Next, Minato Namikaze truly experienced an extremely realistic Virtual Reality Game.
Whether it was positive sensations or negative feelings, everything was experienced at maximum intensity and with an incomparable closeness to reality.
During this process, Minato Namikaze failed several times because of the game character's frailty. In other words, when attacked by Evil Spirits, he had failed to respond properly and was strangled by them.
Every death felt terrible. Minato Namikaze's face turned pale, and an overwhelming sense of having survived a disaster rose within him. Cold sweat poured down his back, and it felt as if his consciousness had drifted off somewhere unknown. It was enough to make anyone worry about Minato Namikaze's mental health.
Yet whenever Uchiha Qi became concerned, Minato Namikaze quickly pulled himself together, regrouped, and continued challenging the game.
The formidable resolve and willpower belonging to the future Fourth Hokage of Konoha finally revealed themselves in the process.
Some people truly became the Fourth Hokage for more than just their talent.
And so, Minato Namikaze threw himself into suffering and gave his all to clear the game.
As he entered the black stage representing "death" again, Minato Namikaze no longer paused because of the corpses and sprinted forward with all his strength.
Facing the corpses that had been "activated" and sought to drag him into death, Minato Namikaze darted left and right, continuously evading them with dazzling parkour.
During this time, Minato Namikaze tried using ninjutsu, but every attempt failed. However, he learned that in this game—at least in the "death" stage—he could not use ninjutsu and could only respond with Taijutsu.
Thus, Minato Namikaze treated the game entirely as a trial to hone his Taijutsu experience, techniques, and mental fortitude.
In the end, after an incredibly thrilling and perilous parkour run, Minato Namikaze successfully broke through the black stage before the Evil Spirit that had appeared could catch him.
Next came the gray stage representing all kinds of negative emotions.
After entering, Minato Namikaze did not encounter a horrifying scene like a mountain of corpses. Instead, he saw countless people grieving, crying, and suffering. Heart-wrenching sounds became a "symphony" that filled the entire environment, making Minato Namikaze feel deeply distressed.
And this distress was not because Minato Namikaze was especially kind-hearted. Rather, the entire environment affected one's mind and drew out the negative emotions lurking within.
A classic mental attack.
This was also one of the defining traits of genjutsu in the ninja world.
Uchiha Qi had simply incorporated that trait into the Genjutsu Game. Combined with Minato Namikaze's request to crank the realism to the maximum, the mental impact was naturally incredibly intense.
As a result, Minato Namikaze lost focus under the powerful emotional stimulation. The Evil Spirit seized the opportunity and landed another face-to-face kill on him, taking his second life.
Although Minato Namikaze had been prepared and reacted immediately, the mental interference was simply too strong, causing him to fall for it in an instant.
This was Minato Namikaze's second death.
After reviving, Minato Namikaze recovered from his fear of death and immediately began clearing the stage again. By guarding his mind, he finally cleared the gray stage after dying once more.
The reason he died another time was that there was a trap near the end of the gray stage. Entering that area triggered the Female Evil Spirit's "teleportation"—she had originally been chasing from behind, but upon reaching the crucial area, she teleported in front of the player for a sudden face-to-face kill.
Although Minato Namikaze had indeed kept an eye on what was ahead, that final face-to-face kill was simply too fast. In the end, he failed to dodge in time and died once again.
At that moment, Minato Namikaze felt deeply stifled and miserable. Then he reflected on it, feeling that he had simply been too careless.
Uchiha Qi watched calmly and merely remarked, "It's a suffering game. Don't play if you don't like it."
Fortunately, Minato Namikaze had reached the red stage representing slaughter and battle. For this stage, Uchiha Qi offered a warning, saying it was both the hardest stage and the easiest one.
Because, just as its premise suggested, this stage was all about combat.
After entering, Minato Namikaze found himself in a blood-red domain, facing the siege of ninja seemingly formed from blood.
Those ninja were all enemies the character played in the game had encountered before: ninja from various hidden villages and wandering ninja scattered across the land.
