Intel has traced the Ascendant's last confirmed location to Museum Estate, the terminal station of Rail 11 in City 015. Records indicate that the estate was formerly owned by Mr. Copperfield, a business magnate within the Transatlantic Economic Community during the Golden Age. The structure is equipped with integrated Anti-Punishing Virus countermeasures dating back to the Post-Pandemic Age and served as a civilian shelter facility until the conclusion of the Great Evacuation.
Distress signals from recon squads draw us in. We investigate the area and find multiple Construct bodies. Upon a closer look, most of their wounds are from gunfire. Then the Estate Terrapods begin to engage us from multiple angles. Lucia calls for Liv to request backup from the nearest available team.
As a Terrapod aims a shot at Lucia from behind. Before it fires, a Tank-type Construct with a colossal blade drops it instead. He introduces himself as Kamui from Strike Hawk, tasked with tracking one of the Ascendants, Roland. After an encounter with Iron Maiden in City 015, she slipped the name, but Kamui does not know what the Ascendant looks like.
He also mentions the Ascension Network as the source of Ascendant power and strength, though he has yet to provide a precise definition.
Kamui is visibly surprised to see Lucia and reveals that they knew each other when they first entered service in Babylonia. However, Lucia has no memory of him.
Terrapod: An advanced security robot created by Cosmos Industries, designed to patrol designated routes reliably. It detects intruders with precision signals from monitoring devices, ensuring thorough coverage. The Gatling gun, provide robust protection and can rotate at any angle, offering versatile defense. It automatically reloads through the magazine below, maintaining continuous operation without manual intervention.
[Timestamp: +15m]
We push deeper into the estate. Kamui triggers the highest tier of the museum's security system. After clearing the security mechanoids, the Estate Butler contacts us on a private channel, ordering us to leave immediately. Kamui directly asks him about the Ascendant's location, but the butler does not respond and cuts the connection.
Lee manages to hack the gate open, just as an explosion is heard somewhere inside the estate. Liv picks up friendly Construct signals from the courtyard, engaged in combat with an Ascendant reading several magnitudes above Tifa. Force field barriers block our approach. Liv uses her Levi-Gun to breach the core terminal and overloads the field. The butler returns to the channel with a final warning: past this barrier, there is no going back.
[Timestamp: +10m]
The courtyard is massive. The fighting has stopped, but it is eerily quiet. Lucia utilizes Electromagnetic Camouflage to sweep away the remaining Corrupted. We move upstairs and find Constructs on every level. Their limbs and Inver-Devices are damaged, but they still register vital signs. Their voice modules are missing. One Construct manages to send a warning before Motion Bombs detonate inside their bodies.
The normal route leads us into a fake guest hall. The butler contacts us again. He tells us to stay put with the Corrupted already inside. He explains that these are the ones the estate could not neutralize: he had them sealed in this room. He prefers us to be consumed by the Corrupted instead of being used by the Ascendant. We clear the Corrupted in the hall. A second voice, probably the Ascendant, cuts into the channel and states that the butler deliberately routed us apart, then the line goes dead. Liv scans for an alternate path to the real guest hall.
[Timestamp: +15m]
We caught up with the Ascendant. Kamui recognizes him from his previous encounter. Roland looks past us at the butler, who is now fully Corrupted. He remarks that the outcome would have been different if the butler had accepted the power of the Ascension Network.
The butler is a formidable opponent. We engage him for a considerable amount of time before he finally falls. His last words are an apology to Mr. Copperfield for failing to protect the estate, and then he activates his self-destruct sequence.
Kamui presses on toward Roland. The fight shakes the hall, and debris rains down from the ceiling. Kamui is losing ground. Lucia moves in to assist. Roland tells her: "She is weak, just like she said." As Roland pushes Lucia back, Kamui charges forward. The Ascendant reveals that he was after Kamui all along. He swings his weapon, bringing down every pillar in the hall at once. The collapse seals Kamui off on the far side, and we lose all visual contact.
Chrome contacts us immediately, indicating that Kamui's corruption level is rising rapidly.
Addendum I: Kamui meets Roland outside the city's skirt, who appears as a friendly Construct, and asks for directions to the Museum Estate to reinforce Gray Raven after receiving their request for backup.
[Timestamp: +15m]
After breaking through the wall debris, we find Kamui unconscious on the ground. The Ascendant is nowhere to be found. Lucia brings him around. He reports elevated Virus activity in his frame but has no memory of what happened after losing consciousness. Before we can press further, Liv warns us: the manor structure is failing, and Corrupted swarms are already moving in, blocking our only escape route.
Kamui points us to a set of nearby monitoring devices, deployed earlier by Strike Hawk to collect high-precision geo-data of the surrounding area. He suggests feeding that data to Liv to calculate a second escape route. Lucia is visibly worried about his condition. He notices and comments that she is more caring than she used to be.
[Timestamp: +20m]
We recover the devices and hand the data to Liv. She runs the calculations while the rest of us hold the hallway and push back toward the far side. When she finishes, the result is zero. No viable route exists. Kamui does not hesitate. He still has EMP grenades and proposes blasting through the wall directly. The risk is that the electromagnetic discharge will wake whatever is dormant beneath the manor floor—his guess: One of the guards here will start fighting the Corrupted. We can slip past them.
[Timestamp: +25m]
The gamble holds. A massive, uncorrupted mechanoid guard rises and tears through the Corrupted, blocking our path and giving us the window we need. Before we leave the manor entirely, Lucia calls for us to take down the guard. It is not infected yet, but given its scale and combat capability, it will be a serious threat once the Punishing Virus infects it. We engage and bring it down.
As it falls, its speaker cycles in a loop, calling out a name: Emma. It keeps calling until the power runs out entirely. Kamui pulls its memory shell before we withdraw from the manor.
ADDENDUM II: Zack is one of the large agricultural machines codenamed Harvester; they were refitted and militarized by humans during the early days of the Punishing Virus outbreak. To avoid exposure to the virus, they were only allowed to operate inside the Central Purification Filters' range. Most were destroyed during the Great Evacuation, but Copperfield managed to secure a few.
- See Personnel File: Roseblade, the Estate Butler, from the memory shell of the large mechanoid guard named Zack.