"Special Week has burst forward from the back of the pack — what an unbelievable turn of events! That kind of explosive power — could this have been Special Week's strategy all along? Was it the trainer's directive, or her own on-the-fly call? But right now the entire crowd is cheering for her — this is a true breakaway charge!"
The commentator was openly excited too.
She hadn't expected to witness such a stunning Extreme Closer in a debut race of all places. In this declining era — across Central races, even GI-tier competition — it had been some time since anyone had run as a Breakaway or Extreme Closer.
Front-runners were still common. They just weren't running Breakaway anymore.
And true Closers were genuinely rare.
The commentator never could've guessed: a week after a Breakaway prodigy named Silence Suzuka had appeared, an Extreme Closer named Special Week would emerge in this very race. And she'd already noted that Special Week and Silence Suzuka were both in the same team — a team called Spica.
Until now, this team had been a no-name group.
But in this moment, Akasaka had a feeling — a premonition, even — that this team was about to become a new legend.
"The race is entering the final turn. Holding the lead is still Seiun Sky, but King Halo is now closing on her position. The competitor who has led nearly the entire race seems to finally be hitting her limit... Special Week is here, currently in fifth place — and her runaway charge hasn't stopped!"
In the stands, Nishizaki Ryu turned to Silence Suzuka, thoughtful. "That burst of Spe-chan's — did you teach her that?"
The motion really did look the same.
Flash skills couldn't be taught.
But the gesture Special Week had made just before her burst was identical to Silence Suzuka's pre-burst motion. It was hard to believe there was no connection at all between the two skills.
Silence Suzuka shook her head. "I didn't teach her."
Her own emotions were complicated.
If she had taught Special Week, she could have accepted what was happening calmly. The problem was that she genuinely hadn't. Special Week had never even shown signs of it during their training. Granted, Silence Suzuka knew Special Week had wanted to learn her running style — but she had always considered that an impossibility.
After all, Special Week's running style was nothing like hers.
So what was this Flash skill, then?
[Single-Minded Yearning (ZONE): Lock onto a single target. As long as the racer's will to win burns, she will continuously close the gap toward that target — until her goal is achieved, she will never stop!]
In a sense, it was a similar type of ability to Kitasan Black's Imitation. But Special Week's ZONE could only lock onto one target at a time, and the target couldn't be consciously chosen — it would automatically lock onto the figure she idealized most. Yet unlike Kitasan Black's Imitation, which only replicated skill mechanics, Special Week's ZONE was a growth-type ability. It didn't merely let her use skills similar to her target's during a race — it also triggered passive experience boosts during ordinary training. In a sense, you could call it the [True Protagonist] cheat.
What made it even more terrifying: Special Week's ZONE manifested its effects even before its true awakening. You could only really say this is what the chosen ones of fate were like — the starting line for them was simply not on the same plane as everyone else's. Without outside-world interference, this world's Special Week might genuinely have become the strongest in the world by her own strength alone, perhaps even broken through this world's ceiling and made it to the cross-dimensional tournament hosted by the Three Goddesses and the System.
You could only say: this world really was a high-tier world. King Halo's wariness from the start hadn't been excessive paranoia. If she were still her self from half a year ago, facing the prodigies of this world, she would genuinely have been in for a brutal fight.
These ones had been buffed too far. Whether in their starting points or their growth ceilings, they were not on a level any previous world had reached. And on top of that, her Story Mode completion target had to take place in Japan — currently the eye of the destiny-storm — because this was the world of Uma Musume. This era genuinely belonged to the cohort of uma musume making their debuts in Japan.
The Golden Era wasn't just talk in this world's setting. While the world ceiling might be slightly lower than the absolute apex, in such a heavily destiny-blessed era, the original protagonist being buffed to an absurd degree was entirely plausible.
The talented world had already been delivered to her — the rest depended on her own effort. Perhaps that was the love of the Three Goddesses.
But King Halo got no such buff. While her Story Mode world was that monstrously strong, her own talent within her family was the absolute bottom of the bottom!
The weakest of us all challenges the strongest of worlds?
A look of pure imperial defiance crossed King Halo's face.
Then bring it on!
Hooves ripped into the turf as her legs slammed downward with explosive force.
The previously dispersed wind around her instantly condensed into shape. Riding on the air's roar, [Surge] manifested around King Halo's body. Up ahead, Seiun Sky's body was beginning to feel disobedient. No one had specifically pointed it out, but she'd been in burst state since the beginning of the race — without a single chance to draw breath. Mejiro McQueen and Kitasan Black could sustain something like that. This world's Seiun Sky could not. She was already running on fumes.
