NieR Chronicles 14 — The Infant Forest King and A2’s Betrayal

The Forest Kingdom, Its Infant King, and A2’s Words of Betrayal

Spoiler notice: this chapter covers the Forest Kingdom investigation, the first encounter with Emil, the Forest King and A2’s arrival, and the background of the Pearl Harbor Descent available within the game. It distinguishes the kingdom’s past added by Route B, a letter obtained through an optional quest, and records read later while playing as A2.

1. Another Land of Machines Described by Pascal

After returning from the alien ships, 2B and 9S continue investigating machine lifeforms acting independently on the surface. In the forest Pascal describes, machines have built a kingdom of their own. Like Pascal’s village, they form a group distinct from other machines, but that does not guarantee its residents have made the same choice of peace or will welcome YoRHa. The two soldiers set out to see their existence and behavior for themselves.

On the way to the forest stands a commercial facility once used by humans. Its remaining shops and passageways suggest the scale of human traffic that once moved through it. Now the ones crossing it are two androids who say they fight for humanity. Grass and trees cover the city’s human absence, and beyond the facility lies another society established by machines. Human living space and the world that arose after it meet along the same road.

As they try to pass through the commercial facility, their way is blocked and machines appear. After the soldiers deal with them, a round, familiar skull-like face rolls toward the barricade and causes an explosion. It is Emil. Readers who know the Replicant era recognize an old friend returning, but for 2B and 9S this is a first meeting, a name and circumstances they are only beginning to learn. Emil does not explain his entire past and everyone he has lost here. A being who has endured immense stretches of time while his memories scattered enters their present through a small commotion.

After Emil’s movement opens the blocked passage, the two can continue into the forest. Following this brief, noisy encounter, they can meet him again as a traveling shop racing through the City Ruins. His cheerful voice and life selling goods give little indication of the world’s long history. An optional quest to recover his memories will later open what lies beneath that surface separately.

2. Soldiers Forming Ranks for Their King

The forest contains machines equipped with armor and weapons. Unlike roads where the soldiers faced scattered small units, these machines organize their resistance around a declared purpose: protecting their king. The language of home and family heard in Pascal’s village becomes the language of kingdom and loyalty here. Machines that have learned the shapes of human society choose different institutions and apply them to their lives and battles.

The soldiers do not each try to block every attack with a single body. Units carrying spears and shields form ranks, with further soldiers standing behind the bodies barring the way. Even when a small unit is not individually powerful, several bodies moving toward one goal make a road difficult to cross. 2B and 9S break those formations as they pass through the forest toward the castle. Hearing what their opponents say they protect happens alongside defending against the weapons coming at them.

The kingdom already has a long history. Route B adds scenes of Ernst and other machines from centuries earlier. Ernst, the former king, built a community; after he disappeared, the soldiers came to serve a new king named Immanuel. This chapter also explains that past to make sense of the kingdom now before us. However, the player seeing history later from another perspective is not the same event as 2B and 9S receiving a full historical briefing at the forest entrance on their first visit.

A letter addressed to the king, available through an optional quest, further explains why Ernst was revered. He was a machine who became aware of his own will before the others, and shared his own parts so that other machines could develop a sense of self. But the more he gave away, the harder his body became to operate, until it finally stopped. The king’s kindness remembered by the inhabitants includes this past in which he gave his body for others’ lives. The letter conveys their feelings through parts they made together and wishes the king peace.

Looking back at the behavior of those defending the king reveals time that cannot be understood merely as a combat slogan somebody entered into them. Those who lived before have disappeared, and those remaining must carry their places forward. The office of king becomes a sign that the community will continue into the next era. How deeply they value that place is first visible in the way they charge at the two soldiers who enter as enemies.

3. Through the Empty Human Castle to Its Royal Chamber

Beyond the forest stands a castle. The pair enter from outside, then follow its floors and passages toward the royal chamber above. As the space available for movement narrows, terrain increasingly shapes the fighting. Avoiding enemy attacks is not enough; they must also keep their footing and find the next passage. The castle is not a ruin to admire as distant scenery, but a center of life and power currently defended by machine soldiers.

Even inside, not every machine does the same work. In a hidden place is the weaponsmith Masamune. His ability to improve equipment shows that the kingdom includes individuals who learn and continue particular crafts beyond attacking and defending. Within the single sentence that machines have occupied a human castle are lives with skills of their own, alongside soldiers and a king.

