End of the Maze

* Title screen
* Original title card

**End of the Maze** is a side story event.

## Synopsis

> *On one quiet night, Lee Sooyeon receives a call. It was her friend who thought she would never see again.*
>
>

## Appearances

* Kim Hana
* Lee Sooyeon
* Lyudmila
* Valeriy (Administration Shieldman)
* Alex
* Yegor (Administration Rifleman)
* Hayami Sanae
* Na Yubin
* Rosaria le Friede (Asmodeus)
* Frederick Doma
* Frederick Yuma
* Administrator

## Plot

### Act 1

Following the Replacer Incident, the Administration publicly requests that all TASKFORCE companies and Administration-approved organizations draft and establish a coalition in case another global crisis breaks out.

Lee Sooyeon is about to go home for the day when she receives a phone call. She initially assumes the caller is a scammer when she doesn't identify herself until she mentions the Old Administration's Fenrir Division. Sooyeon recognizes the voice as Lyudmila, commander of the Maze Division, and asks for her location so they can talk in person. After picking her up and returning back to the Coffin Company building, Sooyeon asks Lyudmila how she is still alive and where she has been for the past two decades.

Lyudmila recounts her final battle of the Administration Failure: Maze Division, along with all the other squadrons of the Administration, were on the verge of destruction as hordes of Corrupted Objects overrun its squad members. Despite the chaotic situation and the loss of the command group, Lyudmila ordered her soldiers to hold the line, much to Deputy Commander Alex's disbelief. She tries to contact the other divisions but could only reach out to Gordias Division, whose Deputy Commander informed her that Gordias Division and the Nanahara Family Alliance were already preoccupied with what they believed to be a Category 6 C.O. To raise their chance of survival, Lyudmila then ordered her troops to proceed to the front lines and meet with Fenrir Division. However, Na Yubin and Lee Sooyeon of Fenrir Division ended up coming to their location instead, having lost the front lines as well as their commander. Yubin explained that, with Protocol: CoW enacted, everyone is to head to the Ark, a dimensional ship known as Coffin-6, so they can be transported to a new world.

The remaining soldiers of the Administration made it to the Ark, defeating the Category 6 C.O. along the way, but are then ambushed by the Demon Lord Asmodeus and her servants. Lyudmila, Yubin and Sooyeon went out to fight Asmodeus but are easily defeated. Meanwhile, the Supreme Administrator cancelled Protocol: CoW and enacted Protocol: CoT-13 instead, putting the Ark and everyone onboard in cryostasis instead and leaving behind the three veteran soldiers.

When Lyudmila woke up twenty years later, she was found by Alex, who was supposed to be in the Ark when it dived. Alex takes Lyudmila to the crashed Ark and asks her to unlock its stasis field so that the other Division members can be freed, but Lyudmila unfortunately did not have authorization to do so. When Lyudmila asked how Alex managed to get out, Alex attacked her and revealed herself to be a Doppelganger, a type of incomplete Shadow that needs to absorb the original person in order to become whole. Lyudmila was then chased by Dopplegangers of soldiers of Maze Division but managed to lose them. She eventually encountered some mercenaries who took her back to the Normalside and learned about Sooyeon's survival and Coffin Company from them.

Sooyeon offers to help Lyudmila get accustomed to the new world, but Lyudmila wants to go back to the Counterside and rescue her old comrades. Sooyeon is reluctant but accepts her request so as long as her company is able to salvage whatever technology and eternium they can find. She then introduces her to the Administrator, saying that he is a engineer who can disable the Ark's stasis field while withholding the fact that he is, in fact, the former Supreme Administrator. They board a ship and head to the location, where Sooyeon notes that there are many wrecked ships of the Old Administration. The Administrator asks Lyudmila not to totally destroy any machines that might attack them on their way to their destination, saying he could repair and put them to use.

The three of them reach the Ark where the Doppelgangers are standing their guard. Lyudmila distracts them while Sooyeon and the Administrator go to the Ark and disable the stasis field. The Administrator warns Lyudmila that disabling the field may cause the passengers inside to rapidly corrupt because the presence of Doppelgangers implies that something went wrong with the ship's cryostasis system. Lyudmila is unconcerned, so the Administrator proceeds.

