[Tusjecht]

Sunder, you're not active on the LN thread, are you? Anyway, I'll just copy and paste my post from the SAO LN thread, and hope you have a good grasp on the events of Alicization:

From Flere's WEB Final summary, and my response to that here, I quote myself:

Spoiler for "Good spoiler: Speculations incl. AW speculations:

So that ending just hinted that the SAO universe is very intimately connected with a certain Fluctuating Light.

From OVA1 of Accel World, the cast had to defeat the last Assault Linker who played the previous generation of acceleration-type game, AccelAssault2038. (Tus note: Flere, correct the names again, its BB2039, AA2038, and CC2040.)This implies that the AA game failed and died a natural death, i.e no remaining players.

So in other words, whatever goals that Duska achieved in the course of becoming the only remaining player in the entire server, it wasn't the correct flag, and she even closed off the routes that would have lead the AA players to the 'true end' of AA.

We know BB is stalled because of the peace treaty, but that was also a response to the system's Sudden Death rule. So now I had to consider this: what if, the aim of BB is not to reach Level 10? Considering the newfound significance of the last remaining Arc, which is The Fluctuating Light, together with the system reward of reaching Level 10, it seems highly possible that this is in fact, a turning point. The Kings can work together to clear the Imperial Palace and access TFL, or they can kill each other for Level 10, triggering the death flag. After which, the creator will then meet up with the victor, and say something like "Oh I'm sorry, you guys made the wrong choice and the game is all over."

I'm highly considering this was precisely what happened in AA.

So what does it mean for CC2040? On one hand, it could be a reboot of BB, to try to force a situation where everyone has to cooperate. And on the other hand...the 'Corruption' part gets me a little. Somehow, I'm thinking it is the AW equivalent of Dark Knights to Synthesis Knights.