The race continued.
Trainers watched the runners unfold, cross-referencing the info in each student's file, assigning mental grades as they went.
Past the first turn, the race entered the middle stage.
Since this was a sprint, the course only had four sections: the opening straight, the first turn, the final turn, and the final straight.
Which meant right now —
The trainers all sharpened their focus.
Here's where the race gets decided!
Less than 800 meters left.
"King Halo hasn't moved yet? No — she's accelerating along with the pack. But it doesn't look like she's ready to launch her sprint."
Trainer Fukunaga furrowed his brow, staring at the girl in the middle of the track.
As a Chaser, King Halo's starting position was deep in the pack — a disadvantage over this distance. Had she misread the moment for her sprint?
Maybe this ojou-sama from overseas wasn't as strong as advertised?
Beside him, Trainer P watched King Halo suddenly peel off and swing wide into the outer lane, and his pulse quickened. He'd caught onto something.
"Is she about to make her move?"
He murmured it under his breath.
King Halo hadn't launched her burst yet — but her expression and body language radiated total confidence.
No one could seriously think she was misjudging this, right?
Fukunaga caught P's whisper and turned to glance at him.
Trainer P wasn't even active in the game yet — so Fukunaga had no idea that this man his own age would one day become his lifelong nightmare. In the game's storyline, he and [King Halo] would be utterly crushed beneath the team led by this genius trainer.
"Oh — that racer's looking good."
A voice nearby, bright with surprise.
P and Fukunaga both turned back toward the front of the pack.
The pace of the race was picking up, and the first- and second-place runners had hit trouble. They'd entered their sprint too early and had no reserves left to fire off new skills. You could see the anxiety in their posture — their breathing rhythms breaking, their speed not rising but actually starting to slip.
That was the Front-runner's flaw. Without enough raw strength, a runner could find herself cornered like this: leading early, then forced to watch her rivals close the gap at the decisive moment because she couldn't summon another burst. Front-runner was always a strategy for the strong — and the lucky.
Now!
A runner behind them began to kick.
A streak of blue starlight flashed in her eyes. As her speed climbed, a wave of white air began to swirl around her body. She opened with a Green-tier skill as her base, then — a flash of gold on her horseshoes, a Gold-tier skill layered on top — stacking the effects to maximize the output, pushing her load and efficiency to the brink.
The ability to trigger [Surge] meant this runner was hitting the theoretical peak of her own speed in that moment.
A number of watching trainers lit up.
This racer had shown herself well through the race. She'd secured a strong position at the start, controlled her momentum, and kept her reserves intact through the early stages. Nothing flashy, but she'd successfully showcased her strengths to the trainers on the sidelines.
And she'd already mastered a Gold-tier skill, plus the advanced technique of chaining two skills together — not at the level of a genius or a monster, but definitely G1 potential. The only remaining question was her distance aptitude. If she had a range for middle-to-long distances, plenty of trainers would be fighting to sign her.
That little — !
The original second-place runner's eyes went wide with fury as she watched the other racer sail past her. That feeling — being overtaken — was unbearable.
The leader heard the footsteps closing behind her. Her ears shot straight up. Teeth clenched, mind jittery, she tried to force a skill activation.
But skill activation required focus. With her breathing shot and her concentration scrambled, forcing a skill out under those conditions was pure desperation. The light beneath her feet flared for a single instant — and shattered just as fast.
The watching trainers shook their heads. That was the kind of play that only lost you points.
And because the skill had failed to deploy, her body took the backlash anyway. Her speed dropped off a cliff. Skill activation, successful or not, cost the same. Forcing a skill in a bad state was just a slow suicide.
I've won!
The runner now in first felt a surge of confident elation.
"No — the race isn't over yet!"
Trainer P and the young master nearby both locked their serious gazes on the middle of the pack.
King Halo — who had been running behind — was now in fifth. Somehow, she'd surged up from deep in the field without anyone really catching the move. And even more surprising: she hadn't activated a single skill. All around her, runners who had triggered their skills were actually slower than a skill-less King Halo.
Was it the crushing gap in base stats?
That was part of it — but P had also noticed something else: most of the other runners' skill activations were underperforming.
Of course. These were first-years. They hadn't yet mastered the essence of skills. Only a tiny handful of prodigies could pinpoint the optimal activation window at this stage. Even learning a Gold-tier skill didn't mean you could wring out its full power.
King Halo knew that. That was why she hadn't wasted her stamina on a premature activation.
But —
Trainer P kept thinking.
Beside him, Fukunaga spoke up. "Then what's she waiting for?"
A realization struck P like a spark.
Got it.
Timing.
King Halo was waiting for the optimal window for her skill.
Which meant — the skill she'd mastered had restrictions attached but came with overwhelming payoff?
That thought alone made P suddenly eager to see what came next.
...
Final 600 meters.
The rankings had already shifted dramatically. The original first and second had tumbled multiple places.
Barely 200 meters had passed since the middle stage, but with every runner now at full burn, the race landscape had transformed in just a few seconds.
That was a sprint — the moment that decided victory was fleeting. A single instant, and it was gone.
And it was right then that the true [Surge] appeared in this race — the echo of the wave, a resonance beyond ordinary skill activation. If an ordinary [Surge] was the phenomenon of peak condition, then this thunderous [Surge] belonged to a higher road — a signpost past perfection, on the path to the ultimate.
The first marker of ZONE!
"That's… Surge?"
The trainers' expressions snapped to shock.
