Not long after, the grand event finally came to a complete end. Although Minato's Team had turned it into a hilarious spectacle and given the audience tremendous emotional payoff, all feasts must come to an end, and the demonstration of "Left 4 Dead" was over.
After all, it was only a demo version with just two short stages. Once they were cleared, there was nothing left.
The other three teams had cleared the game quite smoothly. They encountered plenty of mutated monsters along the way, but the demo stages did not feature any outrageously powerful mutants, so they made it through without much trouble.
Afterward, those players excitedly declared that the game was incredibly fun and thrilling, pouring out every bit of emotional value they could provide.
Combat was awesome!
Team combat was even more awesome!
The audience also gave the lucky players who had successfully cleared the demo enthusiastic applause, making them feel as though they had become celebrities.
Of course, the most popular team was still Minato's Team, which cleared the game last.
Minato's Team had clearly faced a much higher difficulty, and there were also two lively troublemakers in the group who could not stand each other, making them far more entertaining.
Because the two troublemakers had started fighting among themselves, they ran into danger during battle. When they entered the second stage, they began hurting each other again, only to crash straight into the strongest wave of zombies, accompanied by numerous mutated monsters.
The two troublemakers, who had beaten each other down to dangerously low health, were immediately knocked down by a mutant monster that sprayed corrosive acid.
This monster would spray a pool of corrosive acid at the crowd. Once the acid hit the ground, it formed "a puddle of green water," and players had to leave its range immediately or they would continuously lose health.
Normally, players would lose some health when encountering this kind of monster, since it attacked rather quickly. But as long as they ran fast enough, the damage would not be too severe.
Unfortunately, Kakashi and Obito had reduced each other's health to less than one-sixth. They had also entered the low-health "weakened" state, which automatically reduced their movement speed by 30%.
Thus, the two unlucky boys failed to dodge in time and had their health bars emptied, collapsing onto the ground.
Normally, even after falling to the ground, players would not die immediately. Instead, they entered a one-minute near-death state in which they could not move. They could only get back up if healthy teammates came to rescue them. Conversely, if no one rescued them within a minute, they died on the spot. They would also die immediately if struck by another fatal attack.
However, they had encountered a terrifying zombie horde at the time. Nohara Rin anxiously tried to save them, but her rescue attempts were constantly interrupted by attacks from other zombies and monsters.
Moreover, the zombies kept attacking the two near-death players. Obito and Kakashi lay helplessly on the ground, able only to watch as a swarm of zombies surrounded them and subjected them to a brutal, merciless beating.
In the end, the two unlucky boys were beaten to death amid Kakashi's unwilling growl and Obito's terrified shouts.
The number of teammates instantly dropped to two, while Nohara Rin was still in grave danger under the assault of the zombie horde.
At the crucial moment, Konoha's flashiest Minato Namikaze seemed to trigger some passive trait as he directly entered showtime mode.
With a katana in one hand and a kunai in the other, Minato Namikaze moved at high speed while cutting down all manner of monsters, turning into a battlefield meat grinder.
Even when facing attacks from mutated monsters with crowd-control abilities, Minato Namikaze, whose strength had been severely weakened, could still evade with the smallest possible movements. More often than not, he attacked while dodging, like a martial artist dancing across a bloody battlefield.
When small evasive movements were not enough, he made larger ones instead, including many actions that were extremely difficult for his current body.
For example, he charged toward a nearby tree in a parkour-like sprint, used his momentum to run up the trunk with both feet, then leaped backward to evade an attack. At the same time, his katana flashed coldly as he severed the mutated monster's head.
The whole point was to keep showing off to the very end.
Thus, Minato Namikaze's one-man show miraculously broke through the most difficult stretch.
In the end came the iconic scene of Minato Namikaze reviving Nohara Rin, who had been beaten into a near-death state beside a heap of monster corpses.
At that moment, the value of the "Yellow Flash" rose yet again, proving to everyone that even with his strength greatly diminished, this greatest genius of Konoha's younger generation remained invincible among his peers.
As for Kakashi and Obito, the two unlucky boys could only float behind Minato Namikaze and Nohara Rin like ghosts, unable to do anything as they watched the pair continue onward. It was unbearably awkward.
Only after Minato Namikaze led Nohara Rin to a key checkpoint did Kakashi and Obito revive. In the game, as long as the entire team had not been wiped out, dead teammates could revive if the surviving members continued onward and reached areas with a sense of "space," such as safe rooms, ordinary houses, tree hollows, caves, or tents. They would appear as though locked inside those areas.
As long as a living teammate reached them, the dead teammates could be released and return to battle.
Though they looked like a pair of clowns, Kakashi and Obito had also directly demonstrated to everyone what to do when someone died in the game.
In the end, Minato's Team cleared the game last, yet received the most enthusiastic applause. Minato Namikaze in particular was several times more popular than everyone else combined.
Nohara Rin, his student, was delighted, while Kakashi and Obito were embarrassed. The two best friends immediately began blaming each other again, insisting it was all the other's fault, perfectly demonstrating the truth that best friends were destined to argue for life.
After that, the event completely ended. More than five thousand spectators returned home or left Konoha carrying boundless excitement and endless topics of conversation, spreading the news far and wide.
From that day onward, "Genjutsu Game" would spread throughout the ninja world and become a brand-new phenomenon known in every household.
As Hokage, Hiruzen Sarutobi understood that Konoha would soon see many new spies. They would do everything possible to investigate the truth behind "Genjutsu Game," and once they confirmed it, they would use every means at their disposal to seize the technology.
Unfortunately, unlike other secret techniques, this technology was directly controlled by the Uchiha Clan.
In these times, who could possibly snatch something from the Uchiha Clan?
If spies ultimately targeted the Uchiha Clan, they would most likely just be delivering themselves to their deaths. At the same time, they could create a certain degree of restraint and harassment for the Uchiha Clan, which was precisely the classic "balance" favored by Konoha's upper ranks.
Therefore, Hiruzen Sarutobi was not worried that "Genjutsu Game" would be stolen by outsiders. The core technology was right there, and it was something others simply could not take away.
They could try the old approach of "if we cannot have it, destroy it," but the same point remained: Konoha was now strong and prosperous, and that was the Uchiha Clan. What could the other ninja clans possibly use to destroy something they could not obtain?
In the end, this secret technique had now become one of Konoha's core products. After learning that the Uchiha Clan had joined forces with many ninja clans to establish a guild specifically for selling and expanding genjutsu games, the longest-serving Hokage immediately weighed the pros and cons and analyzed how Konoha could gain the greatest benefit.
Then, "Left 4 Dead" was specially selected. If the game could be further improved and upgraded to give players a more realistic experience, it would become an invaluable training tool for newly graduated ninja teams.
To that end, Hiruzen Sarutobi specifically sent the Anbu to the Uchiha Clan and raised each issue concerning "Left 4 Dead" one by one.
The current Uchiha Clan still held the Third Hokage in high regard, so the information was quickly passed through the Uchiha Clan into Uchiha Qi's hands.
Looking over the questions one after another, Uchiha Qi considered them before taking out a pen and answering each in turn. Yet the core of all his responses pointed to a single matter—
"Left 4 Dead" would introduce a specially designed survival mode, where players would experience an incomparably realistic post-apocalyptic survival scenario and fully maximize its value as a training tool.
After receiving the reply, Hiruzen Sarutobi nodded in satisfaction. Then, with a sweep of his brush, he granted policy support to the newly established Konoha Gaming Guild. He understood very well that since even the clans represented by Konoha F4 had already joined, placing obstacles or restrictions in their way would only offend people for nothing. He might as well do them a favor.
Before you continue