The instant the signal lights flared and the gates flew open, a wind whipped up across the track. It wasn't some perceptual illusion — it was a real, palpable surge of pressure rising off the bodies of her opponents!
Special Week's eyes went wide.
"Eh — eh — eh?!"
She completely failed to grasp the timing of the gate launch. By the time she snapped back to awareness, every other racer had already exploded out ahead of her. In a panic she rushed forward, crying out as she chased — but the would-be Chaser had now become the only Extreme Closer in the entire race!
"Oh!"
"Special Week, a catastrophic slow start!"
"Could it be the nerves of her first race? Let's hope she pulls herself together!"
Watching from the stands, Nishizaki Ryu's blood pressure spiked.
"Oh no."
Special Week! I just got done praising you!
[Gold Ship] said, "...Yeah. She's done for."
"Mm... she's done for," Daiwa Scarlet chimed in heartlessly.
Vodka piled on: "Yep. Definitely done for..."
Already at a massive disadvantage, and now a bungled gate launch on top — truly, that's our Special Week. Her capacity for the unexpected is unmatched.
"Hm?"
Seiun Sky glanced at King Halo beside her, puzzled.
Strange — a slip-up?
Why would she be sprinting from the gate?
Wait —
Seiun Sky noticed that the air pressure rolling off King Halo hadn't condensed into form. It was simply raw speed — King Halo wasn't using a skill to push herself into Surge state the way Seiun Sky herself had.
"This is bad."
Seiun Sky's expression turned grave.
Halo-chan got even stronger, didn't she?
The corners of King Halo's mouth lifted.
Through her eyes she gathered the information of the entire field; her brain finished the calculations in an instant; her body did not need to force any kind of explosive output. All she had to do was follow the equation that calculation produced, and she'd slide naturally into her optimal state —
'Incredible. So this is the world after the eye evolves. Now I'm even more curious about your Full-Field Perception*, McQueen!'*
If this — the shallowest tier of [the eye] — could already lift her so far in a race, then how terrifying was the strength McQueen kept hidden? King Halo couldn't suppress the thrill rising in her chest. She could feel it, plainly: she was growing stronger!
"As expected, the lead duel is between these two — Seiun Sky and King Halo!" the commentator declared excitedly.
The host followed up: "Although King Halo is a Chaser by aptitude, her base speed is more than enough to sustain that position. Holding here shouldn't be difficult for her at all."
King Halo couldn't have cared less about her position. Yes, she was a Chaser. Yes, her skills were designed to maximize their effect from the rear of the pack. But if a rival couldn't even keep up with her baseline speed, that rival simply wasn't worth her full effort.
She was not about to deliberately drop to the back of the pack the way the Demon King did.
Three hundred meters of opening straight passed at a sprint.
The gap between first and second — Seiun Sky and King Halo — was less than half a length. Third place was four lengths back. The local star running there as a front-runner had her face twisted in frustration; she was being suppressed from behind by a Chaser. It was a humiliation — but no matter how she pushed, she simply couldn't catch up!
Seiun Sky's tail had gone rigid. A chill crawled up her spine. She didn't dare imagine how King Halo was matching her strongest opening burst with nothing but baseline output. And once they entered the middle stage and her own burst began to stiffen — could she still hold King Halo back?
The answer required no deep thought.
She could not.
Absolutely not.
"I'm going to lose the lead?"
Seiun Sky's heart trembled.
"While Halo-chan hasn't even started taking this seriously — am I going to lose?"
That —
That!
"Don't make me laugh!"
The previously soft light in Seiun Sky's eyes turned razor-sharp. A faint blue glow flickered in their cold depths, and as she ran, light-trails of after-image trailed behind her.
Her hooves struck the turf with deafening force. The pressure-aura around her, which had been about to fade, abruptly surged back at twice its size. A flash of skill-light ignited on her body. It was a reckless gamble — the kind of move you'd never expect from a cool-headed, intelligence-type uma musume like her — but the unyielding fire of refusal had completely overridden Seiun Sky's reason.
[Record Breaker (Flash): Upon entering the middle stage, when overtaken or pushed into a competitive state, recovers stamina and gains speed in proportion to Guts. The fiercer the will to win, the higher the conversion ratio!]