The battle outside abruptly stops the moment the stasis field is removed. Lyudmila subsequently reveals herself to be a Doppelganger as well, but Sooyeon had already figured that out since the beginning— not only did she find out the mercenaries who found Doppelganger Lyudmila die of fatigue shortly after their encounter but she also revealed that the real Lyudmila would never have left her comrades behind or put them in danger if she knew the risks. The Administrator fully reactivates the Ark and all its weaponry and starts attacking the Doppelgangers with maximum firepower. Doppelganger Lyudmila orders her soldiers to charge the Ark head on, but Doppelganger Alex ignores her commander's instructions, knowing that it was foolhardy, and has her squad engage the tanks and artillery first. The Doppelgangers are able to close in on the Ark until buildings suddenly start falling from the sky. This only excites Doppelganger Lyudmila even more as she recognizes where the buildings are coming from and demands her squad to push harder, but Doppelganger Alex convinces her that they should fall back instead.

The mystery benefactress turns out to be none other than the original Lyudmila. Surprised, Sooyeon approaches and greets her.

### Act 2

Doppelganger Lyudmila wants to go back and assault the Ark immediately, but Doppelganger Alex tries to tell her that there's no need to rush. This only irritates the impatient commander, who silences her adjutant by telling her that the Apostle is soon arriving.

Back at the Ark, Lyudmila tells Sooyeon and the Administrator that she had been protecting her squad from the Doppelgangers for the past two decades and thanks the two of them for finally removing the stasis field. They are interrupted by C.O.s and go out to eliminate them; afterwards, Lyudmila and Sooyeon both notice that, oddly enough, only Category 3 C.O.s had arrived. The Administrator theorizes that this is because they are on one of the paths connecting the Normalside with the Qlipha Dimension; during the final moments of the Administration Failure when he enacted Protocol: CoT-13, the Administrator used the Ark, which was capable of traveling through spacetime, to seal off the channel between the two worlds in order to cut off the flow of power to the Demon Lords, thereby weakening and forcing them to hibernate. Recent events like the Replacer Incident have weakened the Ark's seal, so now the Administrator intends on reconfiguring it to allow some of the energy from the Qlipha Dimension through so that it won't completely break from pressure.

The Administrator turns off the cryostasis system, thawing out the passengers, but the security system detects that the passengers have late-stage Corruption syndrome. It then attempts to burn them before they turn until the Administrator stops the incineration process before it starts. Lyudmila questions how her troops could have been corrupted, and the Administrator answers it was bound to happen as they've been in the Counterside for too long. Lyudmila frantically begs him to find a way to save them when the Doppelgangers begin bombarding the Ark from afar. The Ark cannot return fire, so Lyudmila goes out to battle them once more.

The Doppelganger squad push forward but are stalled by Lyudmila. As they continue losing troops and artillery, the Doppelgangers urge their commander to give a retreat order, but Doppelganger Lyudmila refuses and demands to keep fighting. Doppelganger Alex again tells her that her tactics were pointlessly reckless, but Doppelganger Lyudmila threatens to kill her if she questions her any more.

Eventually, Lyudmila is able to repel the Doppelgangers once more and returns to the Ark, where she finds Sooyeon staring at a wall with countless tally marks scribbled onto it. Sooyeon asks her if she had scrawled all those marks, and Lyudmila replies yes though she doesn't remember when she stopped. Disheartened to hear the confirmation, Sooyeon tells the commander that she isn't the real Lyudmila either— just another Shadow who thinks she's the original. Lyudmila is bewildered and contests that possibility, so Sooyeon lays it out to her: the fact that Lyudmila has been able to fight in the Counterside every single day for decades without tiring, eating or even becoming corrupt proves that she isn't human but a Corrupted Object. On top of that, Sooyeon points to Lyudmila's current condition— not only does she have wounds that would normally be fatal to anyone but she's also rapidly healing from them (something she shouldn't be capable of doing even as a Counter) while emitting Corruption rays. Sooyeon speculates that the original Lyudmila must have been severely corrupted by the time the Doppelgangers arose, and the Lyudmila she's talking to now must have mistook herself as the original when she met the Doppelganger Lyudmila.