A first-year simulated race — and someone had triggered an incipient ZONE? Even without fully awakening ZONE, the fact that a student could produce the phenomenon at all was extraordinary.
For a moment, every eye locked onto that one figure.
"It's her."
"Then it's not surprising."
"Yeah."
When they realized it was King Halo triggering the [Surge], they exhaled and calmed down. But their composure lasted only a breath — because in the next instant, a rainbow light ignited beneath King Halo's feet, and they were shaken all over again.
"That's — a Flash-tier skill?!"
Even Trainer P, who'd prepared himself for something impressive, stared in open astonishment.
Flash-tier skills were, in a real sense, the hallmark of a G1-caliber uma musume. It could even be said that only a racer who had won a G1 could possibly attain the insight required to reach the Flash tier during those brutal high-level races.
Flash skills were both power and a symbol of honor.
Though it was an unwritten rule, possessing a Flash skill effectively announced that you'd arrived in the G1 world.
That was why even these experienced trainers — who'd seen plenty in their careers — were now staring slack-jawed at the sight of King Halo, a first-year, demonstrating a Flash-tier skill.
This world was different from Mejiro McQueen's world. There, because the world's tier wasn't high enough, only senior trainers and the uma musume themselves could perceive the glow of skills. Everyone else was blind to those spiritual phenomena. The System's broadcasts were an exception because the System's power granted viewers elevated perception.
But in King Halo's world, even rookie trainers had the spiritual acuity to see these lights. Skill research had advanced a step further. The tiering of skills had been formalized with more precision:
Green-tier skills were tools every uma musume had to master — the level appropriate for local, low-ranked races.
To compete in Central's Graded Stakes — even just G3 — Gold-tier skills were essential. Gold-tier skills were thus the symbol of Graded Stakes caliber.
And Flash-tier skills were the match-enders — the decisive trump cards of standard-level races. They were the true mark of G1.
[Surge] and a [Flash-tier skill] — either one alone would have been extraordinary for a simulated race. Both at once was another level entirely.
"King Halo — her talent is the real thing!"
"A Flash-tier skill right out of the gate — I can't wait to see her debut!"
"I thought the reports were exaggerating. Now I think they weren't going far enough!"
In the instant her burst hit, King Halo flashed past three runners in what seemed like the blink of an eye, pulling up alongside the current second-place.
Before second-place could even think of a response, King Halo was past her.
It's fine. I gave it everything I had.
Fragments of rainbow light drifted in King Halo's wake. The moment second-place saw that glow, her emotions went still. Once someone like that entered a race, the rest of them were done — the outcome had already been written.
And the first-place runner? She heard those impossibly fast footfalls closing from behind, her pupils contracted, and a cold sweat soaked her entire body.
What's going on back there?!
She didn't get the chance to answer her own question. King Halo's figure cut past her flank — overtaking on the outer lane.
[The Long Road to Ideals (Flash): When entering the final 600 meters of a race and beginning to overtake rivals from the middle of the pack, burst power will continuously increase!]
That was King Halo's skill.
On paper, it looked like an ordinary skill. The description was vague, with no concrete numbers.
Typical skills at least indicated magnitude — "slight acceleration," "major acceleration," that kind of phrasing. But this one? Just "continuously increase." No duration listed, either.
Back when King Halo had first seen this skill in Training Mode, she'd immediately clocked it as absurdly broken. No duration. A vague description. The sort of skill that screamed busted at first glance.
In practice, she discovered the burst intensity scaled with the number of rivals overtaken. At maximum output, the effect could rival the signature trump card Demon King Ship had devised for herself.
And compared to the Demon King's Overload Mode, this skill's strength was that its cost was only that of an ordinary Flash-tier skill. The real limitation was the activation condition — you had to read the moment carefully. It wasn't something you could mindlessly fire off like Overload Mode.
This skill was the crystallization of one possibility in [King Halo]'s life — the condensed story of a woman who spent an entire career striving to become the strongest in the world.
It was the tale of someone who had never won, who had risen again from countless defeats, who had ultimately crossed every trial and conquered her fate — who had made her dream real.
If the [King Halo] of canonical history ended up winning just one short-distance G1 at the end of her career, this skill represented the possibility condensed from an IF-route — the legend where she broke through the Arc de Triomphe in her final leap, achieving the ultimate dream.
How could this King Halo possibly leave such a skill unclaimed?
She wasn't Kitasan Black — she wasn't the type to wallow in self-pity!
After overtaking four runners, the skill's boost hadn't reached its maximum yet — but it was already terrifying. Reaching the skill's full potential required overtaking seven runners, and she was already at four — more than halfway there.
Even at this rate, the boost was already at the baseline level of a Flash-tier skill.
And another crucial detail: the skill's duration was the entire final 600 meters.
What's more, the stamina cost was paid up front at activation. Which meant subsequent skill usage wouldn't be significantly hindered.
From the final 600 meters to the final 200, King Halo completed her reversal in just 400 meters — and left the former leader four lengths behind.
"Unreal…"
Nishizaki Ryu carefully reached into his pocket, pulled out a lollipop, and popped it into his mouth without even bothering to unwrap it.
You could imagine how electrified he was.
Meanwhile, a thought flashed through King Halo's mind: she still had another Flash-tier skill she could activate here. She carried one that could only trigger within the final 200 meters. If she used it, she could potentially try to win by an Outside placing.
But the thought came and went. In the end, she decided against deploying her second Flash-tier skill.
There was no need.
She crossed the finish line.
Victory.
King Halo's first simulated race since enrollment — won with ease!
...
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