"Is this the ceiling of who I am right now?"
Seiun Sky thought it bitterly.
Behind her, King Halo's running shoes were beginning to glow. Her eyes radiated a ghostly luminescence. Routes of dazzling light were flickering through her field of vision — even Special Week's path and form, far behind, were being calculated and rendered visible to her. This was the result of consciously training her eyes, combined with the consolidated race experience inherited from "those who came before" — culminating in the awakening of an eye beyond specification.
'So this is the place?'
'My route — to the hundred-percent victory.'
A flash of skill-light burst forth.
[Sweep All Before Me (Flash): Upon entering the final stage, acceleration massively increases!]
Once King Halo activated her acceleration, the spent Seiun Sky could do nothing. She could only watch, helpless, as King Halo blew past her — the way she had in every simulated race before this.
"Just ahead is the final straight, and King Halo has finally broken past Seiun Sky! Is this where the result is decided? No — not yet! Special Week! Special Week hasn't given up! She's still chasing! The gap is large, but she doesn't look ready to surrender. Can you catch them, Special Week?! Show us your guts!"
Without a doubt, Special Week was now stealing the limelight from King Halo's textbook-perfect run. King Halo was the fan-favorite, and her ability was undeniable, but in this moment, the audience and the commentator wanted to see Special Week pull off a dark-horse upset. To people like them, individual victories didn't really matter. They just wanted to see a thrilling race.
"AAAAAAH!"
Her face contorted with fierce determination, Special Week threw her head down and charged.
This was nothing like racing with the local birds back home in the countryside. Now she was competing on a real racetrack against uma musume just like her. She couldn't afford to relax for a single moment — because she had a feeling that the state she was in right now would vanish the instant she let up.
She had to ride this surge for everything it was worth!
King Halo? Strongest of our year? Stronger than Suzuka-san? So what! Right now even I don't know how strong I really am! And I absolutely refuse to lose my debut race! Because I made a promise — to Mom! I'm going to win, I'm going to be the number one uma musume in all of Japan!
Mom is watching this race from home right now, isn't she?
I cannot lose!
My very first race — I have to win!
The flame flickered into life again.
Special Week's speed kept rising.
Yes, her ZONE granted her abilities patterned after her target — but that didn't mean it overwrote what she already possessed. Yes, she'd absorbed the Flash skill Silence Suzuka had shown in the earlier race, but she'd never become a Breakaway runner like Silence Suzuka. The ZONE's effect was to let her commit fully to her own ideal — a power that, as long as she put in the work, would respond. Like a limiter being released. So at this moment, she was Silence Suzuka's effects layered on top of her own.
[Shooting Star (Flash)!]
After Silence Suzuka's inherited Flash skill, Special Week's own signature skill finally manifested.
The radiance of the skill matched its name. A pink shooting star streaked across the racing turf. When Seiun Sky saw Special Week catching up to her, the calm she'd just barely recovered shattered all over again. There was no way she could've predicted this.
And the Special Week running now was nothing like the Special Week she knew.
"You actually —"
Seiun Sky was stunned.
Special Week was hiding her real strength?
In the Team Rigil tryouts, Special Week had shown nothing of this level. She'd even been beaten by El Condor Pasa by an enormous margin. If she'd had this kind of strength back then, there's no way a less-than-fully-serious El Condor Pasa could've left her that far behind!
Seiun Sky couldn't help suspecting it: had Special Week known all along that Silence Suzuka had switched teams, and deliberately failed the tryout just to engineer a reason to join Spica?
How else could anyone get this much stronger in a single week?
So in the end, was the fool just me?
Seiun Sky was so spent she felt unmoored.
King Halo had shown more power than in the simulated races. Special Week had revealed an entirely different face.
And only she had still been naively assuming the others were holding nothing back, just like her — believing she might still have a fighting chance.
You — you both genuinely pissed me off!
In that moment, Seiun Sky's normally placid temper snapped.
She felt like a clown. As her friend, she hadn't been hiding anything. Fine — King Halo had been quietly leveling up. But Special Week had been hiding her strength too?
There was no way she was letting them win!
Seiun Sky somehow squeezed a final reserve of stamina out from somewhere and stuck close behind Special Week.
She refused to accept it.
Losing to King Halo — that, she could swallow.
But losing to this Special Week — the one who'd been playing dumb all along — no. Absolutely not. She would not, would not lose to this one!
Watching the three of them, the racers behind exchanged complicated looks. Their will collapsed in an instant.
This...
If every future race was full of monsters like this, they didn't even want to pursue Graded Stakes anymore.
The local circuit was actually starting to look pretty appealing.
