NieR Chronicles 31 — C and D, Sacrifice and the Departing Ark
Chapters in this story
- The C and D Crossroads: A Life Left Behind and an Ark Departing
- 1. Two Remain After Defeating the Same Enemy
- 2. The C Duel: What Must Follow Defeating 9S
- 3. C’s End: Sending Another Body Out Instead of Her Own
- 4. The D Duel: An Opponent Who Does Not Return Even in Victory
- 5. Adam Speaks to a Dying 9S
- 6. What Is Flying into Space?
- 7. Data Remains After Both Endings
- Sources and Scope of Verification
The C and D Crossroads: A Life Left Behind and an Ark Departing
Spoiler notice: This chapter separately covers ending C, reached by choosing A2 in the final duel; ending D, reached by choosing 9S; and the choice within 9S’s consciousness in D. The same two living people do not fight again after C to produce D. These are two endings that take different actions from the same crossroads.
1. Two Remain After Defeating the Same Enemy
Defeating Ko-Shi and Ro-Shi removes the common enemy standing between them. A2 carries the memories and final request received from 2B. 9S has reached this point after witnessing 2B’s death and encountering secrets about YoRHa and machines. Both have arrived at the same Tower, but they have not agreed on what future they want to leave.
9S wants a fight. The truth about 2E conveyed by A2 did not quietly stop him. Understanding that fact does not lead in sequence to resolving his feelings about losing 2B and forgiving A2. For him now, with memory, belonging, and the reasons for revenge entangled, ending the opponent before him remains something to do.
The player chooses the character to control at the end. The outcome differs depending on whether A2’s body faces 9S or 9S’s body fights A2. Until now, the player has alternated between two people with different abilities, and inside the Tower used those abilities together against the same enemy. Now those familiar techniques turn toward one another.
The choice cannot be solved solely as an information test in which one knows every lie and the other knows nothing. 9S already knows many truths. A2 has no method for restoring everything either. But rather than killing him to satisfy her own anger, she tries to save him in accordance with 2B’s request. Within the same final battle, the aim of ending the opponent meets the aim of subduing and then saving him.
2. The C Duel: What Must Follow Defeating 9S
Choosing A2 makes the player face 9S’s attacks and hacking. The ability previously used against enemy machines and to open doors now threatens the player’s own controls and vision. The fight requires evading distant Pod attacks and weapons coming close. The opponent is not simply a weak Scanner with a small body. His learned abilities and present anger arrive as real danger.
A2 finally subdues 9S and cuts off the arm he took from a copy and attached to himself. But victory does not immediately complete her task. Logic-virus contamination remains in his body and data. Knocking him down so he cannot move differs from saving him so he can continue living. She moves on to that next action.
With Pod 042’s support, A2 accesses his data. As she passes complicated inner paths, the Pod warns that removing the contamination has a low chance of success and carries great risk. She proceeds despite the warning and eventually finds the image of a sleeping 9S. This differs from hacking into a system as an attacker to destroy it. She must leave something of him able to continue amid damage and contamination. Simply erasing his mind and memories might produce an enemy who no longer hurts her, but would not save the 9S whom 2B asked her to protect.
She tries to remove the virus and send him outside, choosing this despite knowing the danger of handling the infection for her own body. The request accepted with 2B’s sword becomes concrete action here. Rather than answering someone who tried to kill her with the same death, she prepares to move his immobilized body elsewhere.
3. C’s End: Sending Another Body Out Instead of Her Own
A2 tells Pod 042 to take 9S away. The Pod carries his body outside the Tower. It is not an order to stay beside her until the last moment of her life, but a decision that the person entrusted to her must get out even if she remains. A similar direction returns from 2B’s earlier use of flight-unit control to send 9S away from danger.
A2 herself remains in the data space and approaches a pillar of light. Children’s laughter can be heard there. When she touches the pillar and ends the structure’s function, the enormous Tower begins to collapse. Action in data space connects to destruction in reality. She is not securing her own safety, pressing a remote switch, and leaving. Her own body remains within the cost of sending 9S away and the Tower’s collapse.
At the end, she expresses an awareness of the world’s beauty. Eyes long fixed on killing enemies after losing her companions now see what still exists outside herself. That sight is not awarded as a reward for having saved Pascal’s children. Rather, it remains at the end of her attempt to save one person even after passing through that failure.
Ending C closes with this sacrifice and rescue. Signs of 9S outside the Tower show that the action to save him continued beyond it. But there is no declaration here that every machine on Earth has vanished forever, or that all wars and discrimination are resolved. Nor has humanity come back to life. It is the result of choosing a path to save one person amid the present threat and infection.
