Sword Art Online: Alicization Shocks With Gruesome Deaths

Sword Art Online: Alicization has already had its fair share of gruesome scenes depicting darker kinds of violence, but with the War of Underworld arc officially taking the third season in an even more intense direction the latest episode of the series has certainly kicked things up a notch. With the mercenaries uploading themselves into the Underworld as the leaders of the Dark Territory, Episode 4 of the War of Underworld arc goes a long way in showing just what "Emperor Vecta" is capable of as he not only brutally murders someone, but uses her head as a way to ward off traitors.

Episode 4 sees Gabriel adjusting to his new role as the recently awakened king of the Dark Territory, Emperor Vecta, and when he's attacked in the night by the Dark Knight Lipia, he pins her down and breaks her neck by literally choking the life out of her.

The latest episode of the series sees the Dark Knights Shasta and Lipia hate Vecta's idea of using the Dark Territory to unleash a new wave of violence on the world because they were on the cusp of forging a new peace treaty with the human society after the death of Administrator. When Shasta reveals his worries to Lipia, she decides to take matters into her own hands.

Walking into Vecta's chamber as someone who'd accompany him for the night, she soon reveals a small knife and tries to kill him. But Vecta sees this coming, and ruthlessly chokes the life out of her. When her "soul," emerges and goes into his body, we see a disturbing flashback with an even more gruesome murder! It turns out that Gabriel has always been curious about death and souls and has essentially been chasing after the pursuit of this knowledge like a sociopath.

This flashback reveals that he once killed his childhood friend Alicia by stabbing her through the brain in the hopes that he'd find the soul that must be in her head. After this moment gives him the kind of fantasy he's pursuing, he's been chasing that feeling ever since and killing as many as he can. But with Lipia's death, he experiences this once more and this will certainly only fuel more bloodshed going forward.

But the last bit of brutality comes with how he displays his latest kill. Serving as a warning, Vecta has chopped off Lipia's head and frozen it. He sits it by his throne as a bloody statement for this violent king, and it's clear that he's going to be a villain that's going to take everything Kirito has in order to defeat. If you wanted to jump back into the series, you can currently find Sword Art Online: Alicization - War of Underworld streaming on Crunchyroll, Funimation, HIDIVE, and Hulu.