At least back there you could run for fun, and even local races came with respectable prize money in the uma musume world.
Better not step into Central — that ruthless world. Everyone there was a monster.
What they didn't know was that the three running ahead of them would, in the coming Golden Generation, be among the absolute top tier. They had picked up their swords in the world's tutorial village, and at the very moment they stepped outside its gates — before they could even claim the holy sword and class-change into Heroes — they had run face-first into the Demon King at full power.
Anyone would've broken under that.
And the Demon King was being cautiously over-prepared in this assault, vaporizing the rookie adventurers and the village behind them with a single flick. That was a hell-mode opening.
There was no way they could finish this race in any meaningful sense.
'I'm going home. Central races are too scary.'
'No wonder the trainer said I didn't have Central potential — Central uma musume are this caliber of monster.'
'Wuu... damn it, my dream is over!'
But weak as they were, no one in the audience cared. Every spectator's eyes were locked on the three at the front.
"GO, Spe-chan!"
Nishizaki Ryu was screaming in the stands without a shred of dignity.
"GO, King Halo, you're the strongest!"
A young man beside him was screaming even louder than he was.
The two glanced at each other. The look in their eyes was no longer anything like senior and junior. If you're the trainer of my opposition — sorry, but you are now my enemy.
In an instant they were screaming twice as hard.
At an airport, a middle-aged uma musume was watching the live broadcast on her phone, eyes locked on the screen.
'Impossible. A newcomer like that has appeared in Japan? My little Halo isn't completely dominating them? Is this even the Japanese uma musume scene I know?'
She had been planning to head off to find the kid's father, but on impulse, she suddenly wanted to swing by Japan to see this in person.
But as she fretted over her precious daughter possibly losing, the broadcast camera zoomed in on King Halo — and the moment she saw her daughter's smile, she knew the race was already won. Halo's expression was sheer confidence.
Beautiful. Truly beautiful. As expected of my daughter!
"You're catching up, Protagonist."
King Halo couldn't suppress the smile rising on her face.
Why would she be happy about being caught from behind? Because she was hungry for this pressure!
She did not want to follow Kitasan Black's example — forced to face McQueen and the others, beaten down until she had to brute-force a ZONE awakening. That mode of breakthrough was too uncertain, too inelegant. She couldn't imagine herself awakening her own ZONE under that kind of duress. So her hope was to awaken ZONE while still inside her Story Mode.
Awakening ZONE required three things: a baseline stat threshold, the will to win, and pressure during a race. The first two mattered most. The third — pressure — was the most uncontrollable.
ZONE wasn't only accessible when victory looked impossible. It could be opened in any moment when defeat was a real possibility — by holding firm to the conviction that you would win, and forcing that gate open. To open the second gate, Mejiro McQueen had had to research a great many things.
And all of that knowledge was now within King Halo's reach.
"I feel it. I see it. It's right there!"
In the next instant — thought accelerated, the world stilled.
King Halo's consciousness sank into the deepest part of her mental space. It wasn't necessarily a deep-sea landscape, but it was always the deepest, most silent place — the origin point of one's spiritual force.
And there, at the center of that space, stood the great stone gate that seemed to suppress all things. Its height stretched beyond sight.
The stone gate was trembling, slowly.
King Halo knew it. One step. Just one more step and she could push that gate open. If her will could only firm up just a little more, she might truly cross through it.
But —
"Hah. Stop here. Now is not yet the time. I'm not yet ready to construct my own Domain."
Because she was still uncertain what her victory was supposed to look like. To open ZONE in such an ambiguous mental state would risk crystallizing the wrong ability — one not truly hers. Like the Demon King Ship, who put up a strong front, but among the senpai who could share memories, no one was unaware that she'd been regretting her choice down to the bones.
But the Demon King would rather suffer for eternity than lose face. Asking the Demon King to give up face was asking her to die. So everyone tacitly agreed to grant her that face.
King Halo absolutely refused to become the next Demon King.
So even though she could open ZONE in this moment, she pulled her reason together and held back. Her purpose in ambushing Special Week had only ever been to claim this qualification. She had achieved that. There was no need to push further.
Her consciousness returned to reality.
The race resumed.
A smile played at the corner of King Halo's mouth. Beneath her feet, another flash of skill-light bloomed!
"Thank you, Special Week. I don't think I'll ever forget you."
She drove her hoof down and exploded forward.
Special Week, who had been thinking I can win, watched King Halo pull instantly away. The focus in her eyes wavered. The flame flickering at their edges helplessly began to die.
King Halo accelerated toward the finish line.
Behind her, Special Week's eyes went wide as she watched it happen.
"How could —"
...
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