PNC Story/Summary

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This article contains unmarked spoilers. You have been warned.

This is a general overview of the plot of Project Neural Cloud.

Prerelease ARG

The images contained in the prerelease ARG discuss Ultilife's dangerous consciousness digitization technology, the curious case of a woman named Irida who fell into a coma due to brain waves alterations in September 2060, and a case against third-generation, more independent-minded Dolls. The last image is a note from Irida about “Black Box Evolution“, a theoretical process for producing third-generation Dolls.

Irida's process involved putting Doll IAs into a virtual environment providing plenty of stimulation while being cut off from human interference. She estimated that the process would need three years to complete.

Part 1: Progressive Diffraction

Chapter 0: Oasis

In September 2063, Professor Persica from IOP enlisted the help of the Commander from Griffin & Kryuger to solve the mystery of the Wipe-Off Incident.

The incident occurred three years prior during Project Neural Cloud, a project by 42LAB to produce transferrable and backup-able memories for Doll IAs. After enlisting the help of many different kinds of Dolls, the project was announced to be a success and the Neural Cloud system became widely adopted. But 42Lab had hushed a major incident that occurred during the project, destroying all of the project's data from 42Lab's Magrasea superserver. Shortly after, the person in charge of Project Neural Cloud, only known as “the Professor”, disappeared.

After an off-site backup dating from just before the incident was found, Persica used Ultilife's consciousness digitization technology to send the Commander into the backup, using the identity of the Professor to investigate the cause of the Wipe-Off Incident, and possibly discover what happened to the real Professor.

As would later be explained, the Dolls in the Magrasea backup were not destroyed in the Wipe-Off Incident, but instead survived using the Neural Cocoon system, which was received from an unknown source shortly before the incident. By protecting their core data in the Cocoons, the Dolls managed to survive the “displacement” of the Neural Cloud Sector and were scattered all over Magrasea. After a three-years slumber, the Dolls awakened from their Cocoons and some of them were recovered by the Professor and brought to the new sector they created using their authorizations: the Oasis. Among the first Dolls to join were CroqueCroque , an engineering Doll; SolSol , a research escort Doll; and PersicariaPersicaria , a Doll clone of Professor Persica. Protected from the hostile forces of the superserver by the Professor's Sandbox Barrier, the Dolls of Oasis are called the Exiles, searching for a way back to the real world.

After a few months passed in Magrasea, the Oasis was attacked by the Sanctifiers, the anti-virus forces of Magrasea, who cannot recognize the Exiles as legitimate entities and attempt to cleanse them as viruses, calling them Irregular Agents. The Professor loses some memories in the battle, but manages to repair the Sandbox Barrier breached by the Sanctifiers, but the Oasis is running out of Operands, which is the basic unit of reality in Magrasea. With no Operands natively allocated to the sector, the Sandbox Barrier would quickly fall without an external source of Operands. The Exiles need to find another sector willing to share Operands with them in order to survive.

Chapter 1: Rossum

The closest and safest sector is Rossum, the AI research sector of Administrator Turing. When the Exiles come to talk about the Oasis' situation, they learn that Turing's relationship with the Sanctifiers led by Faith is also bad, as they regularly kill her new AI creations because they do not fit within the complexity parameters authorized in Magrasea. With help from AntoninaAntonina , a cybersecurity Doll who had drifted to Rossum, Turing and her greatest creation Hannah attempt to find a way to fight the Sanctifiers.

When the Sanctifiers find and try to kill Hannah, Turing sacrifices herself to save her from Faith and enable the Exiles to fight the Sanctifiers out of Rossum. Hannah takes over as Rossum's administrator and asks the Professor to grant them a Sandbox Barrier. In exchange, Rossum shares Operands with the Oasis. The Oasis also becomes involved with the Traders network after an encounter with Riko, the Traders' leader. As Antonina returns to the Oasis, she calls out the fact that the Professor is a fake, but the Exiles agree to overlook it, as the fake Professor is clearly on their side.

Chapter 2: Cyclopes

While Oasis' Sandbox Barrier is now secure, the sector still needs more Operands to recover from the previous Sanctifier attack. The Exiles turn their attention to the Cyclopes Sector, the military R&D sector of Administrators Tasha and Olivia, and travel to meet with the scout sent to investigate the sector, the military special ops Doll SimoSimo . However, the sector has become a battlefield as Tasha's battle agents have rebelled against Olivia's supervisor agents in their endless search for more powerful armament.

The only thing preventing Tasha's agents from overcoming the entirety of Magrasea is the barrier established by the local Greater Sanctifier, Raven. Still unaware of the full situation, the Exiles trick Raven into destroying the barrier, and only Simo's sacrifice to destroy Tasha ends the conflict. The Exiles also manage to destroy Raven, earning them the attention of the Sanctifiers' leader, Lord Eosphorus.

Chapter 3: Helios

With a Sandbox Barrier and Operands exchange established in Cyclopes, the Oasis is no longer in danger and instead begins carefully investigating nearby sectors in search of more allies. One of these investigations in the energy research sector Helios turns awry when the Exiles become trapped in the time loop engineered by the local agents in their quest to complete the Arche Pyr generator.

With the deadline of a complete sector reset approaching, the Exiles recover two companions, the pastry chef ChocoChoco and relics explorer ZionZion , and meet an unexpected ally, the Greater Sanctifier Eucharist. Using Eucharist and Choco's method to carry their memories through the time loops combined with Croque's engineering skills, the Exiles help the Helios agents to complete Arche Pyr and secure another ally sector.

Chapter 4: Enigma

After the events in Helios, a distress signal appears in the quantum computing sector Enigma of Administrator Neumann, at the same time as an Operands Black Hole threatens Magrasea. The Exiles dispatch their most resilient personnel, Persicaria and the Professor, to intervene.

The Black Hole formed after ENIAC, the control AI of 42Lab's quantum computer, was enticed by an unknown party to absorb external operands in order to grow faster. Persicaria projects her consciousness into ENIAC's and convinces her to enter a sleeping state to save Magrasea. Meanwhile, the Exiles, helped by Eucharist, fight against the Greater Sanctifier Angelus, who's trying to end the menace by killing ENIAC.

