NieR Chronicles 13 — The Attack That Split the City and the Truth Below

The attack that split the city, and the creators' bodies below

Spoiler notice: this chapter covers the Goliath attack immediately after the exchange with Pascal's village, the underground investigation, and the truth about the aliens. Adam and Eve's present lives are distinguished from the history shared through the machine network.

1. An alarm after the delivery

After the soldiers deliver Anemone's oil to Pascal, their next task cannot simply continue examining peaceful exchange. An emergency call reports enormous machines in the City Ruins. The ground where the Resistance lives and where the two have undertaken requests becomes a battlefield again. Confirming that they can talk to machines in a village has not given them a way to stop the gigantic arms approaching the city.

2B and 9S return. These enemies are not the size of the small individuals they encounter along a roadside. Vast bodies and rotating weapons enter between buildings, making the city's height a condition of battle for the soldiers on the ground. Structures around them are routes they must climb and objects that enemy attacks may collapse. They must avoid danger markers appearing underfoot while moving toward their destination.

When their operator directs them to the Flight Unit delivery point, they head for the building near their original landing site. The height from which they first surveyed a new investigation area now becomes a position for fighting the enemy's body. Goliath attacks continue while they ascend internal stairs and broken floors. The city is no longer merely a briefly visited mission zone. They must defend a place containing camp residents, traders, and those with whom they exchanged supplies.

The Engels encountered near the roof belongs to the same family as the weapon fought at the coastal factory. Facing rotating saws and enormous arms sweeping in front of her, 2B holds out and counters when an attack ends and leaves an opening. The enemy's scale has become more familiar, but this is not a battle with a wide space for escape. She must watch both where its arms can reach and which footholds remain available.

2. Airborne soldiers and collapsing ground

After driving Engels back from the roof, the two board Flight Units on an adjoining rooftop. Looking up at an enormous body gives way to aerial combat, flying between attacks. The enemy fires lasers and missiles and swings huge arms. 2B and 9S continue attacking with their units' firepower and mobility. Against the same type of Goliath, their movement differs from the preceding fight to hold a rooftop beneath their feet.

At the end of the coastal factory mission, they had to detonate their black boxes together. This assault does not reproduce that ending. They continue fighting in Flight Units, overcome the threat, and survive. But victory does not restore the surrounding terrain and daily life to their former state. After the shocks of combat, a large part of the city center's ground gives way.

A gigantic crater opens. Roads and buildings once connected are separated, revealing an opening into deep spaces previously hidden from the surface. Part of the map they knew changes. The scar will remain on future journeys through the city. Completing one mission and removing an enemy does not always restore an identical world over the aftermath.

The collapse yields unexpected information for YoRHa: a signal connected to the aliens is detected underground. It is a clue to invaders who have not appeared directly for a very long time. The task of repelling enormous machines becomes an investigation into the whereabouts of those who started the war. One of the oldest names in the soldiers' account of the enemy suddenly emerges beneath the city they have been walking through.

3. Descending in search of the invaders

The two descend into the crater and follow the caves. Above, they traveled through ruins containing buildings, trees, animals, and the Resistance. Below are passages that have long been without light. A signal alone cannot tell them the state of whatever is inside. They might find aliens secretly commanding an army, a trap, or an abandoned facility. These possibilities remain open.

For the investigators, the aliens are not merely a mythical name. YoRHa's account of the war rests on their invasion of Earth and deployment of machine lifeforms. Machines on the surface really do fight androids, and huge weapons have just attacked the city. The prospect that discovering the army's masters could transform the war belongs to their current mission.

Beyond the caves are alien ships. These remains differ from human buildings on the surface and the amusement decorations imitated by machines. The two enter a facility apparently used by the invaders. The war's origins, previously examined from above, acquire a real place and objects before their eyes. Yet living commanders directing military forces are not waiting inside.

The ships contain alien remains. The motionless bodies reveal old deaths, unlike survivors who have just fallen under attack. Their expectation that the signal would lead to a living enemy's hiding place fails. They came down to confront the invaders for the first time, only to reach a place without anyone they can question or demand surrender from.

4. Two brothers appear before the bodies

Adam and Eve appear before them there. The beings born from the desert machines, rapidly transformed during combat, have returned. At that earlier meeting, the soldiers watched a new form take shape and another individual emerge from the wounded Adam. Now the brothers receive them as opponents already established in this place.

Adam introduces himself and Eve and says the aliens they seek are already gone. His account no longer leaves machine lifeforms as weapons still carrying out alien orders. Machines changed in intelligence and behavior, surpassed the beings who made them, and ultimately killed their creators. The bodies here link that past to the present investigation site.