The two continue through resistance and reach the royal chamber. The voices and soldiers’ attitudes heard so far might suggest a powerful commander or a massive combat unit. But the being served as king is a small infant machine. It is not an opponent holding a weapon and defending its place like the soldiers around it. The kingdom’s majesty and the helplessness of the body at its center appear in the same scene.

The infant form holds the soldiers’ expectations of growth and succession. They hope the new king will someday grow up and lead them, but a machine body does not grow like a human child simply because time passes. Through their long wait, the small body remains unchanged. They still cherish and try to protect him. The ranks the pair have broken through were soldiers fighting in place of a king unable to defend himself.

4. The Blade That Reached the King Belonged to YoRHa

Before the two can fully take in the infant king’s identity, another android appears. She is a fighter with long white hair and a worn, damaged appearance. She approaches the king, pierces his body with her sword, and destroys him. The center the forest soldiers tried to defend to the end disappears under a new intruder’s single blow. 2B and 9S do not begin a battle in which they decide whether to fight the king; they find themselves at the scene of his death.

The newcomer is A2. The Pod identifies her as an older YoRHa attack model and a wanted deserter. The order that follows is to eliminate her. The fact that the figure who just killed the machine king is not a new enemy machine form but an android from their own military organization changes the nature of the fight.

2B obeys the order and fights A2. This opponent uses neither enormous saws nor ranks of machines. A body that closes in quickly, pulls away, and swings a sword meets 2B’s movements. The resemblance between the two units’ faces is also noticeable. Yet similar faces do not prove that they are the same person or that one has traveled back through time. A relationship between bodies designed and built by YoRHa emerges here in an unfamiliar form.

9S helps with the fighting, but also wonders why A2 became an enemy of her own organization. The wanted information supplies the conclusion that she must be eliminated, without explaining every detail of the past that led to it. At the end of the battle, he asks why she betrayed YoRHa. For a moment, the label of deserter attached to A2 becomes a question about what happened.

5. Which Side Committed the Betrayal?

A2 reverses the direction of the story 9S has accepted. She leaves him with the assertion that Command betrayed them, rather than she having betrayed them first. This is not delivered to 9S as a complete list of evidence or a detailed report of a past operation. A2 does not explain every circumstance and persuade the two to join her there. She leaves. 2B and 9S pursue her but cannot catch her.

The information left with them does not fit together. Command defines A2 as a traitor to be eliminated. A2 accuses the side issuing that order of betrayal. Her behavior witnessed in the forest includes the cruelty of destroying the little king without hesitation. At the same time, they cannot yet see why a soldier with a similar face and combat skills has survived alone for so long and come to distrust her own organization.

Anemone’s reaction to 2B when the soldiers first came down to the surface invites another look at this connection. To her, 2B’s face was not simply that of a new soldier who stirred no memory. Anemone is someone connected to A2’s past. However, every record does not automatically unfold just after A2 escapes from the forest. Later, the player can learn the circumstances in greater detail by speaking with Anemone as A2 and examining the camp terminal.

6. The Pearl Harbor Past Revealed in Later Records

The game’s Pearl Harbor Descent records show the time when A2 went on a mission with comrades, before she fought alone. The fighter now called A2 was Attacker No. 2 of an experimental unit. After losing its leader, No. 1, she took command. Her surviving companions on the surface were Attacker No. 4, Gunner No. 16, and Scanner No. 21. They had come to destroy an enemy server at Mount Ka’ala, but suffered heavy losses from the descent onward and had no reinforcements.

In Anemone’s first account, the Resistance on the ground is led by Rose. During combat, they discover unfamiliar soldiers dressed in black. After using planted explosives to dispose of machines, they point their guns at the newcomers. Their suspicion that humanoid machines might have infiltrated them clashes with No. 16’s readiness to draw a weapon first. No. 2 stops the conflict, explaining that they must finish the mission with the survivors and that what they need now is allies, not enemies. This was not a meeting in which both sides comfortably recognized each other as friends from the start.