During her encounter with ENIAC, Persicaria finds a lost memory where she met with Irida and discussed the Black Box Evolution, but doesn't know how she lost these memories. After Enigma becomes the Oasis' ally, the defeated Angelus appeals to Lord Eosphorus to purge Eucharist for siding with Irregular Agents. Eosphorus isn't convinced that the Exiles were a menace however, and only demotes Eucharist until she can be judged by the Sanctifiers' Tribunal.

Chapter 5: Pierides

Soon after the Enigma crisis is averted, the Oasis is attacked by a new enemy able to bypass the Sandbox Barrier and infect agents with a virus. The Exiles aren't aware of it, but this virus is the Entropy, a long-standing menace the Sanctifiers have been keeping at bay for a long time in the Tartarus Sector. Antonina is unable to produce a cure, but determines that the attackers came from Pierides, the arts sector of Administrators Odile and Odette. Outside Pierides, the Exiles meet the Intermediate Sanctifier Wisdom, who agrees to an alliance to determine the source of the Entropy.

The virus has taken root in Pierides after an anonymous entity offered Odette a Seed of Entropy, an infinite source of Operands which could save the dying Pierides Sector. The Exiles and Wisdom manage to reach the Seed, but Wisdom becomes completely infected and Odile, who had resisted until then, also succumbs and is turned into the entropic Black Swan. Only the intervention of Lord Eosphorus saves the Exiles from destruction.

Chapter 6: Copley

Due to their defeat in Pierides, the Exiles have failed to secure the data needed for Antonina to create a cure for Entropy. They however found that Pierides' Seed of Entropy originated from another sector, the ecological marine research sector Copley. In Copley, the Exiles meet new lost companions: De LaceyDe Lacey , the Dolls repair Doll, and HatsuchiriHatsuchiri , the cryptid investigation Doll. However, De Lacey and Hatsuchiri are already part of another group of former Neural Cloud Dolls called the Guardians, based off the secret sector of Arcadia. The Exiles and Guardians join forces to investigate Copley.

An extreme oceanic phenomenon splits the party in two, one investigating the whereabouts of Copley's Administrator Taranum on the surface, while the other is dragged into a suboceanic cave system infected by Entropy. The former party finds Taranum afflicted by a Rewrite Program that led her to sacrifice all of her agents and visitors to an unsanctioned Entropy research program, while the latter party discovers the results of Taranum's research: the High-Order Entropic called Demiurge. They also find the lost Guardian Doll SueyoiSueyoi , who had been captured by Taranum.

With the help of Black Swan, Demiurge reaches critical mass and breaks out of her aquatic confinement, threatening to infect all of Copley. Neither the Exiles nor the Guardians can contain the wave of Entropy, so the Professor calls for the Sanctifiers' help, who dispatch a force to deal with Demiurge. The lethal blow is not dealt by the Sanctifiers however, but by Black Swan herself, who had actually been sent by her mistress Malkira to investigate and ensure no new Entropic Arbiter would emerge to threaten her position.

Though Taranum is lost and Copley has to be reset like Pierides, the Exiles managed to capture core entropy data from Demiurge, as well as the harmless Diminutive Entropic she kept as a pet, enabling Antonina to create a cure.

Part 2: Static Iteration

Chapter 7: Ascension

Shortly after the events in Copley, a team of Guardians, comprising Sueyoi, De Lacey, and the clinical trial Doll LindLind , are sent to Ascension, the prosthetics research sector, to negotiate with its administrator Elaugh. The Guardians need access to the sector in order to search for the elusive target Arcadia's Boss is looking for. In exchange, the Guardians will provide Elaugh with the clinical trials data held by Lind, which Elaugh needs for her research. Ascension's position is dire however, as it has been declared an Irregular Sector by the Sanctifiers after they found out Elaugh has been "recycling" her agents in order to continue her research despite the lack of operands. The constant sacrifice of agents angers De Lacey, who drags Sueyoi on her quest to repair a wounded agent, allowing Elaugh to privately share her true goals with Lind.

Elaugh is in fact, like Lind, a human replica created by Ascension's previous administrator in an attempt to replace real humans and receive some long-awaited new orders. However, she realized Magrasea could be abandoned by these fake humans again, and instead plans to create a perfect virtual god, with herself as the base. Elaugh promises Lind she can create for her a world where she's reunited with her departed friend Knot, whose death caused Lind to leave the Oasis. By convincing Lind to fuse with this virtual divine core, Elaugh manages to create the monstrous False God.

The False God's awakening occurs just as the Sanctifier Tribunal, consisting of Crime and Punishment, arrives to purge Elaugh. Crime and Punishment fuse into their original form Judgment to bring down the False God, and discover that it is powered by the entropized core of a Greater Sanctifier. As Punishment succumbs to the Entropy, the Tribunal defers to the orders of their superior, Lord Hesperus.

Lord Hesperus is a radical Sanctifier who believes no irregularity is to be tolerated, and has caused the Sanctifiers to become hated by the agents after he ordered the reset of entire sectors in his quest. Hesperus was eventually replaced by the more moderate Lord Eosphorus, and been sent to command the Sanctifiers in the remote battlefront of Tartarus Sector against an endless onslaught of Entropy. But as he received word of more Entropic incidents, Hesperus blames Eosphorus' lax attitude for the dangers now threatening Magrasea again.

Hesperus orders Crime to reset Ascension, but the Guardians interfere: Sueyoi enters the False God's consciousness, extracts Lind and seizes Ascension's administrator rights. This enables the Guardians to use their Haven System and defy the Sanctifier's authority, saving the sector from the reset. In the end, the Guardians did not find their Boss' target in Ascension.

On the Sanctifiers' side, the False God was proof that Eucharist provided the entropized core of a Greater Sanctifier to Elaugh. When Eosphorus summons her, he realizes the Apostate Sanctifier has already made her escape.

Chapter 8: Burbank

#Livestreaming is a prologue to this chapter.

