Just as the players were immersed in despair and exhaustion, the public chat had already exploded.
Voices of doubt flooded in like a tide and instantly shattered the silence.
"Cheating! This is definitely cheating! Thirty-two people in seven days could never build so many ridiculous things!"
"That monster army, the tracking lasers, and those wardens with insane stats! Where did they all come from? Don't tell me they just spawned there naturally!"
"I've never even seen that stuff before. They must have tampered with the data!"
"The development team thinks we don't know anything, so they're using admin privileges to cheat. This competition wasn't fair at all!"
"I thought it was ten thousand players against thirty-two people, but it turns out they're making us clear these pre-set insane levels? Why didn't they say so from the start?"
The chat channel of the livestream was instantly flooded with dense layers of doubt.
[Ridiculous! Ten thousand players can't beat thirty-two? How is that possible?]
[I don't believe it. Without cheating, it's impossible for thirty-two people to create so many monsters and traps!]
[Requesting the official replay! I want to see if they actually cheated!]
Not just the participating players, but the spectators were also full of doubt.
No one could believe that thirty-two people could build such a massive and precise defense system with all those contraptions in just seven days.
In the face of the escalating doubts, the officials quickly responded.
[In response to player concerns, the full seven-day livestream replay of the development team is now accessible. All devices were built based on vanilla Minecraft mechanics with no data modified and no special privileges enabled.]
Immediately following that, the livestream replay started playing.
The footage started from seven days ago, when the thirty-two members of the development team first entered the competition map.
They had no inherent advantages and no infinite resources. They were exactly the same as the other players who descended. However, their division of labor was startlingly precise.
As soon as they landed, everyone immediately began to scatter with a defined purpose.
Right at the beginning, some people were already dumbfounded.
The most eye-catching part was Alto's nine-minute speed run of the Ender Dragon.
He was seen landing and opening an extremely complex data interface. Many players knew of this interface but didn't know what it was used for.
After opening the debug screen, he quickly locked onto the location of a village.
Then came a dazzling series of operations involving collecting resources and casting an obsidian portal.
As the footage played, the eyes of those who were originally doubting quickly turned to shock.
[Wait, what kind of god-tier operation is this? He went to the Nether so fast I don't even properly understand how!]
[How did he make that obsidian portal? Why did he do this and then that, and it was just done?]
Watching the Nether operations unfolded like watching a master at work. He speed-ran a bastion remnant, mined gold blocks to break down into gold ingots, and then used the gold ingots to trade with the piglins.
After the piglins got the gold ingots, they stopped attacking and instead looked at the ingots as if contemplating something.
Then they threw out a lot of materials to Alto.
Among them were many ender pearls and obsidian.
[My god, you can actually trade with piglins?]
[Amazing! I feel like I've played for nothing. I thought gold was useless in Minecraft since the gear made from it breaks so easily. I didn't expect it could be used to trade with piglins!]
[So that's how it works!]
Some players jumped up in excitement.
[First, quickly locating a village, then quickly locating a bastion remnant. How did he do it? Was it because of that data interface?]
[What does that data interface even mean? I don't know how to read it at all!]
Next, after farming blazes, he quickly returned to the Overworld.
With just two eyes of Ender, he calculated the location of the stronghold using coordinate triangulation.
Seeing this, Jose was already dumbfounded.
"Huh? How did he locate it?"
Although he could barely understand what those coordinates meant, he completely didn't understand how Alto calculated such a precise location.
Thinking back to how he had stupidly followed the eye of Ender for ages to find it, he felt like an idiot in comparison.
Then, after entering the End, Alto's ridiculous maneuvers followed, which ended in him one-shotting the Ender Dragon, leaving everyone watching stunned.
Some people's eyes were about to pop out, and they hadn't even had time to recover from their surprise.
The move of placing a boat to land safely after being launched by the Ender Dragon instantly made the players who had been chasing him realize the truth.
[Incredible! Using the moment right before landing to place a wooden boat and board it makes him completely immune to fall damage!]
[I knew it! I was wondering why he was fine after jumping from such a high mountain. This is just insane!]
[Clearing the Ender Dragon in nine minutes. I might have only just found my first iron ore at that point!]
[LMAO, I probably wouldn't have even found a village!]
[I'd still be killing chickens!]
[Not only is he good at making games, but he is an insanely good player as well? Talk about Talent!]
The footage continued to play.
In the replay, the first batch of development team members developed rapidly.
They were the first to build basic survival contraptions.
The villager trading hall was quickly completed, and through the villagers' profession, refreshing and trading mechanics, they obtained a large number of enchantment books, tools, and various basic materials.
Most importantly, using the zombie infection mechanic, they could maximize the villagers' discount rates.
Then all the goods for sale were given a massive price reduction.
[Holy crap, am I seeing things? Protection IV for only one emerald? Are these still those scammy villagers?]
[I was wondering what was up with those villagers locked in small cells at the beginning. I didn't expect it to be a villager trading hall!]
[You can do that? That's beyond me.]
Next, the iron farm and stone generator started working simultaneously.
The iron farm utilized a mechanic where three villagers, seeing a zombie, would summon an iron golem, then let the iron golem fall into an execution platform to continuously produce iron ingots.
The stone generator was driven by a redstone circuit and utilized the principle of lava meeting water to generate stone.
As the generated stone was pushed out by pistons, they then used a TNT duplicator to blow it up at fixed points for efficient stone production.
The two together formed the material foundation for all the contraptions.
Advanced farms and automatic harvesting systems followed closely behind.
The multi-purpose farm handled both crops and livestock. The large number of farmed chickens also provided the feathers needed for making arrows.
The automatic harvesting farm used redstone pistons and observers to achieve automatic harvesting once crops matured, providing large amounts of bamboo and paper.
[They automated everything? These contraptions look so complex.]
[Yeah, how are these things even made?]
The most bizarre was the mob tower.
Watching the monsters being generated continuously and then executed systematically left viewers speechless.
The slime farm provided large numbers of slime blocks, and the raid farm produced vast quantities of totems of undying and emeralds.
The footage shifted, and the most shocking process appeared as expected.
Hey guys, I am so, so sorry for the missing releases recently.
AS you know, this isn't my main thing and something I can only allow myself to do on the side until I earn more money.
I recently started doing my driver's license and am also looking for a job. I also have a lot of things to study for and am also doing voluntary work here and there. And between all that, I don't have a lot of time to really write or translate a lot. I know I am slacking rn, but I can't really change it. Don't worry, I won't stop posting and continuing this story, and eventually, when some time frees up, I will start translating new stuff and also continue my Pokémon story, but I'll have to put that on hold for now.
I hope you're all doing well and sincerely ask for your understanding.
I wish you all the best and hope you still find enjoyment in reading this story.
Have a great week.
-Liederfall