NieR Chronicles 17 — The Factory’s Believers and the Escape

The Abandoned Factory’s Believers and the Machines Seeking Salvation in Death

Spoiler notice: this chapter covers the cult at the abandoned factory visited with Pascal after Adam’s death, its breakdown and the escape, and the battle against So-Shi. It also connects Route B’s scenes of 9S providing remote support from the Bunker at the same time. The later factory incident involving Pascal’s children taking refuge is a separate visit.

1. A New Contact with Those Outside the Network

After bringing 9S back from the Copied City, 2B resumes missions on the surface. 9S remains in the Bunker to recover his damaged body. She has found her missing companion alive, but they have not returned to a state where he can immediately walk beside her and talk as before. 2B moves with her Pod, investigating changes among the machines.

After Adam’s death, reports describe machines disconnecting from the network. The possibility of more machines that do not fight seems promising to those who already established a relationship with Pascal on the surface. Learning who among them is building what kinds of lives remains unfinished work. The disappearance of one powerful individual cannot be reduced merely to fewer enemies.

Another independent group contacts Pascal. They convey a wish for friendly relations, suggesting that peaceful machines may exist beyond his village as well. Pascal wants to meet them, and 2B accompanies him. On her first village visit she cautiously followed a machine’s guidance. This time she goes with the Pascal she already knows to examine another machine community.

Their destination is the abandoned factory. The region is not an entirely new name to 2B. It is where her first descending YoRHa force was destroyed, and where she fought a giant enemy alongside 9S before detonating their black boxes. That factory was a battlefield where production facilities and enemy weapons intertwined. On this visit, a proposal of reconciliation rather than weapons draws the two inside.

2. Following a Guide Down to a Place of Worship

At the factory, 2B and Pascal receive guidance from a machine there. Rather than attacking without warning, it intends to lead them to the group’s leader. They follow and take an elevator deeper inside. Within the broad metal structures and production equipment visible from outside is another center, where believers have gathered.

These machines have adopted the forms of religion. They exalt a leader, assemble together, and share a belief that they can reach a state beyond life. Just as Pascal’s residents created families and a school, and the forest machines established an order of king and soldiers, these have learned another institution left by humans. The existence of that form alone does not automatically determine the direction of the actions to come.

2B and Pascal see the leader at the believers’ center. But that body is already dead. The expectation of negotiating with a living leader and sharing terms collapses. As the condition of the body becomes clear, the relationship on which the surrounding believers depended also grows unstable. An unanswerable gap opens between the name they call and the body that does not actually move.

The way they receive that gap is terrible. Some machines accept their leader’s death as a transcendence they too must follow. Belief spreads that death can make them higher beings, rather than continuing a community while alive. Believers destroy themselves and attempt to draw others into the same action. 2B and Pascal did not come to participate in that belief, yet even leaving the space becomes threatened.

3. Fear Divided Beneath the Same Words

The factory’s voices do not remain a single greeting of welcome. Slogans about transcending through death repeat, and red-eyed machines rush at them. They attack not only the android before them but other machines too. Those thought to be members of one group drive each other toward death. The two visitors who came down to discuss reconciliation must now first find a way out alive.

Not every individual there willingly accepts death. Some voices want to live and fear the behavior of the others. Following one leader or being called believers in the same space does not guarantee that all share one will at the moment their bodies end. One person’s salvation becomes another’s destruction to escape.

2B blocks attacks and opens a route. Pascal travels with her, but does not become a combatant who draws a sword and cuts enemies down in the same way. Nor is this a scene where he abandons the peace shown in his village and sets out to attack all the believers. Shocked by why a contact he trusted has ended like this, he must survive and leave with 2B.

The danger is not limited to attacking machines. Metal walkways across multiple levels, production machinery, platforms from which they can fall, and moving equipment complicate the escape. They are not in a structure where simply turning back once to the entrance takes them outside. When the way down is blocked, they must connect other routes, elevators, and passages. Meanwhile, machines continue to be destroyed and fighting persists throughout the factory.

They fight in the room where the believers attacked until a route opens, then take an elevator to the next floor. There are machines who remain without agreeing to the frenzy, and they can also meet a trader. Afterward they move between exterior passages and indoor workshops, climbing stairs and conveyors. Even while dodging enemies rushing to self-destruct, they must watch the intervals of descending presses to move through. Not only combat blades but also factory equipment originally meant to process objects threatens the escapees’ bodies.

4. 9S’s Voice from a Small Machine Body

During the escape, 9S’s voice comes from a small machine that appears before them. The visible body differs from their familiar companion’s face, but the one sending the voice really is 9S. From the Bunker, he has hacked a machine to move it remotely and help them. The android body that walked with her is not beside her yet, but his support reaches the surface through a different body.