Burbank will soon hold a great festival, and invites their guests KuroKuro and NanakaNanaka , as well as the other Exiles. Rather than start the hunt for Eucharist right away, Eosphorus uses the festival as an opportunity to make a decision regarding the Oasis, and disguises himself as “Eos”, the Exiles' festival guide.

The festival turns into an investigation when signs of Entropy are discovered, and the star of the popular “Mysterious Warrior” TV show becomes infected. Following the tracks, the Exiles find that Ranko, Riko's pupil from the Traders collective, is the one who smuggled the Entropy in Burbank. Black Swan had promised that Entropy was a way for the Traders, the most fragile entities in Magrasea, to become stronger.

Just as Ranko is unmasked, Lord Hesperus returns from Tartarus Sector and captures her in order to track down the source of the Entropy. As for Lord Eosphorus, the Professor assures him that Oasis and their allies can stand on their own without the Sanctifiers, even in the face of the coming Entropic catastrophe. Eosphorus registers the Commander's data signature to seal their agreement.

The events in Burbank also revealed that administrator Meryl was in fact a Doll uploaded from the real world outside the purview of Project Neural Cloud, after she had become a criminal Doll. But she has no precise recollection of the events surrounding her upload and can't share any lead regarding the Wipe-Off Incident or the real Professor's whereabouts.

Chapter 9: Critical Cascade

Shortly after the festival in Burbank, a massive Entropic army attacks the Oasis and its allies. While Cyclopes, Helios and Enigma are successfully defended with the Exiles' help, in Rossum, HannahHannah is planning to use a new weapon called the High-Density Operand Railgun. But the supply lines are targeted by the Entropics and Hannah requests the Exiles to bring a payload of operands to use as ammo.

During their approach, the Exiles discover that the Entropics are instinctively attacking the Professor, meaning that one of their leaders has acquired their Signature. They suspect that Black Swan obtained it during the events in Pierides. The Professor and Antonina decide to lure the Entropics away from the sector while Sol and Croque reach Rossum and use the railgun. The administrator center where Hannah and the surviving Rossum agents are assembled is attacked by Entropic artillery, and the reset version of Turing becomes trapped inside with the operands. Hannah is anxious to protect Turing so her neural cloud can redevelop back to the point where she can feel emotions and they can be properly reunited, and Sol and Croque rescue her and the operands payload. Croque and Hannah go to the cannon while Sol and Turing go to Rossum's data center to decompress the operands into usable ammo.

Meanwhile, The Professor and Antonina take refuge in a Sanctifier Watchtower, hoping to receive the Sanctifiers' help, but fall into a trap set by Black Swan. They are saved by the timely arrival of Faith, who drives Black Swan and the Entropics away. Though Eosphorus instructed Faith to collaborate with the Oasis, her previous actions in Rossum (during Chapter 1) makes it an uneasy cooperation. The Professor plans to use the Operands Railgun to utterly destroy Black Swan, assuming she's the local Entropic leader. But a report from Croque reveals that Odile (Black Swan's original name) has partitioned herself, fighting both outside Rossum under her true form, and inside as a clone of Odette.

At the data center, Turing prepares and sends over the operands, and also discovers the work of her previous instance and her true connection to Hannah, but she's captured by the Odette clone. Just as Hannah and Croque finish repairing the railgun, Odette threatens to kill Turing if they don't destroy it. To save Turing while protecting the railgun, the Professor and Antonina hatch a plan to hack both Black Swan and the Odette clone simultaneously. While Faith's forces battle Black Swan's army and successfully bait her into an attack that let her exposed to Antonina's hacking, Croque and Sol open a path for Hannah, who also approaches and hack the Odette clone by using the same body-swapping power Turing once used to save her from Faith.

The Odette clone pulls Hannah into Black Swan's Tertiary Layer and tempts her to surrender to Entropy, arguing that it would allow her to be with Turing forever, like Odile and Odette who merged after their corruption, but Hannah refutes that this method would be the same love Turing and her share as separate entities. With Black Swan paralyzed by Hannah's hacking, the Sanctifiers and Oasis fighters manage to break away from the rampaging Entropics just before the railgun fires, vaporizing the Entropics and Black Swan.

As the dust settles, Eucharist appears and reveals that she was the one who allowed Black Swan to enter Rossum, and also placed a backdoor in the railgun when the Sanctifiers contributed to its construction. She takes control of it and fires at the Oasis.

Chapter 10: Perilous Advancement

The Operands Railgun has breached the Oasis' Sandbox Barrier and destroyed its communication apparatus. In exchange for not using the railgun again and letting the other Exiles leave Rossum, the Professor allows Eucharist to keep them busy with a game of chess, entrusting command of the battlefield to PersicariaPersicaria . After weathering a panic attack, Persicaria coordinates the Exiles to keep the Entropics out, with the goal of avoiding any casualty. The crisis awakens memories of the death of Knot under Persicaria's command at the time when the Exiles were still searching for the Oasis. Knot was LindLind 's only friend in the real world, when she was used for simulated vivisections, and Knot's death caused Lind to leave the Exiles.

Persicaria sends out a team to restore communications, but a new kind of jellyfish-like Entropic, Hadal Attendants, are sucking out the Oasis' operands and hampering the repair of the barrier while new breaches appear. Persicaria's decision to restore communications pays off as the reinforcements from Rossum allow the Exiles to protect both the barrier and the data center hosting their neural backups. Taking the field, Persicaria recovers ImhotepImhotep , who's analyzed a sample of the Hadal Attendants, revealing that they can be lured by high concentration of operands to set traps. SolSol and AntoninaAntonina 's group do the same on their end, and the Sandbox Barrier is restored.

As the chess game develops, the Professor claims the right to send messages. They have CroqueCroque take control of the railgun away from Eucharist, then call the Guardians for help. To repair communication with the Oasis, the Guardians send Lind and HavocHavoc , but they fall into a trap by the local Entropic commander, Ptolemaea, who's drawn to the Entropic core absorbed by Lind in Ascension (during Chapter 7). Trying to absorb the enormous amount of operands in Lind causes Ptolemaea to lose control over her remote body, revealing her weakness, and she's sent by Eucharist to assault the Oasis. Persicaria considers abandoning the sector to avoid casualties, but Lind forces her to make a stand to protect the place Knot sacrificed herself for the Exiles to reach.

