To recap: in the world of Mu-Ur Quincunx, dungeons were a twist on the classic trope of highly developed ancient civilization disappearing and leaving mysterious military complexes full of automated defense systems for adventurers to explore and conquer.

But humans were the ones who walked out of dungeons and re-settled the world.

Strangers forced humans to work in the dungeons with their ultra-tech tools, then disappeared, and the humans who still kept slaving on even after slavemasters were gone turned to deviants and made traps to hunt the humans that got out.

Those lucky humans who were selected by Strangers to become slavemasters and quarrymasters became the High Hats. They kept the dungeon mines running decade after decade on their own, thinking that either Strangers would come back and reward their loyalty, or not come back and leave the profits from worldwide slavery for them.

Back in the day people often joked in the speedrunning forums that Strangers were actually a whole species of speedrunners from a higher dimension, playing some large-scale civilization simulator, and they had somehow managed to glitch their whole species out of bounds. That strange flame tank underground between lava flows? Just a setup for a lava surfing glitch.

Funny times.

Anyway, when it became clear that Strangers weren't there anymore, slave revolts started. And obviously there were wars between the new high nobles standing at the top, so they needed slave soldiers more than miners. Most dungeon mines were either shut down or abandoned because workers needed to die on the battlefields.

A few generations later, humans were free again. And after the new, free people tried to find new ways to live and work in a newly free world, it turned into a gold rush back to dungeons: take back the abandoned mines and collect the increasingly rare black core crystals that fueled Strangers devices and vehicles left behind.

From noble-sponsored explorer groups, ex-slave war gangs and deviants defending the mines on their territories, dungeons became the geopolitical hotspots that kept wars in Mu-Ur going indefinitely – like petroleum resources in the real world, except worse, because core crystals were minerals that you could use with minimal processing, if you had a suitable device left by Strangers.

If you were really lucky, you found processing devices from dungeons as well; this happened at the Rukhkh Mountain.

The three types of dungeon mines were labyrinth mines, mountaintop mines and open-pit quarry mines. But each type also had several subtypes – labyrinth mines, for example, were categorized to underground labyrinths, underwater labyrinths, and undermountain labyrinths with distinctly different tunnel designs.

Open-pit dungeon mines had two broad sub-categories: terraced mines and crater mines. Terraced mines had roughly dozen levels of spiral-patterned terrace steps, while crater mines usually had only three large terrace levels and you had to go down using funiculars or ropeways instead of escarpments.

Deep crater mines were obviously easier and cheaper for slavemasters to manage and supervise because slaves lived at the bottom of the crater with almost zero hope of escaping on their own. Unlike in terraced mines, where guards were needed on every level.

Wineep Dungeon was a pure crater mine. It looked like a gigantic meteor impact crater with a black earthen wall circling the rim. Yet unlike other abandoned dungeon mines of northern territories and No-Lands, Wineep was still in heavy use and had never went out of use.

Caliph Tze kept sending new slaves down the crater every year to dig deeper and wider, to keep the diminishing amount of core crystals in profitable levels.

Most of the black crystal cores fueling Strangers machines came from Wineep mine and were transported to the Rukhkh Mountain fortress for processing.

Destroying the mine, or freeing the slaves and taking over the mine for Revolution Movement, were not realistic goals right now. But thinking long-term, the Movement would profit greatly from having a local source of spice.

He who controls the fuel controls the means of transportation.

From the west, Caliph's slave caravans approached Wineep mine using a narrow dirt road that connected to the wide Palace Road. New slaves were inspected and branded, then lowered down to the mine using gondola lifts or ropeway conveyors.

This was one way to get inside in the game: get captured by a slave caravan and ride at the bottom without your gear. Of course, this strat was far too slow for a speedrunner.

On the opposite side of the big crater, all the mined resources – low-grade black crystal ores that Strangers hadn't bothered to exhaust completely – were lifted from quarry tubs using a conveyor crane, moved over with an aerial ropeway operated by specialist workers holding dead man's switches, and dropped on the open-top monorail carts waiting on the northeastern edge.

