To my dear readers,
I started this project over a year and a half ago and cranked away at it recently to finish it up. I was aiming for 60 chapters, but I didn't quite get there before my deadline and now I have many other things to do. However, I don't want to leave you hanging, so I'll tell you now how the story ends, and it's a good, satisfying ending, so sit back and enjoy.
The Ending of .hack/Fork: Genesis
Jyos, Fusota-ri, and Taha go to Θ Cursed Traveler's End, which is a very haunting zone. It contains no monsters, but in it they feel like they are hallucinating and see images of Saya the Witch with a fearful look on her face. Eventually, they see through her eyes and see how she realized the impending doom of the Cursed Wave and it wiping out the armies of Dark and Light. She also sees her companions eliminated there.
The three of them move on from there to the Field of Eternal Mourning. There, Saya had fled from the battle zone. Notably Lara, Harald Hoerwick's niece, had acted out the character of Saya the Witch. The Twilight Dragon in that story was actually a program that monitored the Light and Dark, and upon finding their arguing unending, would delete them and start the world anew every time using the program The Cursed Wave. Saya (or rather, Lara) told it that asking the world to be perfect was a selfish wish and that people can learn only if they have the memories to learn, so eliminating them and restarting fresh would only lead to the same problems. The Twilight Dragon conceded and stopped wiping out the World. However, in .hack/Fork, the story has been modified to follow the Lore. Turns out, the lady Harald Hoerwick loved is actually alive and leading MAMA, the organization behind .hack. Crafty as she is, she took his game after his disappearance and has been completing HER telling of the Epitaph, which includes the death of Saya.
The three hackers travel to the Field of Eternal Mourning where they discover unusual data records hidden in the field. The data doesn't make any sense at first since it not only hints at the ending of the sprites in the Epitaph but of all creatures after the Epitaph (i.e. when the players themselves play the game since the Epitaph is the backstory of The World).
The three of them reach the Monument of Twilight, also known as the Epitaph Stone. It's absolutely gigantic and contains the most complete version of the story ever known, though some parts are still blotted out from the artificially-created appearance of age and wear. They begin to read it, but as they do, its words highlight and start to read themselves. Then, as they proceed, the Cursed Wave appears and starts to attack them.
Meanwhile, Dasomov has just booted the stranger from Japan. As it turns out, this stranger was none other than a member of CC Corp assigned to investigate the strange server signals being received from Russia. (Note, many online games have certain IP addresses or web addresses coded into them that point back to the servers owned by the company who made the game. That way, they can relay info back to the company.) Despite the IP ban, the CC Corp member returns and is able to control Mobashem directly. The other hackers go into hiding and scatter throughout The World to evade capture.
Morganna, who is actually a good AI in this version of the game (since she hasn't lost her purpose), goes in search of Mikmik. She finds a secret zone, but instead of just Mikmik, she discovers a host of other avatars (including those lost early in the story by the hackers). She decides to set them all free. Mikmik, finally free, is very grateful. However, with his real life consciousness restored, he hears voices that sound like those of doctors talking about his condition. He feels the urge to leave to tell them to keep him alive, but Morganna is sad to see him go. She desperately wants him to stay. He promises to return soon, but his doctors and family are so excited to have him back, they don't want him to play the game again.
In KGB headquarters, Evgeni has been put into comatose, and agent Iskra takes over his mission. She goes to visit Dasomov under the alias "Elena" since she used that name to betray him several years ago. She is very attractive and has excellent charms. However, Dasomov's heart is so hardened against her that he shuts her out, and the story starts taking a turn for the better.
Mobashem detects it has been robbed of its prisoners, and Mobashem and Morganna have an epic duel of power. Morganna tries to invoke the Cursed Wave but discovers she is unable to because the Cursed Wave is being controlled by one more powerful than her: the Monument of Twilight / Epitaph Stone.