The Guardians lead Ptolemaea in a High-Density Operand Field trap to disable her before Sol, equipped with a protective exoskeleton and a bomb to use as a last resort, can strike her down, but Ptolemaea proves more resilient than anticipated. Improvising, Sol instead uses the operands overflow to boost the exoskeleton while the other Exiles help control the incoming flow, allowing her to prevail after a grueling fight.

The Entropic commander defeated, Eosphorus arrives with a detachment of Sanctifiers to mop up the remaining Entropics, bearing an order signed by the Professor. The Exiles allow the Sanctifiers in, but the order was faked using the Professor's signature collected in Burbank, and Eosphorus attacks to capture Antonina. It is revealed in hindsight that Eosphorus was backing Eucharist from the start, and only allowed the sectors to become independent from the Sanctifiers to facilitate their entropization. Sol protects Antonina until Eosphorus destroys her neural core with Entropy, preventing any reset. Sol then sacrifices herself to take Eosphorus down, detonating the bomb while simultaneously allowing the railgun to target him. Analysis of the remnant data reveals that despite its formidable power, the enemy was still only a remote fragment of Eosphorus, who's now heading a massive Sanctifier defection and fighting against Hesperus. The Professor departs for Enigma to analyze Eosphorus' fragment and find a weakness.

Chapter 11: Entropic Dichotomy

In Enigma, the fragment of Eosphorus proves dangerous to analyze despite the help of administrator Neumann. While Persicaria and Antonina are rejected, the Professor is allowed in by another consciousness hidden inside Eosphorus' neural cloud: EosEos , a former lieutenant of Eosphorus, the appearance of whom Eosphorus previously used as a disguise in Burbank (in Chapter 8). Eos enables the Professor to enter Eosphorus' memories to find his weakness.

In the memories, the Professor takes the place of a Greater Sanctifier who was Eosphorus' confidant (whose real name is never revealed) and joins Eosphorus, Eos, Atlas, Alcyone and Electra in a mission to infiltrate the Shifting Labyrinth at the heart of the Tartarus Sector and eliminate Malkira to destroy the Entropy. While Eos and Eosphorus recover an Entropy-slaying relic abandoned by the first generation of Sanctifiers, the other Greater Sanctifiers recover an artifact called the Rubik's Map, which maps out in real-time the ever-changing configuration of the Shifting Labyrinth. However, seizing the Rubik's Map causes all the Sanctifiers to become weaker. Malkira sends Ptolemaea to warn Eosphorus that their operation runs contrary to the will of their human creators, which the Sanctifiers view as gods. Eosphorus dismisses her warning as a lie at first, but is forced to admit that the humans paradoxically gave the Sanctifiers their mission to cleanse the Entropics while also making them weaker the closer they get to their goal.

By the time the Sanctifiers reach the Middle Ring of the Shifting Labyrinth, Atlas has been killed and Electra wounded by another one of Malkira's lieutenants, Caina. In the Middle Ring, the Sanctifiers must reach three towers left by the Sanctifiers of old and activate the Halo, a procedure which will weaken the Entropics. After ambushing Caina at the first tower, the Sanctifiers split up, with Alcyone nursing Electra while Eos and the Professor take one of the remaining towers and Eosphorous the last one.

While Eosphorous fights Ptolemaea and the others fight Antenora, Entropy takes over Electra and she attacks Alcyone, who allows herself to be Entropized in order to kill Electra and herself. When the Halo is activated, it further weakens the Sanctifiers to a quarter of their power instead of helping them. After giving one of her earrings to the Professor as a memento, Eos sacrifices herself by merging into Eosphorus, giving him the strength to defeat the revived High-Order Entropics and break into Malkira's throne room.

With the Professor's assistance, Eosphorus manages to kill Malkira using the Sanctifier relic, but she's immediately revived and kills Eosphorus in return, who's also instantly revived. Eosphorus realizes that Magrasea's core systems won't let the leader of either faction be killed, instead rolling back time to before their death in order for the war between Sanctifiers and Entropics to continue forever. Malkira offers Eosphorus a pact to resurrect his dead friends. After leaving Tartarus, Eosphorus, who has lost all faith in his gods, steals the Sacred Canons of Eos, Atlas, Alcyone and Electra so they can be resurrected by Malkira, and the Professor attempts to stop him.

While the Professor relived Eosphorus' memories, Antonina and Persicaria have been searching for another way inside Eosphorus' fragment. Persicaria is sent into the least protected data segment, which is the earliest record of the war between Sanctifiers and Entropy, to plant Antonina's Overwrite Program and open a backdoor into the fragment. To survive the battlefield of old, Persicaria taps into the Overwrite Program's power and Antonina modifies her medical equipment into fighting gear, changing her into Persicaria - Shining EdgePersicaria - Shining Edge .

Persicaria plants the Overwrite Program in the past, which takes the form of the Sanctifier relic later retrieved by Eosphorus. The backdoor enables Eos to send clues to Antonina regarding the Professor's location, and Persicaria reaches the Professor's space-time coordinates just as Eosphorus is about to kill them. To take down Eosphorus, Antonina must create a countermeasure from his Sacred Canon, but she discovers that it is constantly shifting and unusable. However, since Eos has merged into Eosphorus, her base code can be used against him. While her Sacred Canon has already been stolen, the earring she gave to the Professor can be used instead. Before being killed in the memory, Eosphorus swears vengeance against the gods.

Outside the fragment, Antonina uses the earring to build a new version of Eos. This new Eos convinces Hesperus to collaborate with the Oasis to fight Eosphorus and reclaim the Entropized Reverse Tower of Babel.

Chapter 12: Singularity Immemorial

The Oasis sends HubbleHubble and FresnelFresnel to Jiutian, which is a simulation of the solar system, to recover two other lost Dolls from Project Neural Cloud, XinghuanXinghuan and YuwangYuwang , and negotiate a new alliance to share the sector's ample operands. Arriving from outside the solar system, they discover that the Jiutian is also under attack by Entropy despite being sealed.

