[Flere821]

Originally Posted by c933103

Spoiler for reply:

1. Actually, is the one in AW really Gabriel and how is it said as so? Some people said A and B are Gabriel/Kirito earlier in the thread but i believe that is a google translate fault that when a Russian social network vk's LN-related page upload that illustration, they said in russian for something like is that/look like/what if they are kirito or gabriel (I don't know russian but seem to be the case), but then someone google translated the page and google translate's result for that sentence was in definitive tone.

2. In SAO WN UW part, Gabriel want to own Alice for his personal enjoyment. Destroying Alice is probably the thing least wanted from him.

Spoiler for reply:

*shrug* unless in this AU things butterfly'd so much that someone else came into UW before the divergence point of the Imperial Palace being created, going by current Alicization plot it has to be Gabriel, even if it seems OOC to what we know of him. I did say in my earlier posts there's no names mentioned (and from in-story POV, there's no reason why Edge will talk about Kirito and other names Crow and others won't recognize). Going by 'the most simple explanation is the right one', I'm taking 'A' to mean Gabriel unless there's explicit statement in the LNs otherwise. Or, alternatively, if we go by the premise Edge is Kirito's fluctlight copy, his memory might be edited / lacking compared to the real Kirito and there's other things going on.

Originally Posted by OH&S

Spoiler for latest novel talk and speculation:

Or perhaps the AW backstory occurs AFTER the end of the Alicization arc? That prologue that Kawahara did at the end of the Web Novel may be the start of a new arc which becomes the AW backstory.

That's what I'm thinking right now at least.

Spoiler for timing (Alicization spoiler):

The 'battle between two player armies' points to that specific point in Alicization though. And even without that given how Alice is a dead ringer to the Being mentioned in question (there is literally no other entity it could be barring Chaos Theory butterflies - the only other 'Being' that broke the Right Eye Seal was Ishukaan, and beyond the obvious that he's not a woman as depicted in the illustration in Vol19, he did it by gouging out his right eye as opposed to breaking it using sheer force of will that made Alice valuable) in this AU Alice never got out of UW, so the WEB end of Alicization arc is right out.