[Awrya]

Originally Posted by Flere821

As promised, a small summary of a part of Ch8 is here. The translators labelled it as Part 25 of Alicization:

Spoiler for Ch8, Pt25:

Asuna saw Kirito calling Higa and the subsequent cut-off when the base was damaged. With one hand she lifted Higa up and snarled if Kirito died because of him then she will kill him no matter what later on. There were various other military officers here but they were all stunned by her aura, due to Asuna having more experience with life and death than them. Asuna released Higa eventually, and we get a damage report of Ocean Turtle. Bottom line, the whole place is locked down and damaged, but the Americans would be able to escape if no back-up arrives soon. From the replies to Ocean Turtle's messages some one on the upper echelons have made arrangements to stall and give the US enough time to escape with Alice's Fluctlight stored in a Lightcube, a window of 24 hours.

Higa then went into a analysis of Kirito's fluctlight. Kirito's sense of self got blown away from the events at the Cathedral, and due to brain damage the memory suppressing functions of the STL wasn't working, hence Kirito remembered stuff from the last time he dived in. This damage was further boosted when the invaders attacked, cutting off the power to his STL. Asuna was told Kirito would be damaged to the point he could only do reflexive things like eat or sleep, he no longer knows who he is or what he wants to achieve.

Scene change to the dozen Americans that attacked, led by Gabriel. They have trouble breaking into Underworld, and can't tell which of the 100,000 ightcubes are Alice's. All of them follow Gabriel's orders loyally, after he demolished the rest of the team 10 vs 1 both in reality and VR combat.
It turns out someone from the JSDF leaked the info to the US in an attempt to shut down Kikuoka's project, since if he succeeds many soldier's careers would be over. The informant, code-named 'Rabbit', contacted CIA and made a deal; the attackers has 24 hours to get in and get out with the items, while the public media release will make it seem like for the safety of the hostages the JSDF had to be cautious. After that though in order to save face the Aegis cruisers nearby will have to intervene.

We then get treated into another look into Gabriel's insane mind. After finishing this job, he'll betray the US and escape with the STL technology into somewhere in Southeast Asia. After changing all personal traits like his appearance and fingerprints he'll move to somewhere in Europe, preferably southern France or Spain. With his hidden bank accounts he'll buy a mansion and set up some VR worlds. To begin with there'll only be him and Alice, but there will be more later. He plans hunt down some youths with strong souls, outside of his country of residence to prevent being found, use STL to suck their soul out and dispose the remains. For diversity's sake he eventually plans on launching his hunts into other parts of the world, such as Africa and the Middle East. Japan is especially important on his list, due to a strong population of VR players. Some, like the SAO survivers, would likely have especially strong souls and high adaptability, so he wants to hunt down one of them and take their Fluctlight. He especially wants to get his hands on one of the Frontliner's Fluctlights. And as Fluctlights can be copied, he can tinker around with them and see what will make them shine the brightest over and over. The Fluctlight Alice will be the crown jewel of his collection, being a soul that's untainted by the evils of the world - he wants to make her his partner for the rest of his life.

Gabriel went out of his reverie, and found one of his underlings managed to bring up a visual of Underworld. They only have access to the Dark Territories from where they are right now, as their hacker isn't good enough to penetrate the defences. They saw the residents, and discovered the goblins, giants, orcs and such have the same soul as humans. Gabriel decided since they can't log in into the Human Kingdoms with superior accounts (only as Lvl1 villagers), he decided to log into the Dark Territories instead. The 'Super-accounts' there are available to them, and they'll just invade into the Human Kingdom and look for Alice after they conquered everything. One of the accounts is a Lvl70 Dark Knight, and the other one has no class or level labelled; it's only known as 'Vector'.

Scene cuts back to Asuna and others. Higa said there's still hope for Kirito, as his Fluctlight is still logged in. He blamed himself for what happened to his comrades death, but it was possible for him to be healed by someone with their kindness and forgiveness; even if that's extremely unscientific. You'd need like someone's love for him...
Asuna volunteered to dive into UW. Kikuoka brought up the point the Final Pressure Staget will begin soon in UW, a few hours left in real time. The walls separating the Human Kingdom and the Dark Territory will fall and UW will be engulfed in war. And seeing as Kirito had just incapacitated half of the Human's main fighting force when he entered the Cathedral... it'll be bad. Higa said they'll have to send someone inside anyway to retrieve Alice, and Asuna is their best choice; she has a high adaptability to VR setting, and can cooperate with Kirito well. Rinko said the invaders can probably think of the same strategy, while Higa said even if they do have access to two STLS down there they don't have access to the Super-accounts. Higa thought he had forgotten something, then the screen flashed with some of the list of accounts being accessed and logged in.

Spoiler for Vector:

Later, it's revealed Vector's the God of the Dark Territories. Suffice to say, $hit just got real for UW's population...

Thanks for the summary.

Spoiler for reply to Vector:

About Vector, it was mentioned in Vol.9 that Vector is the God of Darkness. Since it is later revealed in the web novel, did Kawahara add this information to the LN version?

Spoiler for Accounts and Lv.:

So Kirito is logged in with as a Lv.1 villager. Killing a couple of Goblins probably raised him to Lv.2-3, since he was in a party with Eugeo and shared the EXP.
Since normal humans usually don't get any EXP from killing mobs, only their skills would increase, so the majority of of the human population are (still) Lv.1 characters?

While strength in UW doesn't only depend on level, I can't help but compare UW situation to a WoW video I saw, where 40 Lv.1 characters tried to take on Hogger (an elite monster).