These people would be "spawned" in the red stage and then launch attacks on Minato Namikaze.
In this stage, Minato Namikaze could finally use ninjutsu.
However, he could only use low-level basic ninjutsu, such as the Three Body Technique and low-level Five Elements Release.
The whole point was that he was a weakling.
Fortunately, the enemy ninja were weaklings of the same level as well.
Of course, they were only weaklings in Minato Namikaze's eyes.
But under the condition that he could only fight using the game character, Minato Namikaze was immediately thrown into suffering mode.
Like an ordinary player trying Soulslike games such as Dark Souls, Sekiro, and Elden Ring for the first time, the difficulty was cranked to the maximum. One moment of carelessness, and he would be struck by an enemy.
Even though Minato Namikaze possessed extensive combat experience and could display tremendous fighting power with a weak body, mistakes still happened when there were simply too many enemies.
Thus, just like every player trying a Soulslike game for the first time, Minato Namikaze's journey of repeated deaths and suffering began.
The experience of being killed by Evil Spirits through all sorts of methods was not pleasant, yet Minato Namikaze eagerly sought it out. After all, a life-and-death battle where he did not need to hold back at all was an exceedingly rare training opportunity for a ninja of his level.
Even if it was not his own body, even if it was only a game world created by genjutsu, as long as it was realistic enough, he could gain enormously from it.
The whole point was: "Fight! Feels great!"
Uchiha Qi saw through all of this and was utterly speechless. Using a game to simulate the combat instincts one used in reality was truly absurd.
Still, that was also a feature of Virtual Reality Games, a black-tech achievement that people living on Earth in 2024 could never experience.
One could only say that accomplishing this in the ninja world was truly a marvelous chemical reaction between the future black technology of the Spiritual Network and the Sharingan.
In fact, Uchiha Qi was not surprised by this. Let alone in the ninja world, which was full of danger and battle, even on twenty-first-century Earth, using virtual reality systems for training and learning was not an unusual idea. Though the real world still could not perfectly simulate reality, such scenarios were far from rare in various entertainment works.
Minato Namikaze had merely realized the benefits the Genjutsu Game could bring through his sharp intuition and powers of observation.
Then, while Minato Namikaze used the game stages to train himself, Uchiha Qi checked the Emotion Value Minato Namikaze had currently provided.
"Minato's emotional reactions have been pretty intense. He should have provided two or three points of Emotion Value, right?"
Muttering to himself, Uchiha Qi opened the system panel to take a look, then froze.
Then he rubbed his eyes again, confirming that he had not seen it wrong.
When he truly made out the displayed number, Uchiha Qi could not help drawing in a sharp breath. He nearly blurted out, "Holy shit."
Because the Emotion Value displayed there was: 1165!
Not 1, not 2, not even 3 or 4, but over a thousand!
What was going on?
Hadn't the system said that one person could provide at most 4 points of Emotion Value?
Thinking of this, Uchiha Qi asked, "System, aren't you going to explain this? Why can Minato provide over a thousand points of Emotion Value? Didn't you say one person could provide at most 4 points?"
Upon hearing Uchiha Qi's question, the system immediately began its analysis before providing an answer.
A normal person can provide 4 points of Emotion Value. A normal person refers to a normal adult male. When certain players surpass the normal-person rating, they can provide more Emotion Value. Analysis has determined that the player currently playing the game has a life level far beyond that of a normal person. His total number of cells is twice that of a normal person, his body contains powerful energy, and he possesses combat power beyond mortal limits. Therefore, he can provide Emotion Value far exceeding that of a normal person.
In other words, theoretically speaking, under emotional reactions of the same intensity, the stronger the person playing the game, the more Emotion Value they could provide?
Furthermore, because the people of the ninja world had twice as many body cells as Earthlings, they could inherently provide more Emotion Value than people from Earth!
After understanding all this, Uchiha Qi was inwardly ecstatic.
Because this meant that, to complete the system mission, he did not need to conduct widespread promotion and let huge numbers of people try it out as he would on Earth. He merely needed to find some powerful individuals and get them to play the game!
Before you continue