That gust of wind tousled King Halo's hair. She watched Seiun Sky's burst with no real shift in her composure. Emotional swings during a race were strictly forbidden — though sometimes a surge of feeling could push a racer to a temporary breakthrough, King Halo disliked that mode of fighting. To her, racing was a place to release the strength one had accumulated in training. Victory ought to be decided the moment one chose to enter the race. Bursting into newfound strength mid-race was nothing more than the desperate flailing of the weak.
She would never become weak.
"Seiun Sky has burst into the lead — for now, the race for first belongs to her! The race has now passed the 600-meter mark. Currently in the lead is Seiun Sky, followed by fan-favorite King Halo... Special Week is here, in last place — could this newcomer's first race really end in a humiliating defeat?"
The crowd buzzed.
Seiun Sky's and King Halo's performances were impressive, but with the rest of the field so weak, no one in the stands could really tell how impressive. Without comparable opposition, the picture was muddied. Still, that level of performance was simply expected of Central Tracen Academy uma musume — Central was the most resource-rich institution in all of Japan; without that talent and strength, what right did they have to its resources? Idol-type uma musume like Haru Urara were a different matter.
But Special Week —
What was up with this competitor?
Her performance was abysmal.
Last place in her debut race?
How could anyone proudly speak of a record like that afterward?
This wasn't America. In Japan, there was no such thing as "losing your debut race." Here, the debut was the simplest race of all — whether weak or a monster, Central uma musume would, without exception, demonstrate absolute dominance over local-circuit competitors at the debut.
In America things were different. Plenty of monstrous American uma musume had lost their debut races. Had Special Week been an American uma musume, the crowd might've been muttering "what a terrifying setup" — a top-academy genius placing dead last in her debut race? Surely she'd be on the road to canonization.
But unfortunately, this was Japan.
In Japan, losing your debut race was something to be mocked!
Special Week, too, was struggling.
"What's happening? Why can't I catch up?"
She had absolutely no thought of conserving energy. Ever since her bungled start she'd been trying to chase. But to her surprise, this was nothing like the Team Rigil tryouts. Her opponents' mindset and execution were on a different plane entirely. It was as if some invisible barrier blocked her — she simply could not lock into the rhythm of this race.
In the stands, Nishizaki Ryu spoke gravely. "This is bad. Spe-chan's spirit has been completely swallowed by the race. She can't even bring out half the strength she shows in training."
Aura — Presence — was a real, documented phenomenon in this world. Research had confirmed it: when suppressed by an opponent's aura, the suppressed racer would unconsciously make all sorts of mistakes, unable to manifest even her baseline ability. It wasn't a skill, nor some demonic interference — it was something more like a magnetic field. And in a real race, this phenomenon was unavoidable. Some racers performed brilliantly in training but stumbled badly in races for exactly this reason.
Her aura had been swallowed.
"This is troublesome. Under the combined pressure of Seiun Sky and King Halo, every other competitor's aura has hardened beyond its usual level. Special Week, who has never even run a simulated race before, probably has no idea what's actually happening to her right now."
Nishizaki Ryu pressed his hands to his head in frustration.
Damn it. If I'd known the debut would put her against these two, I'd never have walked her into this race with a "let her run for fun" mindset, without teaching her any of the professional fundamentals.
Or rather — if he'd known King Halo was entering this debut race, he'd absolutely have pulled out and switched to a different one!
Damn it. Just because it was a debut race, he'd let his guard down.
If he'd just paid attention to the updated competitor list, he would've noticed King Halo's name and adjusted his plans accordingly. But it was too late now.
Right now, Nishizaki Ryu felt like he genuinely deserved to be cursed.
"Trainer, what the hell are you brooding about?"
[Gold Ship] suddenly barked at him!
"Don't forget why you let Spe-chan enter this race in the first place! You never expected her to win her debut, did you? You said you thought she was the in-the-fight type of genius — the kind who grows in the heat of competition! So why do you look like that now? If anything, you should be thrilled. If Spe-chan can finish this race under the pressure of those two prodigies, what she gains will far exceed anything you originally hoped for. What are you regretting?"
Nishizaki Ryu came back to himself.
[Gold Ship] was right.
The light returned to his eyes.
"Ah — you're right. You saved me again, partner."
"Heh. Well, the great Gold Ship-sama is your contracted charge, after all."
