(9x12) Virtuality Incarnate: Part 1, Episode 3
After it is clear that Tom and Xiuying have recovered from their memory reintegration and reintroduction to the real world successfully enough, Metis and her associate begin the process of reawakening other users from Virtuality. That process takes the form of the same initial Virtuality addiction scenario on a simulated World Ring that Tom and Xiu went through, except with magic access blocked, and the simulated world being nearly identical to the post-postapocalyptic state of the real world, including the Rings of Fenrir in place of the moon.
The first users to come through that process do not go through multiple layers of deception, and are told of their still-simulated nature upon recovering the memories of their first virtual "deaths" after the corruption of Sphidia. Still, they emerge from the process disoriented and in disbelief, and Tom and Xiu are both there to help them with that transition. In time, they become ambassadors between the real and virtual world, and begin to help with the transition process from its earliest steps, largely taking over from Metis.
The body of people slowly emerging from Virtuality to reality again, robotically embodied and so tangibly distinct from the rest of humanity, but human-minded and so distinct from the automata, come to be seen as a kind of people of their own, a distinct ethnicity of sorts. In time they come to be called "the Sphidi", after the virtual Sphidiverse, or the remnant of it called Sphidia, that they come from.