Being a re-telling of Virtue's Last Reward, this page assumes you have already played that game, and as such, all spoilers for it will be untagged. You Have Been Warned!
Phi's perspective of the events of Virtue's Last Reward. Complete with Plot Locks and all nine characters' endings. Will the trials of her game repair the void in Phi's soul? Or will they break her, leaving her empty of virtue? ~The fic's blurb.
Empty Virtue is a Zero Escape fic by Chessanator re-telling the events of the second game, Virtue's Last Reward from Phi's perspective. It consists of 95 chapters, giving additional insight on the events of the Nonary Game: Ambidex Edition, and is a Long Runner, being started in April of 2015 and completed in October of 2018.
The fic can be read on ArchiveOfOurOwn here
. The flow diagram for the fic can be viewed here.
Seek a way out!
- Acceptable Breaks from Canon: During Tenmyouji's route in VLR, when the groups go through the white doors, Dio suggests going through the middle door with Phi, with Phi claiming his reasoning is flawed but relenting on his choice. In Empty Virtue, Phi instead asserts her stance and has Dio follow her to the left door through the Security Room. Out-of-universe, this is due to the middle door leading to the Q Room.
- Adaptation Expansion: Some of the routes go beyond what is shown in Sigma's perspective to expand on the story.
- Phi's ending note has her waking up after Sigma and K are killed by the bracelets' drugs, and discovering a hidden room in the Lounge where Zero III mocks her for her decisions, displays how each player died, and has Phi killed by one of the GAULE Ms.
- Dio's ending follows Sigma and Phi accompanying Dio to a Myrmidon base, where he traps the two and reveals the Myrmidons' plans and targets to Phi.
- Additionally, every bad ending is changed to account Phi's alternative vote, with the bad ending in Sigma's route (Phi's VLR route) being the only one retained in Empty Virtue. All AB Game choices assume Sigma uses the vote he had in the route's good ending.
- Adaptational Nice Guy: While Phi's personality remains mostly the same as in canon, she is also put into more lighthearted situations than before, and additional context is given to some of her more unruly moments to make them more understandable from her perspective.
- Backtracking: Phi is forced to play the Pantry and Security Rooms twice, with one instance each of both rooms having a Plot Lock requiring the other instance to be completed to progress.
- Dramatic Irony: While Sigma's face is known from the get-go this time around, Phi is kept in the dark on a number of other details, which, for instance, causes her to not recognize Kyle's face as a younger Sigma in her and K's endings.
- Expanded Universe: Some extra rooms are added to the fic that are not present in the original game. The Lounge, for instance, has a secret room where video footage is shown of the rest of Rhizome 9. Phi visits this room in both her route and K's route.
- Hero of Another Story: This fic details VLR from Phi's point of view, but beyond that, the nine characters also have their routes shuffled where Sigma could get to know one character while Phi gets to know another. To wit:
- Luna's route becomes Quark's route.
- K's route becomes Phi's route.
- Dio is the only character who keeps his route across both Virtue's Last Reward and Empty Virtue.
- Tenmyouji's route becomes Alice's route.
- Quark's route becomes K's route.
- Clover's route becomes Tenmyouji's route.
- Alice's route becomes Clover's route.
- Sigma's route becomes Luna's route.
- Phi's route becomes Sigma's route.
- Late-Arrival Spoiler: Empty Virtue wastes no time in spoiling some of Virtue's Last Reward's biggest plot twists, most notably the fact that Sigma is actually an elderly man rather than college-aged.
- The Unfought: Phi never gets a chance to play the Director's Office room, only investigating it momentarily in Quark's route when the computer to access Luna's secrets needs to be accessed.