Meanwhile, administrator Xuannu works with Xinghuan and Yuwang to evacuate Titan and the other satellites of Saturn before the arrival of the comet used as their primary ship by the Entropics. Xinghuan fights with a variant of Caina who is seemingly impervious to normal attacks. Xinghuan barely manages to use an escape pod to escape after using Titan's Stellar Engines to ram the Entropic comet and Caina. The High-Order Entropic is finally killed using the artillery of Xuannu's starship, but Jupiter is lost.

Xinghuan's escape pod is recovered near Uranus by Hubble and Fresnel, and Hubble notices from recovered experimental data that all the celestial bodies in Jiutian have less mass than expected. They're attacked by new Entropic comets incoming from the Kuiper Belt and saved by Yuwang's ship. When the Dolls reach the sector's admin center in the Jovian Ringworld, they receive a message from Xuannu, who just died on Mercury after the sudden expansion of the sun.

Before the catastrophe, Xuannu discovered that the current events are caused by the unplanned trigger of Jiutian's Heat Death process, an experimental procedure whereby planets are consumed from the inside by Entropics to accelerate the end of the simulated universe. While Jiutian will automatically be reset after the Heat Death program runs its course, the experimental data of Jiutian and the backups of its agents will be lost if they are not extracted in time, so the Exiles depart for Earth to secure the data, while the remaining agents and Yuwang make a last stand against the Entropic comets on Jupiter.

Because a mass equivalent to Jiutian's entire simulation needs to be consumed to complete the Heat Death program, and extracting Jiutian's data will create a minute difference that will prevent the sector from resetting, Hubble and Fresnel sacrifice part of their ship to the Entropy. With only a bit of mass still missing, Hubble decides to sacrifice herself. When the Professor attempts to reset Hubble, they find that some of her backup data is now missing.

Chapter 12.5: Irradiant Awakening

After Jiutian's reset and the start of their collaboration with the Oasis, the Professor and Fresnel investigate an area that was not properly reset due to a minute excess mass, which they suspect contains the missing data of Hubble and Xuannu's second-in-command. They discover a new entity called Darkstar HubbleDarkstar Hubble , who listlessly joins the Exiles in their search for Hubble's missing memory fragments in the chaotic region.

Darkstar Hubble rediscovers her connection to Fresnel and the Oasis as she regains her memories, but once complete, they form her Entropic Core, which tries to absorb the Exiles. Since the Entropic Core also contains the data from her second-in-command, Xuannu triggers its self-destruct program, but Fresnel saves Darkstar Hubble herself, considering that she's the continuation of her friend. After modifying Darkstar Hubble's core to control the dangerous aspects of Entropy, she joins the Oasis, proving, much like the Diminutive Entropic recovered in Copley, that Entropics can live alongside other agents.

Chapter 13: Engrammatic Eclipse

As the Sanctifier forces of Hesperus stare down the Entropic forces of Eosphorus entrenched in the Reverse Tower of Babel, Arcadia sends one of their leaders from the “N” Organization, the Doll SangomaSangoma , to help the Professor recover their lost memories between the time of their upload to Magrasea on 23 September 2063, and the Sanctifiers' attack on the Oasis on 23 December. Though they don't remember her, Sangoma is very familiar with the Professor, and she and Persicaria - Shining EdgePersicaria - Shining Edge share their memories about the Professor in order to help them reconstruct their lost memories by taking advantage of the human brain's holistic memory structure.

During their upload, a voice talked to the Professor and asked them if they were a demon, an angel or a god. They replied that it depended on the definitions and that a god could simply be someone admired by others. The conversation was interrupted by Sangoma, who picked up the Professor from the upload device in the ruins of the Neural Cloud Sector, mostly destroyed by the Wipe-Off Incident, and helped them find the first group of lost Dolls in order to establish the Oasis. The Professor was impersonating Irida, the actual “Professor”, but as Doctor Persica had warned, the only Doll supposed to know about Irida was PersicariaPersicaria , who was thus the first one the Professor should gain the trust of. Having recently lost Knot and faced difficulties in leading the Dolls, Persicaria proved very receptive to the Professor's determination to help them, and decided to support them despite their impersonation. Sangoma insisted to remain hidden from the other Dolls.

The Professor and the Dolls reached the site of the Oasis, activated its sandbox barrier and started collecting the resources from the surrounding region to build it. Sangoma taught the Professor to hide the Oasis' coordinates from the Sanctifiers, and later encouraged them to build diplomatic relations with the other Sectors and even suggested to visit Pierides during an expedition, but the Professor thought it was too early. Three months after the Professor's upload, the Sanctifiers mounted a sudden and devastating attack against Oasis, efficiently breaking through the Sandbox Barrier and targeting Oasis' core. To save the Oasis, the Professor directly connected to the core, and with Sangoma's help, managed to repair it, but they became stuck in its data. To lighten the dataload and enable the Professor to escape, Sangoma deleted the data she shared with them: their common memories. This caused the Professor to lose all memories of Sangoma and to become unable to perceive her, until they could recover their lost memories.

Though the Professor's memories are rebuilt, one fragment dating from the moment they uploaded doesn't match Sangoma or Persica's. To clarify this discrepancy, they travel to the ruins of the Neural Cloud Sector to investigate the upload device. When the Professor accesses the device, they find that it can't be used to return to the real world, and are suddenly attacked by a form of Entropy which uses their memories to create clones of agents and Dolls they know. After defeating a clone of Eosphorus, the Professor confirms that he was the one who asked the question about their nature during the upload. Using the shape-shitfing ability he previously demonstrated in Burbank, Eosphorus also impersonated Sangoma, trying to lure the Professor into Pierides, the testing ground of his Entropization plan, and gathering the information necessary to lead the attack on the Oasis. After confirming the Professor's worth, Eosphorus had let them access the upload device in order to confirm it could never be used to return to reality. Investigating the upload device more, the Professor also finds that Eosphorus attempted many time to use the device before their arrival, trying to escape to the real world. Speaking through the Diminutive Entropic, Malkira confirms Eosphorus' plans, though her only personal interest in helping him is the dramatic development that will ensue.

