[Starting countdown! 10 seconds!]
The atmosphere at the starting line suddenly tightened.
Cloud Leopard glanced at the two Purple Lightnings on either side, her expression dark. Hurricane stared at the track ahead and took a deep breath. Dawnbreak kept looking between the track, the rearview mirror, Laiya An staring dreamily in Derek Su's direction, and Derek Su himself, whom she glared at fiercely. Her head was practically spinning like a top, and she was busier than anyone.
The organizers had put these five competitors together, and it had completely ignited their fighting spirit.
When racing against unknown competitors, people tended to be more casual.
But now, every one of them was holding back a fierce drive, determined to fight for every inch from the moment the race began.
Among them, Derek Su and Purple Lightning were clearly the first targets everyone guarded against.
Dawnbreak on the left and Cloud Leopard on the right were both watching closely, ready to steal Derek Su and Purple Lightning's lane at the first opportunity.
[Five, four...]
Click!
Inside their cockpits, almost every pilot pulled the handbrake and floored the throttle at the same time.
Boom!
The roar of the Mecha Girls' engines echoed through the entire starting area.
Aside from Purple Lightning, Silver Mirror, and Dawnbreak, Cloud Leopard and Hurricane were also Mecha Girls with excellent performance. The stronger the Mecha Girl, the more restless the engine sounded. Purple Lightning and Silver Mirror's engines gave off sharp, piercing howls. Dawnbreak's roar could rival an aircraft. Cloud Leopard's was low and heavy, while Hurricane's sounded steady and grand.
The pressure from the spinning wheels blasted away dust and fallen leaves from the track.
The contestants preparing for the fourth round felt their scalps tingle as they watched Derek Su and the others.
They could see the air twisting around and above the five Mecha Girls. It showed just how terrifying the aura around them was. They felt less like racers and more like people about to fight to the death. Was that really necessary?
[Three, two, one!]
[Beep beep!]
The starting signal rang out.
A cold gleam flashed in Cloud Leopard and Dawnbreak's eyes on either side.
Under their respective pilots' control, they launched forward with launch control and immediately squeezed toward the center. Justin Kim always indulged Cloud Leopard, and although Laiya An admired Derek Su, that did not stop her from wanting to compete against him.
However...
The scene they had imagined, with Derek Su driving Purple Lightning and fighting them for the lane, never happened.
The two Mecha Girls slammed into each other with a loud clang.
Neither Dawnbreak nor Cloud Leopard was especially resistant to impact. They both cried out in pain, and a bump swelled on each of their foreheads.
Cloud Leopard shook her dizzy head and snapped, "What happened?"
Dawnbreak gritted her teeth and looked left and right. "Where are Derek Su and Purple Lightning?"
Laiya An and Justin Kim were also stunned. They instinctively checked their rearview mirrors, only to see Derek Su and Purple Lightning already left behind everyone else, cruising along at a leisurely pace. They were moving so slowly that they did not look like they were racing at all. It looked more like they were out for a spring outing.
"Uh, are Derek Su and Purple Lightning really that slow off the line?"
Justin Kim stared in disbelief, but soon frowned, a trace of displeasure rising in his heart.
He remembered the last time he raced against Derek Su and Purple Lightning. Back then, Derek Su and Purple Lightning had also been very, very slow in the first half, only overtaking later.
At the time, he had thought Derek Su was deliberately holding back.
Holding back in a training race was one thing, but this was the Xiangshan Advanced Race.
Playing around like this even in an Advanced Race was a bit too disrespectful to the competition and to the other racers, wasn't it?
Inside Dawnbreak's cockpit, Laiya An also looked completely confused.
"Could Derek Su have messed up his launch control?" Dawnbreak suggested.
"How could that happen?" Laiya An curled her lip, then poked Dawnbreak's rear and said unhappily, "My idol invented launch control. Even if the two of us messed up and rolled over, there's no way he'd make a mistake with launch control!"
Hearing Laiya An praise Derek Su that much made Dawnbreak itch with resentment.
She pouted and stared at the track in silence.
Why care so much?
Derek Su and Purple Lightning starting slowly was a good thing.
If Derek Su kept beating her and Laiya An, that would be the real problem. As long as she and Laiya An beat Derek Su once and tore apart Derek Su's undefeated halo, Laiya An's blind admiration for him would not be so serious anymore.
When that time came, she would take back everything she had lost.
Little Laiya An's adoring gaze could only belong to her.
As if she could already see that wonderful future, a smug smile curled at the corner of Dawnbreak's mouth.
...
"The vast horizon is my love, flowers bloom below the endless green hills."
"My lady, ah ha, the dusk streetlights can't light up this street."
Compared to the tense, hostile atmosphere among the four Mecha Girls and their pilots up ahead, the mood inside Purple Lightning's cockpit was much more relaxed.
Derek Su drove Purple Lightning at an unhurried pace and even had the leisure to hum a song.
But Derek Su was the only one feeling relaxed. Purple Lightning was not relaxed at all.
Watching the other four Mecha Girls gradually pull away, to the point where she could barely see Dawnbreak's taillights anymore, Purple Lightning was so anxious that her face turned red. Worry filled her brow. Everything was happening almost exactly as she had imagined.
The opponents in the Advanced Race really were far stronger than those in the training race.
It was as if she had returned to that year when she raced together with Chloe Qin. The Mecha Girls around her overtook her one after another, until even their taillights disappeared. The empty track felt like a silent mockery, laughing at her for overestimating herself.
Click!
As they passed the first speed trap, Purple Lightning saw that she was in last place.
The fastest Mecha Girl in this round was Dawnbreak, followed by Cloud Leopard, Hurricane, and Silver Mirror.
Cloud Leopard, Hurricane, and Silver Mirror were very close in speed, all biting tightly at one another, basically staying around 400 km/h.
But when it came to her, there was a clear break.
Her speed was only 261 km/h.
It was over. This time, it was really over.
The Xiangshan Advanced Race was not like the previous training race with so many turns.
There was still a long way to go before the first sharp bend. Before that, the track was mostly straights and gentle curves.
As a comprehensive track, it naturally had sections meant to test a Mecha Girl's straight line acceleration, and one such section happened to be placed right at the start.
Purple Lightning felt that by the time she finished this straight section, the Mecha Girls from the fourth or even fifth starting groups might have caught up.
Forget seeing the taillights of Cloud Leopard and the others. She might not even get to eat their exhaust.
Purple Lightning bit her red lip tightly, her determined eyes fixed on the track, but tears were already welling in them.
As a top level Mecha Girl with a special skill, with a famous top level pilot sitting in her cockpit, those halos placed unprecedented pressure on her. Yet all she could do was watch her opponents grow farther and farther away, shrinking into tiny black dots until she could no longer see them at all.
For any top level Mecha Girl, that was absolutely a kind of mental torture.
If it had been another top level Mecha Girl, she might have already broken down by now.
But Purple Lightning was still gritting her teeth and holding on.
She thought of Derek Su's trust, of everyone in the club who supported her, and of her belief that she would finish the track.
All of it kept her going.
...
...
If you'd like to support my work and unlock advanced chapters, you can follow me on p-@-treon.
p-@-treon/GhostParser (40 Chapters Ahead)
You can also follow as a free member to read a few advanced chapters.