[Gold Ship] gave Nishizaki Ryu's back a hearty slap. Nobody noticed her tail wagging cheerfully.
Daiwa Scarlet and Vodka stared at the scene speechlessly.
"Since when did you get to decide you're his contracted charge?! I'm the contracted charge!"
"No, I'm the contracted charge!"
To be a trainer's contracted charge was to be the team's captain. There was no way they were ceding that position to a creature like [Gold Ship]. Just imagining her as captain, Daiwa Scarlet and Vodka were certain they'd have nightmares.
While the three were squabbling, a re-energized Nishizaki Ryu turned back to the race. They had passed the halfway mark, but Special Week had fallen far behind — she was only just rounding the section of track directly opposite the stands. Refusing to lose his nerve, he cupped his hands and shouted: "Don't think too much about it, Special Week! Run the way you love to run!"
Mid-race, Special Week's ear twitched faintly. She lifted her head and saw, in the distance, her trainer standing at the front of the stands — and beside him, Silence Suzuka, lips parting in what looked like quiet words. She couldn't possibly have heard a sound from that distance, but in that one moment she felt as if she had.
"Trainer — Suzuka-san — they're watching me. They're cheering for my race!" Special Week's mind flew back to the goal she had repeated like a mantra. Her gaze sharpened, transforming utterly from her usual dazed look. A surge of formidable presence erupted from her body.
Up ahead, the racers ahead of her suddenly felt a chill from behind. Only then did they remember — there was one more monster from Central tucked at the very back!
"I've already found the way to make my dream real. I've found my reason for racing here. I cannot — will not — let my first race end with me running away with my tail tucked, having done nothing!"
A flicker of pink flame flashed across Special Week's eyes.
The flame was gone in an instant, but plenty of the watching audience were startled by it. The phenomenon couldn't be captured by television cameras or any mechanical lens — but to anyone familiar with this kind of power, a single glance was enough.
In the Tracen Academy Student Council room, Symboli Rudolf — watching the broadcast — broke into a delighted smile. Special Week was bringing her real surprises. As the creator of ZONE, Symboli Rudolf felt a natural affinity for any uma musume who could enter that realm. And if such a talent appeared among the students she led, then she — the [Emperor] — could only be all the more pleased.
In this moment, through Special Week's emergence, Symboli Rudolf seemed to glimpse the curtain of an era beginning to lift before her — the dawn of Japan's Tracen Academy Golden Era, opening under her stewardship. It was the greatest possible affirmation of her life's work!
"Go, Special Week. Unleash everything you have!"
In the race, a streak of lightning surged forward from the very back of the pack. Before the racers ahead could even react, a wave of pressure swept them aside. They turned in shock to see Special Week, her body wreathed in a terrifying aura — unable to believe such a transformation was possible from the runner who had stumbled at the gate and trailed the entire race.
King Halo was the first to sense that the wind had changed direction. A new gust was rising behind her. Unstable, violent — but it carried a force capable of shattering anything in its path.
"As I suspected — the chosen one of this era. It's only my guess, but in a world without me in it, you would be the protagonist who breaks fate and reaches her goal, wouldn't you?" King Halo thought with satisfaction. After all, in this world Special Week was Silence Suzuka's contemporary, and an uma musume always burned brightest when chasing someone she idolized. If that idol was also a peer rival, the motivation was even stronger.
Silence Suzuka's drive to win was simply too low. King Halo didn't believe she could ever become this world's protagonist. So she must be Special Week's [awakening] catalyst. But —
'Hah!'
'And right now, I am the one ruling this race!'
King Halo's eyes were continuously evolving as she ran. Her expression cold, she watched every signal, every motion on the track. Unlike McQueen's [Full-Field Perception], what King Halo had awakened was something different — [Beyond-Limit Sight]. A terrifying vision capable of observing every flow and movement in the race, even predicting the future to a limited extent.
Fundamentally, King Halo and Mejiro McQueen were different creatures. Mejiro McQueen had absolute confidence in her own strength, so her [Full-Field Perception] was a near-X-ray vision that always revealed the optimal racing line for herself. But King Halo lacked McQueen's absolute self-confidence. So her gift turned outward — toward observing her opponents, predicting what they would do next, designing the perfect counter for each. Because she wasn't a front-runner. She was a Chaser, a back-positioned reactive racer.
...
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