This does not mean that Adam, personally born in the desert only recently, killed the aliens in these ships centuries ago with his own hands. He conveys the history held by the machines and their network. The date of an individual's bodily creation differs from the collective knowledge available to that body. What surprises the soldiers is larger than a new enemy's identity: the entire relationship on the opposing side had already changed.

The brothers also have different attitudes. Adam observes his opponents, discusses what he has learned, and turns his interest toward humans. For Eve, being beside his older brother and acting with him is more immediate. Their humanlike faces and voices do not indicate a single mind with identical desires. Different interests and dependencies have developed between two who were born almost within one event.

An earlier scene focused on the brothers also showed that difference. At a long dining table, Adam reads while Eve eats an apple and asks why they must wear clothes and eat unnecessary food. Adam explains these actions as ways to learn about humans. When Eve asks to play together, his brother agrees. Outside combat, Adam's learning and Eve's desire for time with him were already proceeding side by side.

5. The fight continues while answers are given

The conversation does not take place solely across a safe negotiating table. The soldiers fight the brothers. While 2B faces Eve in the foreground, 9S battles Adam on a different plane behind them. One soldier is not taking on both brothers at once. In a limited side-scrolling space, 2B avoids approaching kicks and energy attacks and strikes back. Combat continues while the enemy's explanation is heard.

Adam's curiosity about humans does not move in the same direction as Pascal's peace. Pascal protects present residents and other communities, exchanges supplies, and builds relationships. Adam wants to understand how humans think and why they act. There is no evidence that his curiosity necessarily includes care that would stop another's pain. To a machine learning about humans, 2B and 9S can first become objects of study and combat opponents.

He asks them to bring him the humans on the Moon. He wants to dissect and analyze them to learn. The soldiers cannot accept such a proposal. Adam also threatens that what happened to the aliens could happen to humans. His words about understanding humanity become a demand aimed at those YoRHa was taught to protect, rather than an invitation to cooperation.

His interest in humans after the machines surpassed the aliens places the soldiers in an uncomfortable position. For YoRHa, humans are the masters to protect and the reason for war. Yet the machine brother, speaking from the side that killed its creators, discusses humanity as a research subject. The same name carries different relationships. The two cannot understand his use of the word human as equivalent to their own oath of loyalty.

They do not win a victory that ends the brothers' existence and places every underground secret in their hands. After the fight, Adam and Eve disappear, leaving the soldiers with dead aliens and what they have heard. YoRHa obtains neither living invaders to detain and question nor a machine command chain severed by this battle. The creators' absence remains alongside the reality of machines continuing to act.

6. The dead masters do not end the war

The two leave the ship and return along the caves. Their operator contacts them, and they reach Jackass and a new access point. Transport becomes available from this point. They no longer need to descend by Flight Unit or walk the whole distance every time they travel between surface locations. They use the function to return to the Bunker and report their findings to the Commander.

Missions continue after that report. The aliens' deaths do not mean the Engels attacking the city never existed. Hostile machines and androids living on the surface can still harm one another. The soldiers have already experienced that the death of an old master does not automatically stop present weapons.

But the information leaves a major gap in the explanation for fighting. If they fight to defeat an alien invasion, yet aliens no longer give orders, who continues the present war? If machines supposedly following their creators' wishes instead imitate humans and build varied societies by their own decisions, can all of them be explained through one command? The soldiers return with more than the same information about the same enemies.

This is not the moment when 2B and 9S also hear every truth about humanity on the Moon. Their discovery concerns the relationship between aliens and machines. Seeing that one side's creators are dead does not give them the identical answer about those their own side protects. The underground revelation does not expose every later secret in advance. It first undermines their certainty about the war from one direction.

With new investigation orders, they head back to Pascal's village. Asking him about humanoid machines and other machine groups brings information about the forest kingdom. A vast history heard underground cannot explain every surface machine's behavior. For the next investigation they must also listen to a machine familiar with the area. The information leads toward the forest through the commercial facility outside the city.

Back on the surface, the crater remains. Below lie the bodies of those who began the war, and above live the beings they created, which have since changed on their own. Some build homes like Pascal's residents; others seek to understand humans like Adam. Following orders, 2B and 9S must keep encountering these different faces. In the forest ahead, machines await with a king, soldiers, and a history they believe they must protect.

Sources and scope of verification

This account connects the game's city Goliath assault, underground alien ships, Transport unlock and Bunker report, and forest information from Pascal. In Route A, 2B fights Eve while 9S faces Adam in the background. The brothers' dining scene is recalled as an earlier glimpse of their relationship. Adam and Eve are not personally credited with every ancient killing, and motives from a separate novel are not added to game scenes. This is AI-assisted editorial commentary without reproduction of original dialogue, lyrics, or novel text. Sources checked on October 18, 2026.

NieR:Automata — Steam

City Ruins/Deep Cave — NieR Wiki

Aliens — NieR Wiki

Adam — NieR Wiki