Did you bother with the games minor min/max element?

[Sephiroth]

I didn't know this was a secret to people. Earlier I thought this was a part of pretty much every RPG. Just a bit different.

(without Eiko-Marcus glitch, since that seems like cheating (and more importantly I am way too lazy to level Marcus to 99 manually and I would hate to stop in the middle so meh))

That has nothing to do with a glitch. You as a speedrunner should know what a glitch is and cheating means as glitches are used for those "fastest speedruns".