4. The D Duel: An Opponent Who Does Not Return Even in Victory
Choosing 9S at the crossroads leads to a different battle and ending. He faces A2’s fast attacks and counters. This time, hacking, the Pod, and his weapons must be used to defeat her. A2’s techniques, which the player controlled earlier, become enemy movements to read and evade from outside.
At the duel’s end, A2 presses 9S but hesitates over her final attack as she remembers 2B entrusting him to her. 9S uses the opening to impale A2. As he too falls onto the sword she dropped, the blade left by 2B pierces his body. Killing A2 does not coincide with his own survival. Revenge’s target has been reached, but no reward follows in which 2B returns to go home with him or his body becomes whole.
The weapon of the person he wanted back finally passes through his own body. This symbol cannot be treated as proof of a tactical design in which someone planned every stabbing angle from the outset. What the game shows is the final attack leading to fatal wounds for both, and 9S being unable to remove the sword as he wants. For someone who kept repairing his body to move forward, no scene of the same possible repair remains.
A2 falls too. She no longer has time to reach the actions of C that would save the person entrusted to her by 2B. D is not another stage after that rescue. Two people carrying the same request and loss arrive at a different result in the final fight. Over the silence of the two bodies, 9S’s consciousness connects to another space.
5. Adam Speaks to a Dying 9S
9S encounters Adam within his memories and consciousness. Adam explains that the Tower’s purpose changed. Originally it was a weapon to destroy the Moon server and bring down the symbol of humanity on which androids depend, but changes in the network produced another plan: putting memories accumulated by machines into an Ark and sending them into space.
The Ark is not a spacecraft carrying living human refugees. Nor is the fact that Adam and Eve lost their bodies on Earth canceled here. What continues is another possibility for data, personalities, and accumulated memories left in the network. A condition of this world appears once again: the death of a physical body and the persistence of data have not always meant the same ending.
Adam asks 9S whether he will come with them. Eve is beside him too. The being who lost his brother and raged against the entire world on Earth is now placed within the possibility of departing with him. That 9S receives the invitation matters too. Names that fought one another as enemies finally call to each other as beings who might join the same voyage of memories.
But the invitation does not immediately become one compulsory ending. The player can choose to go along or remain. Going directs 9S’s consciousness toward joining the voyage. Remaining leaves a choice to stay on this world’s side. Neither answer makes the fatally wounded android body immediately rise unharmed to begin a new life.
6. What Is Flying into Space?
In D, the Ark launches from the Tower. The meaning of a weapon aimed at the Moon changes to a passage sending memories far away. While the Moon holding human records was the foundation of android belief, machines now seek to bring their own records to another world. A direction emerges toward seeking another place beyond the time spent killing one another on this land.
The game’s final images do not show what planet the Ark actually reaches or what society it establishes there. Neither can the voyage be declared a guarantee of perfect peace and happiness. Whether the remaining data creates new relationships or another repetition is open. The clear change is a turn from the aim of endlessly eliminating enemies in the same place toward a launch into another future.
Traces of death and damage remain on Earth. Devola and Popola, who helped the two at the Tower entrance, are together with fatal wounds. Sending something skyward from a huge structure does not automatically save the bodies of those who opened the way below it. The scene holds onto the danger that individuals’ sacrifices might disappear into the background as the scale of events grows.
Among 9S’s last memories is the time he met 2B. Even if a relationship began in a mission concealing truth, the time spent together remains with him. D closes without turning that memory into complete reconciliation and survival. Whether he departs with the others or remains, the end of the bodies the player has controlled is not lightly canceled.
7. Data Remains After Both Endings
C and D are not one timetable in which one is seen first and then continuously undone into the other. The player can return to the final scene and choose the other character to see both results. In one, A2 sends 9S away and sacrifices herself; in the other, they fatally wound each other before the Ark leaves. Experiencing both results connects to the condition for the next ending, E.
At that point, the perspective changes again. The Pods, which have supported soldiers and conveyed orders and information, must decide how to handle the remaining data. The prescribed procedure is to eliminate every record concerning YoRHa. While C and D were crossroads concerning who survived and what result they produced, E leads to a final question of whether even the data containing all those lives must really be erased.
Sources and Scope of Verification
The combat choices and outcomes of the game’s C and D endings are described as separate branches. Pod 042 is identified as the Pod that carries 9S outside in C, and D’s Ark is not described as a spacecraft carrying surviving humans. No one ending is asserted to be the sole official timeline, and the sequel material in performances outside the game is not merged into these outcomes. This is an AI-assisted editorial account, without reproduction of the original dialogue, lyrics, or novel text. Sources checked: 2026-10-18.
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