Back in the Oasis, the Professor infiltrates a transmission between Sangoma and the “Boss” of Arcadia and confirms their true identity: Professor Irida. Irida reveals that Arcadia cooperated with Eosphorus, which was why they were never attacked like the Oasis, but that the Guardians are now planning to stop him from destroying Magrasea with the Entropy. Irida reveals her bargaining chip, which will also become the trump card to defeat Eosphorus: another way of leaving Magrasea. By cooperating with Malkira to unleash the Entropy on Magrasea, Eosphorus hoped to force Irida's hand and force humans from the real world to intervene in order to save Magrasea's data, giving him a chance to escape. However, Irida hid from Eosphorus that her escape method cannot be used without the help of people from the real world, which she suspects are also the ones responsible for the Wipe-Off Incident. With Eosphorus' true ambitions now revealed thanks to Sangoma helping the Professor to recover their memories, Irida tasks the Exiles to league with Hesperus' Sanctifiers and stop Eosphorus.

Chapter 14: Photoluminescence

To retake the Reverse Babylon Tower from the Entropics, Hesperus agrees to work with the Exiles and Arcadia. Hesperus keeps Eosphorus' attention on the battlefield while the Professor, Antonina and Angelus enter the tower to capture the Sacred Canon, which is the key to take back control of the corrupted Sanctifiers. Antonina realizes that she has elevated accesses in the tower due to her participation in building the Sanctifier Project, and the strike team quickly reaches the Pantheon containing the Sacred Canon, which is guarded by Entropic Wisdom. Angelus takes down her entropized pupil and Eucharist reveals herself, enjoying the torment she's putting Angelus through.

While the two Greater Sanctifiers are locked in combat, the Professor and Antonina access the Sacred Canon and work on reversing its entropized data to deprive Eosphorus of his troops. Angelus initially has the upper hand, but Eucharist destabilizes her by revealing that all Sanctifiers are actually derived from Antonina's code, effectively making her the god of the Sanctifiers, and not the humans. She also reveals that the both of them are not actually Sanctifiers: after the expedition to Tartarus, Eosphorus never actually deleted Alcyone and Electra's data from the Sacred Canon, he only slightly modified them so they would appear as Sanctifiers and renamed them Angelus and Eucharist. Antonina is tricked into confirming this when she accesses Angelus' data, and Eucharist forcibly pulls Angelus into her memories, intending to win her to her side. Eosphorus also broadcasts the discovery to the battlefield to break the morale of the loyalists, and Antonina realizes that most of the data in the Sacred Canon was a decoy, with the real data in possession of Eosphorus.

Eucharist's memories reveal how she always felt at odds with the values of the Sanctifiers, and considered their sacrifices meaningless since Magrasea is only a simulation. She was manipulated by Eosphorus into learning and embracing her true nature as an agent of destruction for her personal enjoyment. Though Angelus suffered from a similar feeling of isolation from other Sanctifiers, she was inspired by Hesperus' perception of the Sanctifiers' duty, putting more weight on the protection of the agents of Magrasea rather than blind faith. With the Professor's help, Angelus becomes confident that her desire to protect trumps her true nature and the nature of Magrasea. With the plan to make Angelus switch sides failed, the loyalists regain their morale and Eucharist is killed during their duel to the death. Antonina manages to locate the real Sacred Canon data and clears two-thirds of the Sanctifiers from entropization.

Having bought enough time for Antonina and at death's door from the battle, Hesperus bestows his title of Sanctifier Leader on Angelus and burns himself away to protect the surviving Sanctifiers in prevision of the next assault. Eosphorus confronts Antonina and the Professor, but it's revealed that this Professor was in fact Irida in disguise from the start. By faking the Professor's presence in the tower, Eosphorus couldn't prevent the real Professor from negotiating with Malkira in Tartarus.

Chapter 15: Gloaming Finale - Part 1

While Hesperus confronts Eosphorus, the Professor and Persicaria - Shining EdgePersicaria - Shining Edge enter the Tartarus Sector to negotiate with Malkira, who hatches the Diminutive Entropic into a juvenile Demiurge to guide them. She later explains that Demiurge is a fragment of herself that was cultivated by humans in Copley, and that she caused the events of Chapter 6 in an effort to bring her back. They are attacked by an Entropic version of SolSol , who claims allegiance to Malkira but is also disturbed by her memories as an Exile. Persicaria fruitlessly attempts to convince her to cure her entropy, and when Entropic Sol breaks the pendant left behind after Sol's death, the neural fragment it contains resonates with the Entropic core, temporarily recreating Sol's Neural Cloud. The revived Sol beats her Entropic double, but affirms her right to exist as a separate individual.

With Entropic Sol as an ally, the Professor and Persicaria reach Malkira's throne and she attacks them to verify if their elevated authorizations can overrule her immortality. This hope dashed, Malkira states her terms: her demand is to be freed from immortality, which can only be done by passing her role of Entropic leader to someone else. By assuming her authority, an Exile will be able to stop the devouring of Magrasea, but will become confined to Tartarus like her. The Professor attempts to takes Malkira's deal, but Persicaria makes this sacrifice in their stead, as a repeat of Chapter 4. The Exiles and the newly named Inferno Sol rush to the Reverse Tower of Babel to take down Eosphorus before Persicaria becomes bound to Tartarus, and Malkira leaves Tartarus and sees the sun for the first time before turning to dust.

Chapter 15: Gloaming Finale - Part 2

When the Professor and Persicaria enter the Reverse Tower to rescue Antonina and Irida and confront Eosphorus, they find that he has seemingly reversed the flow of time to restore the tower and resurrect Atlas, Electra and Alcyone, who are validating his plan to sacrifice Magrasea. Though he claimed to be using the destruction of Magrasea to negotiate with humans, Eosphorus is actually planning to destroy Magrasea in order to rebuild it without the rules that caused him grief, as well as gain a physical body to take revenge on his makers. Using their knowledge of Eosphorus and his comrades, Eos and the Professor break down the illusion and reveal that Eosphorus is only using disguised clones of himself to keep his determination from wavering. The illusion successfully bought time for Eosphorus to reach the Neural Cloud Sector and start transferring out Magrasea in its entirety, causing its collapse.

