"Oh-ho! After one massive free-for-all, only Team 1 and Team 4 remain on the field for a final showdown!"
"Will Team 1's two-time demon king, Jei Chou, claim a third crown alongside his girlfriend Uehara Mika?"
"Or will Team 4's unknown couple—the cardboard-box spirit and the plastic-bag spirit—become the hero and successfully slay the demon king?"
"Which team will be the first to cross the finish line and lift tonight's Tanabata championship trophy?!"
"Jei! Jei! Jei!"
The audience all shouted Jei Chou's name at the top of their lungs. Only Symboli Rudolf and Air Groove, hidden among them with their identities concealed, were quietly cheering for Mizuno and Maruzensky instead.
"Mizuno... do your best..."
"If you win, we'll reward you when we get back tonight!"
"Ah-choo—" Mizuno sneezed in the middle of his wheelchair run and suddenly felt a chill down his spine, as if something terrifying had set its sights on him.
He glanced back and found that Jei Chou had already closed to within eighty meters, and Uehara Mika was aiming at him again.
"Again?!" Mizuno instantly guessed that Uehara Mika was planning to do the same thing Team 5 had tried earlier and snipe the driver—him.
After all, if he went down, Jei Chou would have no opponent left.
Thunk~
A golf ball came flying straight at him while Mizuno was still frozen for a moment.
But Mizuno didn't panic in the slightest, because he knew that shot wasn't going to hit him.
And just as he expected, before the golf ball could strike him, Maruzensky in the back seat swatted it away with a frying pan.
Clang!
"Onii-chan... I'll protect you..." Maruzensky called weakly from inside the cardboard box.
"Good girl~" Mizuno reached back to pat Maruzensky on the head as a reward, then picked his moment and activated his counterattack once again.
"If you don't mess with me, I won't mess with you. But if you do... lubricating oil, activate!"
Whoosh—!
A slick sheet of oil poured out from behind the wheelchair, and this time he deliberately spread it over the corner.
Because Mizuno knew that with Jei Chou's technique, oil on a straightaway meant nothing.
But oil on a corner?
That was another story.
You like using the gutter to corner, right? Then what if I lube up the gutter so you can't use it to improve your grip?
And so everyone saw that, when the white AE86 entered the next turn, it actually braked and slowed down for the first time in the entire race.
"Hehe~" But the torment didn't stop there. Every time Mizuno hit a turn, he spilled oil. Every time he hit a turn, he spilled oil. It completely shut down the drifting technique Jei Chou was so proud of.
It was like death by a thousand cuts. Mizuno wasn't trying to kill him in one blow—he just wanted to torture him.
"Tch, what a pain..." For the first time in a long while, irritation appeared on Jei Chou's face, usually so full of easy confidence, showing just how disgusting Mizuno's tactic was to deal with.
And the key point was, he couldn't even complain.
It was completely allowed under the race rules, and on top of that, they had been the ones to attack first, so no matter how you looked at it, he had no grounds to call Mizuno underhanded.
With his drifting advantage gone, it didn't matter how fast Jei Chou was on the straights—he still couldn't catch Mizuno's street-racer wheelchair with its nitro boost.
The gap between them stayed locked at eighty meters, and the situation looked extremely favorable for Mizuno.
Because there were only two kilometers left to the finish line.
As long as Mizuno kept this up and didn't make a mistake, he would cross the line ahead of Jei Chou and claim first place in the race.
"If I can just reach that place! If I can just reach that place!" Mizuno's gaze sharpened, his eyes fixed only on the finish line ahead.
As long as he crossed that line, he could fulfill Maruzensky's wish!
It would prove that the effort he had put in for her over these past two weeks hadn't been wasted!
And after completing the task, he could return to Tracen Academy and go back to focusing on training the Umamusume on his team.
"Heh heh~" The corners of Mizuno's mouth kept turning upward. He was already eager to get back and see the healing smiles of the two little angels, Haru Urara and Rice Shower.
Of course, popping champagne at halftime was never a good idea. Plenty of villains only ended up getting suddenly reverse-killed by the protagonist because they celebrated too early, and Mizuno always kept that in mind, never declaring victory before the goal was actually reached...
But right now, Mizuno genuinely couldn't think of any possible way he could lose.
Jei Chou couldn't outrun him on the straight, and because of the oil, he couldn't make use of his advantage in the corners either. He was practically a dead man walking—nothing to worry about.
What, was Jei Chou going to start flying or something?
Just as that thought crossed Mizuno's mind, a shadow suddenly swept over his head...
"Everyone, look! Jei Chou didn't take the straight route—he went through a gap in the roadside guardrail and drove the AE86 straight down the mountainside slope!"
At the host's astonished shout, the audience leapt to their feet in shock.
Mizuno looked up, only to discover that Jei Chou's AE86 had actually launched out from the slope of the mountain beside the road, its roaring engine shaking the sky, before landing solidly in front of him.
At this moment, the balance of offense and defense had reversed.
"Huh?!"
---
T/N: HUH??!!!! HARU URARA MENTION? ITS BEEN SO LONG
T/N2: heres ur updates :3 meeting the 4 chaps a week quota :3 posting earlier so bonus chaps will be a longer waitttt >:)
bonus chaps
200 stones -> 1 chapter
400 stones -> 2 chapters
600 stones -> 3 chapters
and so on
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