Jyos, Taha, and Fusota-ri avatars are obliterated (literally) by the Cursed Wave. Evan, Anastasia, and their Japanese friend all report back to Dasomov on what happened, but all of them feel mentally strange in an unexplainable way, as if they all had extreme headaches.
The Cursed Wave begins prowling The World, and everything becomes dark and very spooky. The entirety of The World begins playing out the words of the Epitaph of Twilight with the Cursed Wave swallowing up zone after zone.
With each news report from hackers in The World, everything is looking disastrous, Dasomov feels like the entire mission is a failure. However, a few hours in, Mikmik sends a message in chat that he has escaped from The World and is back in real life. Everyone, especially Dasomov, is super excited and thrilled to have him back. That gives Dasomov the freedom he needs to set it all straight: with a few strokes of the keyboard, he shuts down the game servers, thereby ending the disaster.
Afterwards, the hackers discuss what they learned regarding The World. The unusual data in The Field of Mourning revealed a plot by Mama to capture and kill all human beings within The World itself. There were also three other new fields revealed that had been created by CC Corp for the "heaven without humanity", accessed in the area " Θ Heavenly Hearth Signet": Tumultuous Towering Tree (accessed by Heavenly Heroic Vine) - Location of the World Tree (Norse mythology), Infinite Caustic Ocean (accessed by Heavenly Caustic Ocean), and Observerless Rainbow Vista (accessed by Heavenly Rainbow Vista) - Meant to celebrate the elimination of humanity.
Having completed their objectives, Dasomov believes it would be best to wait a long time for Zontna (Yegor), Kreigbrot, and Fusota-ri to finish their analysis of the PNAK system before moving forward. Everyone else has to either learn to work with the German and Japanese in the game or leave the project out of boredom.
Yegor, however, decides to take the job in the United States (California), thereby delaying any progress. While he eventually returns for .hack/Fork: Aura Nexus Chronicles (a story I have an outline and good ideas for but probably will never write), his departure sets the timetables back and kills any hope of making the project go public in the near future.
Xil-Sta gets into a brief quarrel with Jyos about the game backstory, but it ends quick because the game project isn't going to go public.
q5corbo and Mikmik decide to meet in real life, and the optimistic personality of the guy behind q5corbo turns out to be just the right therapy the guy behind Mikmik needs to help psychologically after having been trapped in the game for so long.
Anastasia (Tovia/Taha) meets Evan (Jyos) in real life, and the two of them hit it off well. Naturally, they are relatively close in age, and Evan is interested in dating her (but nervous about asking). However, the big surprise comes when Anastasia introduces Evan to her uncle Dasomov.
Dasomov reveals how he obtained a unique copy of the game The World. He had been trying to date a Korean woman, but his Korean was terrible, so he began taking lessons from some Korean guy in IT (info-tech) who was doing it as language exchange (since the Korean guy was learning Russian). The two guys hit it off as good friends and stayed in touch even after Dasomov's relationship with the Korean woman ended. Some time later, the Korean guy lost his job because of company mismanagement. He was so ticked off, he gave Dasomov the info needed to hack into the servers of the company and told him to sabotage the company on his behalf. Dasomov did some exploring of the company servers first and realized they were holding the backups of the game The World. These backups had been forgotten by CC Corp and were sitting in the old files of the Korean company who just hadn't deleted them yet. Dasomov then set up a hack job to copy the files, and from there the game began.
In the end, Dasomov and Evan enjoy each other's company. Dasomov sees some real gargoyles and starts to think that maybe real life isn't as ugly as it seemed, and that maybe he can have good friends in real life after all. Deleting the game from his computer, he looks at his walls and decides its time to repair his REAL life. Evan and Anastasia are waiting for him, and he goes with them out to eat.
Other notes:
The offer of money to Dasomov at the end of chapter 17 is unethical because it's tax-free/evasion - i.e. the executives aren't telling the government they are giving the extra money to Dasomov.
The gamers do have access to the built-in admin panels, as chapter 8 attests, but these aren't comprehensive. Kellei notes Knut was able to load Mobashem with his own panel.