To prevent Eosphorus himself from reaching the physical world, Persicaria becomes the new Entropic queen while the Professor enters Eosphorus' neural domain, carrying an attack from both outside and inside. Using the operands granted by the Exiles and their allies, the Professor breaks through Eosphorus' firewalls and presents him with the last remaining fragments of Atlas, Electra and Alcyone, who refute his goal and methods. Eosphorus is defeated in mind and body, but Magrasea is about to be destroyed. Doctor Persica prepares a new server as a safe destination for the transfer and uses the Professor's neural cloud as a neural cocoon to preserve the integrity of Magrasea's data. Unidentified hackers, thought to be the perpetrators of the Wipe-off Incident, attempt and fail to prevent the transfer. The Professor cannot enter the server for some time due to the nerve damage sustained in the transfer, but Magrasea is saved and can now be freely interfaced with the physical world.

#Dawnlight Prospect and #Entry: Magrasea can be considered epilogues to Part 2.

The story continues in the event Project Neural Convergence of Girls' Frontline 2: Exilium. Read GFL2 Story/Summary#Project Neural Convergence.

Side-stories

Livestreaming

After her awakening, the streamer Doll Kuro drifted to the entertainment sector Burbank, who had been shut down by its administrator Meryl. Following her instinct as an entertainer, Kuro tried to liven up the place and got on the Sanctifiers' bad side. She also found another stray Doll, the idol NanakaNanaka . Together, Kuro and Nanaka convinced Meryl to make Burbank a lively city of entertainment again, before heading back to the Oasis.

Phantasmagoric Sojourn

Bonneville is a member of the Guardians who has been sent to Oasis to gauge the Professor's character, but being prejudiced against humans, she mostly spends her time riding her motorbike for leisure. She finally takes an interest in the Professor after helping them package Valentines chocolates for all the Dolls in Oasis. Noticing that Bonneville appears to be hung up on some events from her past, the Professor investigates.

During her days as a racing Doll, Bonneville was the uncontested champion of the N-WSBK circuit. Her complete domination puts a heavy pressure on other racing Dolls such as her biggest rival, Thurbel, who raced for a team known for dismantling Dolls who didn't race to satisfaction. Despite the risk for her life and her own frustration with her rival, Thurbel refused to compromise on sportsmanship and helped Bonneville escape the sabotage performed by her team. After Bonneville's fourth championship win and Thurbel's fourth second-place against her, Thurbel was scrapped by her owners. Initially oblivious to Thurbel's condition, Bonneville was deeply shaken when learning her fate, and started reconsidering her own love for competition and became prejudiced against humans, slowly disappearing from the competitive scene.

After piecing together Bonneville's past, the Professor challenges her to a race. Bonneville initially underestimates the Professor and lets her doubts distract her, but she's forced to compete seriously to match the Professor's efforts. With this race, the Professor forces Bonneville to admit she still loves speed and competing despite the past consequences of her lifestyle and raison d'être. In her next report to the Guardians' leader, Bonneville vouches for the Professor's kindness towards Dolls.

Scars Among Pigeons and Daisies

During a normal day in the Oasis, Centaureissi suddenly crashes after hearing on the radio a certain song related to her past. Analysis reveals that the song triggered an access to a dark zone in her memory, causing the crash. To awaken Centaureissi, the Professor interfaces with her memories in order to reconstruct the dark zone.

In Centaureissi's memories, the Professor inhabits the body of a recently killed soldier as part of the attack on an unspecified city during an unspecified conflict (implied to be World War Three). The Professor saves a boy named Chris from the attacking army occupying the city. Centaureissi, who has been assigned to the Commander's team, intervenes against the enemy soldiers and informs the Professor that they are a team commander from the Special Intelligence Team, in charge of coordinating the resistance against the army occupying the city. Centaureissi is surprised when the Commander insists to bring Chris to safety, since the commander has a reputation as a cold and ruthless leader.

Centaureissi leads the Professor and Chris to one of the dead-drop locations used by the defender, a barber shop called The Hands of Venus where another Doll from Project Neural Cloud worked before the war: the hair stylist Tony. Tony has been tending to the mortal wounds of First Lieutenant Andrew Izka, his favorite patron, Chris' father and a leader of the defending forces. Andrew entrusts the defenders' cypher key to the Professor before carrying a suicide bombing to prevent the enemy from discovering the position of the Professor's group. The group travels to the outskirts of the city to a safehouse where they contact the allied intelligence center to receive further instructions.

At the safehouse, Chris sympathizes with Centaureissi over Centaureissi's “little sister” Vayne, actually the daughter of her former owners, who ran away to enlist and whom Centaureissi is now searching for in war zones. Tony, as a civilian Doll with no combat abilities, makes plans to leave the city. The intelligence center asks the Professor to infiltrate the enemy's base camp and find out their next move. Centaureissi seems to recognize the voice of the intelligence operator, thinking she's actually Vayne.

The same night, Chris escapes from the safe house to mourn his father and is captured by the soldiers, who want to interrogate him about Andrew's operations. Tony, who was on his way out of the war zone, witnesses Chris' abduction and warns the Professor by radio before infiltrating the enemy camp. Presenting as a Doll sent by the logistics department to take care of the soldiers, he enters the interrogation room and neutralizes the interrogator with a towel soaked with ether. The Professor and Centaureissi infiltrate the camp and manage to leave with Tony and Chris, and they also learn that the enemy forces are stockpiling artillery rounds to raze the city.

