Death meant corpses. It meant the passing of life.
What Minato Namikaze saw was an endless expanse of dead bodies.
Silence. Deathly stillness.
It was as if he had suddenly left Konoha and arrived at some horrifying nighttime battlefield, with nothing before him but piled-up corpses.
The bodies were heaped in the darkness. There were men and women, ninja and civilians, all wearing expressions of those who had died with their eyes wide open.
Combined with the hellish scenery, the place looked exceptionally horrifying, carrying an atmosphere that awakened a creature's primal fear of death.
Even Minato Namikaze, who had already participated in many battles, completed countless missions, and had more than a few lives on his hands, felt deeply uncomfortable when he saw the scene before him.
Perhaps the Minato Namikaze who would participate in the Third Great Ninja War could remain utterly unmoved before mountains of corpses and seas of blood, but with the war still two years away, some sights were simply too intense for him.
The incomparably realistic scene of death, coupled with its fully oppressive atmosphere, made Minato Namikaze's mind tremble even though he knew it was fake. He could not help but wonder—Was this what the Ninja World War looked like?
For a moment, Minato Namikaze stood there in a daze, perfectly demonstrating how an excellent game could make its players think.
However, in this kind of hellish game, standing still in certain special locations usually led to trouble.
And so, while Minato Namikaze was lost in thought, those corpses suddenly moved.
More precisely, it was the corpses behind Minato Namikaze that moved.
A hand suddenly shot out and grabbed Minato Namikaze's foot.
Although Minato Namikaze sensed that something was wrong and instinctively wanted to react, his body could not keep up with his thoughts. It was the classic case of—his brain: I got it. His body: No, you didn't.
Thus, Minato Namikaze's movements were immediately restricted when his foot was seized.
Then, just as the struggling Minato Namikaze swung his kunai twice, even more corpses grabbed hold of him and wrapped themselves around him.
The corpses opened their mouths, releasing a foul stench as they stared at Minato Namikaze with hollow, pitch-black eyes. They pulled at him frantically, as though trying to drag him into the most terrifying hell.
The next moment, as Minato Namikaze could not help but grit his teeth with a stern expression, the Female Evil Spirit from before appeared. She suddenly emerged in front of him, fixed her resentful, terrifying eyes on him, and reached out a hand.
The moment his skin touched the evil spirit's sharp, icy nails, Minato Namikaze felt his consciousness plummeting rapidly. A pain neither light nor severe shot through his head, and everything before him fell into darkness.
Then, blood-red words drawn in blood appeared before his eyes.
You died!
In an instant, Minato Namikaze felt his brain buzzing, unable to process what had happened.
When he came back to his senses, the scene before him had changed. He had somehow returned to the earlier crossroads where he had to choose one of three paths.
A stunned expression appeared on Minato Namikaze's face. "What... happened to me? Did I... die just now?"
Even as he spoke, his brain was still buzzing. That swift and realistic sensation of death had come too suddenly, so suddenly that Minato Namikaze's mind had barely been able to react.
His body even felt stiff, his limbs ice-cold. The dreadful sensation of surviving a calamity yet being unable to recover lingered for a long time.
As had been said before, the unprecedented experience was simply too real and too advanced. Even an experienced Elite Jonin like Minato Namikaze felt unable to distinguish reality from illusion.
When Uchiha Qi saw Minato Namikaze's dazed appearance, he understood that his close friend had truly been frightened. If even Minato Namikaze had become like this, then other players would surely get their emotions fully satisfied.
Still, too much was as bad as too little. If King of Blame and Old Man Third were the ones experiencing it, Uchiha Qi would definitely think it was not realistic enough and would crank it up even further.
But if he gave his friend psychological trauma, that would not be good. He absolutely could not let the Konoha Yellow Flash, who would shine brilliantly in the Third Great Ninja War, become Konoha's Golden Coward because of him.
Therefore, Uchiha Qi immediately spoke. "What you experienced just now was the feeling of dying in the game. It was not actual death, merely a simulation of reality. After death, as you saw, you'll resurrect at the most recent key point."
"Minato, are you all right? If the experience of death feels too real, I can lower the realism."
Hearing Uchiha Qi's words, Minato Namikaze finally snapped out of his daze. Then he took a deep breath. "It really was an awful experience. Even knowing it was fake, and even knowing that kind of 'death' must have been far less than real death, it still felt truly terrible."
"But there's no need to lower the realism. As a Konoha jonin, I will definitely face situations worse and more terrifying than this in the future. If I cannot even handle a fake scene, then once I set foot on a real battlefield, I will surely die there."
As he said this, Minato Namikaze's expression was solemn, his words serious, even carrying a weighty gravity.
Although there were still two years before the Third Great Ninja War began, war was not something that suddenly erupted. It came from countless contradictions accumulating until they finally exploded.
As Konoha's Elite Jonin and a key member of the new generation being cultivated, Minato Namikaze naturally had access to many secrets. He could also see the storm-brewing atmosphere and intensifying conflicts throughout the ninja world.
In a few years, a new Ninja World War would inevitably break out—this was Minato Namikaze's judgment, and it worried him deeply.
Now that he had seen, in his close friend's game, scenes he might only encounter during the Ninja World War, it was undoubtedly a precious opportunity for Minato Namikaze to train himself. How could he possibly ask Uchiha Qi to reduce the game's realism?
More than that...
"Qi, if possible, please make it even more realistic. The closer it is to reality, the better!"
Hearing Minato Namikaze's request, Uchiha Qi was stunned. Then he did not know what to say. He had been worried that raising the realism too high would cause Minato Namikaze problems, yet Minato Namikaze was saying it was still not high enough.
In almost an instant, Uchiha Qi felt as though he had returned to his previous life and seen players who had tried the hard mode of a game he had painstakingly designed filling out surveys, all writing "very easy" and saying, "I'll still mark it very easy next time."
Damn it, he was getting pissed!
This was the ultimate insult to a game designer who pursued the joy of challenge for players and the torment of their spirits!!!
At once, Uchiha Qi silently raised the realism of the game world to its maximum, holding nothing back anymore!
Hehehe!
Minato, now you'll truly experience just how "great" a fully realistic Virtual Reality Game could be!
Uchiha Qi revealed a delighted smile.
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