Lyudmila goes into denial but soon despondently accepts her identity as a Shadow. Not wanting to be a threat to her troops, she asks Sooyeon to kill her. Sooyeon is about to do as she requests but is stopped by Alex, Yegor and Valeriy, who have all been informed of the situation by the Administrator. The Maze Division troops declare they will stay and fight by their commander's side even if she is a Shadow and join the battle against their Doppelgangers.

The Doppelganger squad, already weakened heavily by all the earlier clashes, are overrun by Maze Division. With no other choice left, Doppelganger Lyudmila decides to deploy Chronos, a massive Doppelganger Titan, and orders her men to apprehend and use Doppelganger Alex as its power source. The Doppelgangers, fed up by their commander's tyrannical and brutish ways, instead attack and use her to power Chronos. Although formidable, the so-called "god-class mech" is destroyed by Maze Division.

The Apostle, Sollicitatio, arrives at the battlefield and chastises the Doppelgangers' ineptitude as well as their treachery towards their commander. She summons a weaker version of Nephil, the Category 6 C.O. from the Administration Failure, but it too is defeated. Sooyeon leaves the Ark and, using her new Arsenal Wings' combat uniform and Reactive Sword—which had been prepared by the Administrator prior to the dive—battles and finishes off Sollicitatio.

Doppelganger Alex flees and encounters a heavily wounded Doppelganger Lyudmila, who survived being shot down and used as fuel for Chronos. With no other options left, Doppelganger Lyudmila concedes they should finally retreat and rebuild their strength and requests her adjutant to carry her. Doppelganger Alex complies but it is immediately devoured by her commander, who decides to take matters in her own hands and proceeds to feed on other fallen Doppelgangers.

Now in full power, Doppelganger Lyudmila reenters the battlefield and overwhelms Maze Division. Sooyeon tries to join the fight again, but the Administrator advises against it due to her physical condition and the uniform not being operational at the moment. He then communicates with Lyudmila and questions why she won't use her telekinetic powers to their fullest. Lyudmila answers that she may end up becoming a complete Shadow and lose all her memories of her troops if she goes all out, something she thinks is a fate worse than death, but is soon persuaded not to hesitate. She moves and rams a dimensional ship into her Doppelganger, turns the immense telekinetic energy to reach critical mass, and absorbs and defeats her once and for all.

Lyudmila descends to the ground and pays tribute to her now comatose soldiers, who are all approximately thirty minutes away from death and total corruption. The Administrator observes the fallen and realizes there may be a way to save them after all— while he cannot reverse the corruption process, he can transfer that corruption to someone else through an experimental technique who recently developed. He warns that this won't cure the victims and the new host will have to permanently suffer the Corruption on their behalf until they die (after which the Corruption will return to the original victims), but Lyudmila is determined to save her troops and agrees to go through with the procedure. Afterwards, the Qlipha seal on the ark recaliberated.

Back at the Coffin Company building, Lyudmila awakens but does not see her troops anywhere. The Administrator tells her they are all currently residing in her Shadow World—a sort of pocket dimension she has within her as combined result of absorbing her Doppelganger and undergoing the experiment—and can leave and enter whenever they please. He then asks what her plans to do now that the Old Administration is gone, and Lyudmila says she wishes to work with him and remain as the Commander of Maze Division. He accepts her proposition.

Later, the Administrator meets up with Sooyeon and tells her everything went well with Lyudmila. As the Administration announces the appearance of Shadow Palaces and Doppelgangers in certain areas, Sooyeon asks if him if he'll leave for the next world if this one fails, and he answers that there will probably be no next time should he fail again since he spent all of the Ark's energy on sealing the portals. She then questions if they can win or even survive against the Demon Lords, and he conversely says yes.

## Stages

* Act 1
* Act 2
* Hard

 1–2