rainwoman later, in understandable format, so that they can utilize my information efficiently and save the world even if I suddenly fall out of bounds and disappear.

“You keep using words like glitch and bug. They seem to have a very specific meaning to you.” (Crys)

“Oh, basically glitch is something weird that was not intended to happen, but still happened. And bug is something that was intended to happen, but didn't happen, and that makes it weird.”

“I see. Like opening a locked door by hammering the hinges, or failing to open a door with the right key?” (Crys)

“Yeah, yeah, but on a weirder scale. Like, walking through a locked door without opening it or failing to walk through an open door.”

“Magic?” (Crys)

“You could call it magic here, I guess. Sometimes things happen consistently when you do specific things and we call those constants. Sometimes things happen randomly and we call it RNG, short for Random Number Generator.”

“And you have to do certain rituals to make these magical effects occur.” (Crys)

“Yeah, you're getting it.”

“You will teach these glitches to us.” (Crys)

“If it's at all possible here, yes, of course. I mean, they worked in the future somehow, but they don't seem to work here that well, or work at all... probably they don't work at all, but I have to do more tests. I'll definitely tell how to use them, if I ever find something that works!”

The last remark Crys made sounded more like a command than a question.

Although magic-level ultratech existed in this world, and I managed to kill the messenger with a Four-Thirty Roll, these specialties still followed the physical laws and rules of this world.

It would actually be quite scary if all glitches worked and everyone could learn them – wait, if glitches worked here, people should have already found them by accident long ago and started using them, right? There would already be whole industries formed around exploiting glitches, just like in the real world there would already be companies making crazy money exploiting ghost spies and pyramid powers, if those actually existed.

It's probably correct to assume that the glitches worked in the game only because it was an imperfect representation of this world.

I concentrated on shooting practice and kept answering Crystal Pencil's questions as truthfully as possible.

“So, sequence break means doing things out of normal order –”

And so on. I explained, although I was not sure how much of this esoteric gaming knowledge would be useful for him.

Kimono didn't seem interested in listening my ramblings.

Crys gave me more shooting tips and I tried my best to integrate them to my previous experiences from the game. The heuristics were the same at least: know your enemy, stay in optimal range, don't spend more resources than required.

The modern gun safety rules were something I had to dig from my memory, though: right tool for the right job, gun is always loaded, know what is between you and the target and also behind the target, shoot only what you intend to destroy, know where your allies are and their zones of fire, keep your finger off the trigger until you're ready to shoot, and so on...

After I felt I knew how to shoot consciously rather than instinctively and unconsciously, we returned inside the house to clean and reload our guns again.

Repetition was the mother of learning.

“Crys, what kind of business you are doing with the Lucranah Cult?”

“I sell them dueling pistols and sickle carbines.” (Crys)

Oh, I actually remembered the latter ones from the game. They were modeled after bajozutsu rifles used by samurai. Dueling pistols were probably similar to their historical European counterparts.

“Riders coming.” (Kimono)

Kimono gave a sudden warning, stepped on the table between me and Crys, and jumped all the way up to the horizontal beam that bordered the ceiling. Then she peeked out of a small circular window near the roof ridge.

Her fake kimono fluttered and reminded me of timelapse videos of flower petals opening. I saw a glimpse of a basque corset under her fake kimono, along with the daggers and darts girdled in her thighs.

And if you have to know, they were black, but I've personally never understood the Japanese obsession with pantsu shots.

“Suleiman's men, five or six, on horses. Coming from the northeast road, with night lamps.” (Kimono)

Kimono's hearing or eyesight didn't seem to have any problems either. She heard the faint sounds of horses galloping on the road outside and recognized the enemies in the dark.

“Mounted constabulary from Seitheargnagh, most likely. Regular patrol would have more men and they wouldn't ride at night. This must be a search party or returning espionage group.” (Crys)

“Are we going to run or...?”

“This is a good opportunity. Load your revolver as you did earlier and hide to the side room.”

“Wait a minute, an opportunity for what?”

“I will invite them in. I will offer Kimono to them for a night. I will burn their horses first, then I'll come back in and shoot them. Watch them through the door gap. If they try to escape outside, shoot them in the back through the window. If they try to take cover in the room, shoot them before they reach the door. Kill at least one of them.” (Crys)

Our hero, ladies and gentlemen.

Crys came up with a dirty backstabbing scheme on a spot. Was his reason to bring them inside instead of shooting them outside just to give me some training in real gunfight? Sensei, your training is too harsh!

“Can you do it?” (Crys)

“I'll... I do my best.”

Crys took out a firebomb from his shoulder bag; an earthenware ball filled with flammable oil. Yeah, this is how he operates.

In the game, a common tactic when playing with Crys was to throw fire or acid on a group of enemies, then shoot them while they were distracted by their own suffering.

Kimono jumped down from the beam and sat down on the floor in seiza like a geisha.

“Brother, they are not a threat, there's no need for you to take action.” (Kimono)

“I want to see how Speedrun handles a close quarters fight. You will only take out their captain, leave the others to us. Speedrun, pick one target and concentrate fire on him until he stops moving. Then move on to a second target, if necessary. Liberate these marionettes struggling in the coiled strings of Suleiman.” (Crys)

Oh, he said his catchphrase! How nostalgic. It was a good meme back in the days the anime first came out.

Soon the constabulary horses stopped at the front yard and the soldiers dismounted. I hid in the side room and crouched next to the door. The captain of the group raised his voice:

“In the name of Suleiman the First, I command thee to open the door and let us enter! Those who resist shall perish!”

Crys gave me a nod, then opened the front door to welcome the soldiers, bowing and apologizing profusely, acting like a regular sleazy merchant. Kimono put on a fake smile.

Oh boy. Roll for initiative.