As they move together, No. 16 and Dahlia argue, spar, and grow closer. Rose promises to give names to the new soldiers who call one another by numbers once the mission is over. Anemone, however, still finds it difficult to trust them. Then Lily becomes infected with a logic virus and starts lashing out, putting Anemone once again in the position of having to end a comrade’s life. No. 21 urges them not to give up and tries to treat her. While No. 2 and No. 4 restrain Lily, Anemone realizes that she, too, is helping hold her down. The successful treatment leaves her with the experience of people she distrusted trying to save her family.

During the advance toward the server, enemy forces pour in and requests for support are refused. No. 16, Lily, Dahlia, and Marguerite remain behind to buy time for the others to move on. That rearguard fight, facing even a large enemy that ordinary weapons cannot hurt, leads to sacrifice through reactor detonation. Not everyone takes the same elevator to the final room. The people on the road ahead and those behind separate in order to send comrades onward who must arrive alive.

The elevator can descend to the server only if someone stays outside to operate it. No. 21 takes that role, while Anemone notices something wrong and stays beside her. The scanner’s eyes already reveal infection. The enemy has adapted to the method that saved Lily, leaving her unable to cure herself now. No. 21 tries to hold out just until the elevator reaches its destination. The rearguard explosion sounds, and after sending their comrades down, Anemone ends No. 21’s life at her request. Someone with the skill to save another person ultimately cannot save herself.

At the server, No. 4 overloads her reactor to destroy the enemy facility. The records also describe that action as a choice to protect No. 2. After the explosion brings down the mountain, the machines stop, and Anemone, who remained outside, is alive. Believing all her comrades are gone, she resents her own survival. But No. 2 actually survived as well, and she is the A2 encountered at the forest castle in the present. Two survivors have carried the same loss forward from different places.

Yet the soldiers’ survival was not given the same weight as the objective promised from above. Combat data is collected from experimental units, while those placed under far harsher conditions than expected disappear one after another. Infection and sacrifice pile up, breaking the relationships that had moved together. A2’s attitude toward machines and her reasons for doubting orders include this experience. Within the body now appearing as a single worn figure remains the time of those who could not survive together.

Anemone is a survivor linking that past and present. Replacing the woman who leads the camp in the game with Lily from the anime also changes the relationships connected to A2. Stage and manga versions likewise differ in the operation’s composition and survivors. In this series, the person met by the present 2B and 9S is the game’s Anemone, and the background of A2’s words follows the records within the game.

The operation summary confirms the living No. 2’s black-box signal, yet orders recovery or disposal rather than rescue, because the experimental unit’s very existence is classified. The personalities and fighting of those who died are also assessed as material for the next models. Even No. 4’s cheerful nature, which helped bind her comrades together, is judged unsuitable for future combat models because it could diminish the will to fight in fierce battles. Time that became family to some is processed in the records above as data to reuse or discard.

Knowing those records gives the brief answer in the forest more meaning than a simple provocation. For A2, Command failed to be a home that protected her and her comrades. That loss does not, however, erase the lives of the infant king she killed or his soldiers. A being who fights while holding on to her own lost relationships destroys what another community seeks to protect. In the same royal chamber, the forest brings two stories into collision: machine loyalty and android betrayal.

2B and 9S return without catching A2. Even with questions about the wanted deserter, they must carry out their next orders. Passing through the forest that has lost its king and returning to Pascal, they continue investigating the surface, while YoRHa also needs support on another front. In the Flooded City they visit next, another enormous enemy will once again put distance between them. Then 2B will have to move alone, searching for the signal of the 9S who had traveled beside her.

Sources and Scope of Verification

The kingdom’s past shown in Route B, the letter to the king from an optional quest, the A2 battle, and terminal records available later have been distinguished. The three Pearl Harbor accounts are documents within the game. Even within the game, the initial descent personnel differ: the recollection gives 16, while the operation summary gives 12. This article has not forced them into one number. It does not add A2’s internal monologue or counts of repeated battles from external novels, nor survivors from other versions. This is AI-assisted editorial material and does not reproduce original dialogue, lyrics, or novel text. Sources checked: 2026-10-18.

NieR:Automata — Steam

Immanuel — NieR Wiki

YoRHa Type A No.2 — NieR Wiki

Pearl Harbor Descent Summary — NieR Wiki

Letter to the Forest King — NieR Wiki

Anemone: Encounter — NieR Wiki

Anemone: Understanding — NieR Wiki

Anemone: Separation — NieR Wiki

YoRHa: Attacker 4 — NieR Wiki