Ready Player Two

At that moment, L0hengrin arrives with her gunter friends. On the Middletown planet, she found a Dungeons & Dragons adventure module Kira created called The Quest for the Seven Shards of the Siren’s Soul. The plot of the adventure involves an evil wizard who abducts the siren Leucosia—Kira's D&D character—and scatters the seven shards of her soul. Only when the shards are recovered is Leucosia restored. Wade theorizes that Anorak believes by gathering the shards, Kira herself—or at least a virtual version of her—will be resurrected.

Within the module, the group also finds a handwritten note from Og revealing the presence of a sword known as the Dorkslayer hidden in the OASIS. The Dorkslayer is the only weapon capable of defeating. Moreover, only Og’s avatar, The Great and Powerful Og, can wield it. So, to slay Anorak, the group must find the Dorkslayer and save Og in real life. L0hengrin and her friends agree to try and retrieve the sword while Art3mis—the only one who can leave the OASIS—will try to save Og. Wade, meanwhile, formulates his own plan for when he hands Anorak the Shards, though it is not described in the text.

With less than three hours left on their ONI timers, Wade, Aech, and Shoto travel to the Afterworld, a surreal rendering of downtown Minneapolis — Prince’s hometown and the setting of his 1984 film Purple Rain. As they approach Prince’s massive home studio, Paisley Park, a new clue appears on the Fourth Shard: a series of nonsensical symbols. Aech interprets them as meaning the group must recruit Prince’s colleagues, the band Morris Day & the Time, to defeat all seven incarnations of Prince from various stages of his career.

Aech moves quickly through the Afterworld, collecting Prince-themed power-ups to help them with the imminent battle. At one point, Shoto makes a joke at Prince’s expense, causing a purple bolt of lightning to strike him down and nearly exhaust his health bar. He uses healing spells to replenish it.

As she continues to retrieve power-ups, Aech talks about how hurt she was when Prince became a Jehovah’s Witness and disavowed the LGBTQIA+ community that supported him his entire career. Aech compares this to the pain she experienced when her mother disowned her after she came out as a lesbian.

The group successfully recruits Morris Day & the Time to join their fight by winning a Dance Dance Revolution contest.

After an intense battle against the seven incarnations of Prince, Wade and his friends are victorious. However, they lose Shoto, who is killed by a bolt of purple lightning after he makes another joke at Prince’s expense. This leaves him in a mysterious state of limbo, unable to respawn in the OASIS or wake up in the real world.

Wade touches the Fifth Shard, which transports him to Kira’s 40th birthday party. Og invited Prince, her favorite artist, to perform, and Prince sings “Happy Birthday” as Halliday sulks in the background.

Back on the Afterworld, an inscription appears on the Fifth Shard: “Win her hand through a feat of dark renown / The last two shards are set in Morgoth’s Crown” (286). Wade shudders, explaining that Morgoth, based on the main antagonist of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion, is an immortal and invulnerable NPC. He resides on Arda I, an OASIS planet devoted to the First Age of Middle Earth, the setting of Tolkien’s most beloved books.

On Arda I, Wade and Aech ride mystical horses to Morgoth’s lair in the Iron Mountains. Wade admits he is rusty when it comes to Tolkien lore, in large part because the books remind him of Art3mis. Aech never liked Tolkien much because of what she and others believe to be racist undertones in his work. Wade sends a message to Art3mis, hoping she can help.

Outside Morgoth’s lair, Aech tries to put a sleeping spell on a giant wolf named Carcharoth, but it fails. Carcharoth kills Aech and poisons Wade. As the wolf closes in on Wade, whose health bar is close to zero, Art3mis falls from the sky.

Art3mis sings a magical song to Carcharoth, lulling the wolf gently to sleep. She also sings a song to Wade that reverses his poisoned status and sets his health bar back to its maximum.

The two of them sneak into Morgoth’s chamber, where Art3mis sings another lullaby that puts the terrifying creature to sleep. Wade cuts out a jewel from the sleeping Morgoth’s crown.

The jewel transforms into the Sixth Shard. Upon touching it, Wade is transported to the replica of Rivendell, an idyllic valley from The Lord of the Rings, that Og built for Kira.

Back on Arda I, Wade has an epiphany. He believes that after Anorak revives Kira, the two of them will hijack The Vonnegut and live in ARC@DIA, Wade’s mini-OASIS Wade, as they travel the galaxy in a scenario reminiscent of the classic 1993 Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Ship in a Bottle.”