fix: transfer effects when merging batches (#18254)

An effect could be gated behind a branch. If we don't defer + transfer
them upon merge, the branch would still be marked clean but the effect
behind it is dirty but no longer reachable. It's not reachable via mark
either because that one only concerns itself with block/async effects,
and the branch gating the effect is not guaranteed to be touched by
that.

Fixes #18249

Little sad side-effect: Since we cannot reliably know _before_ traversal
if we have no blocking pending work left (the traversal could mark an if
block falsy which contains the last blocker), we gotta undo a
performance optimization.