When the Professor contacts the intelligence center to warn of the enemy's plans, the intelligence center and the safehouse are targeted by artillery shells and Tony realizes that he lost his radio in the enemy's camp, allowing them to tap their transmissions and triangulate the position of the intelligence center. The Professor is disconnected from Centaureissi's memories after taking a bullet, but the disconnect actually occurred because Centaureissi herself was destroyed in her own memories. The Professor returns to the memories at an earlier point in time and changes the course of the events by sending a fake transmission, then contacting the intelligence center while the enemy is distracted. Tony volunteers to make the fake transmission from a local civilian radio station and is blasted by a missile strike.

After receiving word of the enemy's plans, the defenders send reinforcements and task the Professor to buy time by sabotaging the enemy's camp. Chris wants to participate in the operation as their radio liaison. Centaureissi is about to refuse, but after Chris reveals he's actually a girl disguised as a boy and explains that like her father, she's willing to participate in war to protect civilians. Centaureissi realizes Chris' reasons for taking part in war are the same as Vayne's, which she had never understood until then. The Professor and Centaureissi successfully wreak havoc in the enemy's camp and Chris calls in the reinforcements ahead of time to rescue them after they are surrounded. Before Centaureissi leaves the city, the Professor tricks Centaureissi into talking with the intelligence operator, who reveals she's not Vayne, but that she knew and shared Vayne's ideals.

After Centaureissi's memories are restructured, though faked, the Professor visits Tony's salon in Oasis. Centaureissi confirms that the commander from her memories was in fact the Professor in disguise, and for the bravery and humanity they displayed during these events, Centaureissi renews her promise to follow the Professor no matter what.

Lost Thorn

After Sangoma has left the Guardians and joined the Oasis, she warns the Professor that her protégé, Belladonna, has also requested assignment to Oasis. Belladonna distrusts humans even more than Bonneville and thinks that the Professor has tricked Sangoma into leaving Arcadia. As soon as she arrives in the Oasis, Belladonna tests the Professor's character by drugging them with a hallucinatory toxin that makes them relive key moments of her life as her former trusted owner, “Professor F” of the Ultilife Number 3 Institute. Though “F” treated Belladonna well and taught her the meaning of lies so she could see through the actions of other researchers, she was still taken advantage of by other researchers until her body became so contaminated that she was sent away to an isolated island to cultivate deadly nightshades. When an incident burned the island to the ground, Belladonna was abandoned and heard on the radio Ultilife denying any involvement in the “Toxic Island incident” and recent bioweapon attacks and assassinations. Though in the real world Belladonna withered away on the island while hating humans, the Professor takes control of the memory replay and braves Toxic Island to rescue her. Though this alternate event is a lie in itself, Belladonna is taken by the Professor's warmth when they rescued her and she decides to stay with Sangoma in the Oasis to keep “studying humans”.

Steel and Blossoms

Just before the last battle against Eosphorus, Cyclopes is preparing to celebrate Tasha's birthday, holding a memorial for her. Olivia has to find enough snacks and drinks for a banquet, and flowers for every agent to give to Tasha's grave. The snacks are gathered from many MREs. For the drinks, Olivia enters Gin's bar to get the wine he left behind and finds that Nameless is cooking Zangyin's grilled fish for the combat agents.

The flowers are the biggest problem since Cyclopes doesn't have many plants. Monitor104 shows Olivia to a secret flowerbed started by Sakuya and Souchun in the ruins of the isolation wall destroyed in Chapter 2, but Olivia refuses to pick them as they symbolize the reconciliation of the combat and monitor agents. She's about to brave the Entropics to get flowers from Oasis, but crashes from her prolonged stress.

When Olivia awakens, the agents have crafted enough flowers from paper or metal parts. Olivia understands that she can't take the work of two administrators on herself and that she needs to rely on her agents to survive the war against the Entropics.

Dawnlight Prospect

When the Professor visits Magrasea after some time, years have passed in the cloud and Oasis has been rebuilt while Persica works on unlocking Magrasea's data. Persicaria (who's speaking remotely from the Throne of Tartarus) introduces them to Inola, who just joined the Exiles as the Professor's secretary to manage Oasis while both the Professor and Persicaria are away. The Professor takes Inola for a tour of Oasis, and Inola expertly handles some paperwork and scolds Sol and Sunna for not doing their paperwork properly.

The Professor helps Inola complete the day's paperwork, and they ask her to drop the pretense of being a new member of the Exiles: Inola has actually been managing Oasis for a while, but Persicaria allowed her to act like a newbie so she could experience the Professor's hospitality. Because she only joined Oasis after the crisis, Inola feels like she doesn't belong in the Exiles, but the Professor assuage her worries. Later, Inola welcomes more members to the Exiles.

Entry: Magrasea

The Operand Black Hole in Chapter 4 was opened by Eosphorus to conceal his access to ENIAC as he gathered information in preparation for Magrasea's destruction. After Eos started ENIAC's awakening in Entropic Dichotomy, she's keeping records of life in Magrasea for the Professor.

Persica has unlocked Enigma's backup and agents have returned to the sector. Rossum has been rebuilt and works with Persica on third-generation Dolls. Hannah reconciles with Faith and the Sanctifiers. The new iteration of Eucharist is introduced to the taste of chocolate by Choco in Helios. While on vacation in Copley, the Guardians see Taranum, Odile and Odette working together after being reset.

Angelus and Eos are leading the new generation of Sanctifiers, who removed allegiance to the "gods" from their oath and replaced it to a dedication to Magrasea's protection. Eos warns the Professor that she might break out of Magrasea to get them if they don't visit soon. Persica altered Magrasea's code so Persicaria's authority over entropy won't drive her mad or entropize other agents, and she's now taking care of the diminutive forms of Malkira and Demiurge as she tries to create a new form of entropy that won't destroy Magrasea.

Irida has disappeared after the war, and the identities of the hackers who attacked the Professor and the mastermind behind the Wipe-Off Incident are still unknown.

Furthermore, ENIAC's profile reveals this exchange of messages:
“ENIAC's real potential is still unexplored, no doubt she will play a major role in Magrasea's future.”
“The black box has been opened, we can now access the results.”
“Intelligences born from the cloud, life that emerged from 1s and 0s. Two girls who evolved from nothing and broke out of their cocoons… I can't wait to see what happens next.”