When the monorail carts were fully loaded, the monorail operators started the train and transferred the materials straight to Rukhkh Mountain fortress.

That was the routine we came to break.

In a rainy moonlit night, we approached the Wineep mine from south, where the earthen wall around the crater was at its lowest.

I knew a secret route up the wall and remembered the patrol routes of the wall guards, so getting at the crater edge for preliminary recon was the easiest part of the mission.

Same as in Bone Dune Station, guards here were more concerned about keeping people inside; they didn't spend much time worrying about outside attacks.

“The guards are well-armed, they carry regular army rifles and revolvers, but the guards who carry fletchers shoot Hypnotica Hypes aka Command Poison darts, so they are the real nasty ones here. Rain, you especially should shoot the fletcher guards first whenever you see them.”

“...Haa.” (Rain)

“Say yes, not haa. You sound like you're not listening.“

“Shoot fletchers first.” (Rain)

“Good girl, that's the money strat. Also, we should all remember to grab some antidote pins from the guards stationed on upper terrace. The guards at the lower terraces and at the bottom don't carry antidote, only poison. The guards keep the antidote in a belt pouch on the right hand side. If you still get hit by a flechette, press the antidote pin on your neck immediately. If you can't use the antidote, shove mud into your ears, jump into a hole, run inside a tunnel – anything that prevents you from hearing orders – and wait until the dizziness disappears.”

In the game, Command Poison was an annoying status effect that made friendly NPCs take orders from enemy commanders. And what was even more annoying, it made the player lose control over his character. Out-of-control POV character was a RNG nightmare – you could only watch in horror when your virtual body ran in the wrong way, shot allies instead of enemies and randomly squandered all the precious items you had saved for later. The effect of the Command Poison was short-lived, but the incurred losses were often immense.

“And before we get close to the edge, I need to do something...”

Standing at the top of the wall, I could see the two peaks of Rukhkh Mountain as hazy silhouettes in the horizon – the lower peak just under the gray clouds and the higher peak disappearing in the clouds.

I took out my compass card and briefly pointed the red laser light towards the higher peak, pressing one of the small discs on the card.

The compass card had a simple function to save a location – point the light at a target and an arrow in the card always points at the latest target. I didn't have automap or HUD, but I could at least leave a marker to follow.

“...What was that light? Tell me the reason for that.” (Rain)

“I'm just storing the Rukhkh Mountain location in the compass card. It's a setup for future.”

“The guards must have seen that light.” (Rain)

“They might have seen it, but from their perspective, it probably looked like the light beam came from Rukhkh Mountain. I don't think they have the courage to raise an alarm about some Strangers-related oddity that Caliph Tze might be experimenting with at Rukhkh. At most, they'll send a patrol to check this place in the morning, but we're already running by then.”

“...Hmph. Tell me before doing something like that.” (Rain)

“Deal. I try to remember, if you try to listen.”

At the bottom of the crater, mining slaves lived in small, domed mudbrick huts and pushed mine carts out of the cave tunnels that extended radially outward from the pit. They worked in shifts, all day or all night, under the lights of mining vehicle lanterns.

The crane claw kept moving back and forth above the crater, dangling from a long, tight cable bridge, picking up half-full carts from the bottom of the mine and emptying them at the monorail gondolas behind the eastern earthen wall, then returning the empty carts at the bottom.

Several operators were needed for the ropeway conveyor – crane operators at both ends moved the terminal bullwheels and claw operators sat on a rolling platform under the cable, operating the claw itself.

In the game, you could fight your way to the main crane operator cabin and play an improvised Easter Egg sub-game of arcade crane claw – instead of picking up stuffed toys from a transparent box, you picked up ores, mining vehicles or humans from an open-pit mine.

