So I discovered that this actually does work with the cultists too, but it's harder to do and it took me a little while to figure out how to do it consistently. It seems that there is a precise moment when you need to pause in order for it to work. The easiest way I found to do it is to pause after the bullet hits the enemy; then unpause and immediately pause again; and repeat the unpause+pausing until you pause at the right spot. You can tell it's worked when the camera starts moving while you are in the pause screen. If the camera starts moving faster in between pauses (but does not move while paused), then you've missed the window and will need to try again. I could get it to work most of the time using this method.

This is probably only useful for speedrunning purposes if you can nail down the timing so that you can get it to work without having to lose significant time on the pause buffering, which may be tough to do.

I don't really think it gives an unfair advantage, since anyone can do it... And in my experience with other games, looking for these sorts of tricks seems to be encouraged. But yeah, fair point that speedrunning and going for high scores are two separate things.

Innnteresting! Thanks for sharing. Was able to get the top score on this level's leaderboard with the help of this technique (well, it's the #2 score, but the current highest score appears to be fake...)