The words and name 2B used with 9S now address a unit with an enemy’s appearance. Judging only by its body, it resembles machines she normally cuts down. Knowing who speaks and acts within it, and with what intention, changes the relationship. Help meant to get 2B and Pascal outside takes place through the small body before them.

In Route B, 9S uses a Bunker terminal to access the factory’s systems and machines. If 2B sees a closed door open or receives directions to the next route, on the other side are his actions creating an intrusion path and overcoming obstacles. His own body’s absence from the factory does not mean there is no risk or difficulty. If access is blocked, the help needed by the two on the ground will be cut off.

The body 9S enters remotely is not fixed to a single unit either. He can hack a more suitable machine and take control, and one section uses a flying unit to move downward. Passing workshops where machines fight each other and corridors with moving presses, he reaches a stopped elevator and activates it. To provide something 2B can ride upward, he follows a separate route through the same factory in another body.

After contacting 2B at the elevator, he enters virtual space and opens the following gates in turn. He must break through guarding enemies and security devices and reach the corresponding control points before the doors in the physical factory open. The brief change of one passage opening before 2B contains multiple stages 9S had to overcome on another screen. Ultimately, he must breach the factory mainframe’s defenses and cut its power too.

9S operates machine bodies and hacks the required systems to prepare a route. 2B physically passes through the paths he opens and defeats the enemies blocking her. One person’s ability cannot replace the other’s entire work. An open door still needs someone to arrive there alive; cutting enemies with a sword does not remove the need for another approach to systems she cannot operate. Their cooperation from separate locations becomes the structure of the factory escape.

5. The Route Blocked by So-Shi’s Barrier

At the end of the escape route appears So-Shi, a spider-shaped machine with large legs. It is different from Ko-Shi, encountered in the Tower’s final fighting. Even after opening so much of the way, they cannot leave the factory without passing this opponent. 2B starts fighting again, but a strong barrier around it prevents effective damage at first.

Here she first needs time to endure while evading attacks. So-Shi uses broad attacks, and nearby machines pose threats as well. 2B cannot stop moving, but swinging her own weapons cannot change the barrier’s conditions. 9S reaches toward the factory system maintaining it. They face the same enemy, but one handles its body while the other handles power and control systems.

When 9S cuts the factory’s power, the lights go out and So-Shi’s defense collapses. In place of brightly exposed machinery, the light of attacks rises in darkness. The change on screen signals that the support succeeded and shows that 2B’s fighting conditions have genuinely changed. Her counterattacks can now reach the enemy.

2B dodges and strikes back. Facing large legs and blades, shots and missiles from its sides, she keeps attacking the huge body. As the fight continues, So-Shi sheds its outer armor, becomes spherical, and charges while spinning. This is not an enemy she can keep at one distance based solely on its initial spider-like outline. In the spherical state that blocks ranged fire, she must also create opportunities to approach and attack with her sword. Even after 9S removes the barrier, the final fight does not automatically end. She has to survive within the opportunity he provided and bring the enemy down. At last, So-Shi’s destruction opens the way out.

6. The Abnormality Has Not Ended Outside

2B and Pascal escape the factory. The agreement that originally brought them there has not been reached. They have seen a group destroying themselves after their leader’s death, and the danger faced by beings who do not want to follow that belief. The other peaceful community Pascal sought cannot join him in the way he expected.

The information the survivors bring back does not fit the hope that all machines became peaceful after Adam disappeared. Disconnecting or searching for a new way to live does not always lead to a safe outcome. How they endure the absence of a meaning they established, and how far they force that meaning onto others, become further dangers.

9S has saved them from afar. 2B brought his body out of the Copied City; this time he opened the route for 2B and Pascal to return. Their roles do not become permanently fixed as rescuer and rescued. It is difficult to explain their relationship only by whose body is stronger or who stands at the front. Even in separate positions, they act so that the other can come back alive.

But a message arriving after they leave prevents them from lingering in relief. The Resistance Camp is under attack. The place that gave the two soldiers supplies, information, repairs, and rest is in danger. At the end of a day that began by going with Pascal to find new neighbors, 2B must rush to a scene where the lives of people she already knows are collapsing.

Sources and Scope of Verification

This commentary connects the game’s factory cult visit and 2B and Pascal’s escape with Route B’s remote support by 9S. So-Shi is the opponent in this factory battle and is distinguished from the later Tower’s Ko-Shi. Scenes of machines destroying themselves are explained through narrative and harm, without recreating methods in detail. This incident is separate from the children’s later refuge in the factory. This is AI-assisted editorial material and does not reproduce original dialogue, lyrics, or novel text. Sources checked: 2026-10-18.

NieR:Automata — Steam

Abandoned Factory — NieR Wiki

So-Shi — NieR Wiki

Pascal — NieR Wiki

Bunker — NieR Wiki