“You could drive a mining vehicle out of a tunnel, then use the claw to lift the vehicle while staying inside. Their bullets cannot penetrate the vehicle armor and they can't afford to cut the crane.” (Crys)

“Yes, that's actually one of the intended strats for this area, but we can do something faster. Sorry Man's indestructible body can keep the claw slightly open even if all the operators are dead and their dead man's switches have defaulted to closed state, so we can climb inside the claw safely even without jamming it with a vehicle.”

I was quite impressed by how Crys immediately discovered the standard vehicle strat. It took me a while to puzzle it out when I was playing Wineep mission casually for the first time.

“Kimono, collect Command Poison for me as well.” (Crys)

“Yes, brother.” (Kimono)

“Planning on turning enemies to allies, eh? Order them to shoot their friends and then themselves?”

“I assume I used Command Poison like that in the future.” (Crys)

“Yeah, you did. Also, I know a place in the Mandarin River area where we can get lot of Command Poison, so there's no need to collect much here. By the way, Kimono, if you plan on using the poison darts down there, save a few for the claw operators as a safety strat.”

“Brother?” (Kimono)

“Do as Speedruns suggests.” (Crys)

The claw strat was one of the clear differences between the anime and the game: in the anime, Rainwoman used Sorry Man to keep the crane claw open and that was it, but in the game there were several different ways to survive the claw. After all, if you played as any other character than Rainwoman, Sorry Man wasn't there and you needed something more elaborate.

One way, as Crys had guessed, was to jam a mining vehicle in the claw and get inside the vehicle when the claw lifted it.

Another way was to shoot Command Poison at the legless claw operators repeatedly and order them to keep the claw half-open.

This time Sorry Man was our main strat and the two other were our backup strats.

“Rain, you're alright with Sorry Man becoming a prop, as we agreed? It can't be helped, right?”

“...It can't be helped.” (Rain)

“Thanks for understanding.”

“So we have a way up, but what's the route down?” (Kimono)

“Actually, I'd like to hear what Crys thinks now that were here. Sensei might come up with something easier than what I have in mind.”

“Poison all their food and water, give antidote to the person we came to pick up.” (Crys)

“Ah, so it's that again...”

“According to you, Mirim survives her death, so it doesn't matter even if the antidote doesn't work.” (Crys)

“Sure, but, you know...”

I looked at Rainwoman for some moral support.

“...I want Mirim to live.” (Rain)

“So she says.”

“Then we'll follow your plan, Speedrun.” (Crys)

Hm? Crys immediately agreed. I guess he didn't have any better ideas for now... No, it's more probable that he wants to keep his best ideas to himself – he doesn't want Rainwoman to learn his tricks in case he needs to fight against her. He always keeps some aces up his sleeves in case of emergency.

Rain and Crys were an S-class team together, but I hadn't thought about this dynamic before. Some unexplained things from the anime series started to suddenly make sense, like how characters sometimes forgot that they had certain secret weapons or skills.

Maybe those weren't mistakes. Maybe the characters wanted to keep their secrets even in the face of immediate mortal danger – like players who hoarded health potions and struggled through a campaign holding items that were Too Awesome To Use.

I guess the positive lesson to take from this (if I'm reading him correctly) is that Crys estimates the whole Wineep Dungeon area to be less dangerous than Rainwoman.

“Alright, here's some insider info: on the eastern crater face, there's a string of hooks that slaves once tried to use to escape. They failed, but the guards took out only the lower hooks; the hooks in the middle are still there. We should be able to reach those hooks with the ropes we've carried all the way here and use them to abseil–”

“Are we going in at night?” (Kimono)

“No, we'll go in when the sun rises. Change of shift is the correct timing. And since weather forecast says overcast with rain–“

“We will set up a diversion again.” (Crys)

“Yeah, that too. Basic strat, best strat.”

We both looked back at the wall.

Dancer, our dynamite diversion specialist, was waiting further back in the wastelands of Wineep Isthmus with Michael Horse.