.hack//Quantum

In 2022, Asumi, Eri, and their friend Iori all play The World R:X together as Sakuya, Mary, and Tobias respectively. On one occasion, they happen to be in the dungeon containing The One Sin event while Shamrock's guild was trying to defeat it. While trying to reach a good spot to watch from, Sakuya accidentally triggers a trap that instantly kills many of the guild members. The next day, Iori finds that Shamrock's guild placed a bounty for Iori's character Tobias, along with Sakuya and Mary. Sakuya decides to log in anyways, hiding out by the riverbank in Mac Anu. There, she meets Hermit. While they are talking, Iyoten and Asta capture them with cheat items. However, Mary and Tobias show up, figuring that Sakuya would log in anyways. Hermit uses his powers to erase the cheat items and repair the damage to the surrounding area that they caused while Sakuya, Mary, and Tobias fight with Iyoten and Asta. As the fight turns into a chase, Shamrock and some of her guild members try to stop Iyoten and Asta. It is then revealed that Iyoten and Asta were the ones who posted the bounty, not Shamrock. Soon after, Iyoten PKs hermit by pushing him into an abyss and all of the characters nearby are transported to an unusual area where a strange AI appears to be corrupting PCs and putting them into cages hanging from the branches of an enormous dead tree. Unsure of what's going on, Tobias tells Sakuya and Mary to log off before logging off himself. Sakuya tries to log off, but the AI interrupts the process. Mary attacks the AI, who then corrupts her. Sakuya reaches out to help Mary, but she gets knocked out.

Hermit wakes up in the strange area to find that everyone was gone or had been corrupted by the AI. He starts looking at the items the players left behind trying to find his list until he gives up and hires Geek to make a new one. Hermit starts using it to identify the corrupted players. Meanwhile, Sakuya's player, Asumi, wakes up to find that she and Mary's player, Eri, are in the hospital. Asumi was only unconscious for a few hours and the only long-term effect is a tingling in her right hand, the same hand which she used as Sakuya to touch Mary. Asumi is told that she and Eri had just been playing for too long and that Eri would soon recover, but as time goes by, Asumi and Iori become suspicious. Sakuya finds Hermit's original list in her items, not knowing when she picked it up. Together with Iori, she looks into it. They are then contacted by a mysterious woman who tells them where to meet up with her in the real world. This person turns out to be the player behind Shamrock, Reiko Saeki. Meanwhile, Hermit meets with Geek and expresses his desire to free the corrupted players in the strange area. Geek tells Hermit that the players' minds were hooked up in a kind of quantum computer and that freeing them would be difficult. Later, Sakuya, Tobias, and Shamrock meet up again online, and Shamrock explains the list to Sakuya and Tobias. She says that the list documents the haplotypes of players in The World and compares them with the haplotype of a young American boy who died seven years previously. While they are talking, Hermit comes up and spies on them, noticing that they have his list. When he hears that the boy whose haplotype was being compared is dead, he is shocked and teleports away. He then goes to the bar where Geek is waiting to speak with him and starts trashing the place in blind anger, yelling, "All of this and for nothing! Seven years just wasted!" Meanwhile, Tobias questions Shamrock about a hacker's ability to access personal information. Shamrock proves that the list can hack into players' information by pulling up Sakuya. When she does, however, the list shows that Sakuya is a compatable donor. Just then, the Mac Anu is overrun by data bugs and the dead tree with the caged players hanging from its branches starts growing into the town. A corrupted form of Eri appears in front of Sakuya and attacks her. Shamrock uses a form of data drain to fight off the corrupted Eri, but it's ineffective. Shamrock then kills all of the players in the area with an area attack to force them out of the game before the data bugs can kill them.