I did a comparison of Auchgard's any% Normal run vs mine out of curiosity to see where I lost so much time.

Enter Mild Town 5.9 11.9 (+6.0) (Kirk lost 6 seconds because he didn't skip cutscene) Leave Mild Town 42.2 46.9 (+4.9) (Auchgard's Mild Town was kind of bad by his own statement.) Leave Forest 1:02.1 1:07.0 (+4.9) Leave Fall Town 1:42.5 1:49.4 (+6.9) (Kirk lost 2 seconds to first fight) Leave Centaur Cave 2:02.9 2:13.0 (+10.1) (Auchgard had better fights.) Leave Burn Town 2:50.3 3:03.0 (+12.7) (Auchgard had better fights.) Leave Pyramid 3:33.1 3:50.5 (+17.4) (Auchgard had better fights.) Leave Moon Town 4:18.8 4:36.8 (+18.0) Enter Warp Room 4:56.9 5:15.5 (+18.6) Final Heart Door 6:48.7 7:05.3 (+16.6) (Auchgard uses Spider Cave first route, we both make some time consuming mistakes though.) Phase 1 7:09.9 7:25.2 (+15.3) (Auchgard grabs an extra flask here) Phase 2 7:29.0 7:43.3 (+14.3) Phase 3 7:47.5 7:58.3 (+10.8 ) (Kirk spends 3 flasks) Phase 4 8:29.1 8:45.1 (+16.0) (Auchgard has an extra 4 flasks.)

Conclusions: 1: Hit escape to skip opening cutscene and save 6 seconds lol. 2: Based on this comparison I still think there's a good chance Spider Cave last might be a couple seconds faster. Analyzing where Auchgard and I made mistakes in that section might give a more definitive answer. Darko's run does this route as well. 3: Auchgard spends about 1.5 seconds on the flask at the end. Auchgard's extra 4 flasks on this attempt save about 5.2 seconds or 1.3 seconds per flask. There's variability, so it's extremely close either way. Looking at the boss health memory and analyzing damage per second might give the real answer, but we're talking about a couple tenths either way. 4: Spending the flasks on the final phase probably makes it more consistent and probably faster overall, because the fight is shorter and you don't need to dodge as much.