Warm sunlight streamed through the window into the room, a gentle breeze stirring the curtains. A few small birds took flight toward the blue sky.
When Kitasan Black came to, it was already the day after the race.
She was lying on a hospital bed in a special ward — this was Senior McQueen's world, and she was currently a patient at the Mejiro family's hospital.
Thinking back to yesterday's race, she still couldn't quite believe it.
"She's overtaken her! Number 2, Kitasan Black, has completed the pass — and the final straight is right ahead! Will the winner be decided here?!"
Ms. Musashi had been calling the race at full volume.
At that moment, Kitasan Black had felt as though her whole body was burning. Even the air she breathed had felt scorching hot.
In her cracked-mirror eyes, a purple phantasmal glow had danced.
'So this is the view from Senior McQueen's eyes? No — no, that's wrong! The me right now has already surpassed the strongest!'
A frenzy like nothing she'd ever known had flooded her mind.
Without realizing it, a savage grin had carved its way across her face.
Power was overflowing!
Her mind had been clearer than ever before, her field of vision impossibly wide.
It had felt as if she'd acquired the Byakugan from Naruto — she could see the entire racecourse at once.
This was the manifestation of spiritual power externalized.
Kitasan Black wasn't seeing with her physical eyes anymore — she'd awakened the sight of the mind's eye.
The final straight!
Four hundred meters!
'I can do it — I can do it, this is the power I possess, this is the real me—'
Her head flooded with heat, Kitasan Black had channeled her spiritual power to unleash another new skill. A prismatic rainbow of light had spread out from under her feet across the turf. In that moment, her radiance had been about to claim the entire race!
But the very instant that skill had been released, Kitasan Black had felt her spirit sinking. The next moment, a full-body numbness had seized her and frozen her footsteps. That supernatural field of vision had vanished in a flash, her mind had gone blank, and her already-thundering heartbeat had felt like it exploded. Searing pain had severed her consciousness from the race.
The last thing she'd heard was Ms. Musashi's shocked voice: "What's happened?! Number 2, Kitasan Black, has suddenly lost speed! Number 6, Mejiro McQueen, has reclaimed the lead! Number 5, Rice Shower, is blocking number 13 Gold Ship's burst, and is now launching a terrifying surge at the runners ahead of her…"
After Kitasan Black blacked out, the race had continued. Her body, running on pure instinct, had kept pushing toward the finish line.
"Number 5, Rice Shower, has successfully overtaken number 2, Kitasan Black!"
"But number 6, Mejiro McQueen, still holds a commanding lead! The final 200 meters, 100 meters—"
Kitasan Black had watched Rice Shower's figure blur past her with unseeing eyes. In truth, she hadn't been able to see anything anymore.
Every trace of skill-light around her body had dissipated. If the runners behind her hadn't already fallen so far back, they would have caught up to her long since.
At that point in the race, the terrifying presence that was Rice Shower had launched her own challenge at McQueen. Having [Fused] with the Demon King, Rice Shower had successfully deployed Gold Ship's Overload Mode. Rice Shower's stat panel had already been frighteningly high — add in the Demon King's power, and the force she'd unleashed in that instant had come close to matching Kitasan Black's peak moment.
But facing a surging Rice Shower, Mejiro McQueen had shown no change in expression whatsoever — because the distance simply wasn't going to close. Rice Shower wasn't going to catch up.
At the end of the day, [Fusion]'s limitations were just too severe.
If it was only fusing skills, then it was essentially the same as what Tokai Teio had — just gaining two extra trump cards.
The one genuinely transformative effect of the move was the ability to fuse an opponent's stat panel.
The power that released in a race was indeed terrifying, but [Fusion] had one fatal weakness: the range limit. It could only target opponents within a certain radius of Rice Shower herself.
This was exactly why Rice Shower couldn't beat Mejiro McQueen — by the time Rice Shower's burst detonated, Mejiro McQueen had already locked in the win.
Exactly like right now!
In the final 100 meters, there was no way Rice Shower could close the six-length gap.
Yes, the speed Rice Shower was producing was genuinely explosive. But Mejiro McQueen wasn't exactly standing still.
Even if Rice Shower's strength surged from 100 to 150, Mejiro McQueen was maintaining a solid 100 at the very minimum.
If it had been mid-race, Mejiro McQueen might well have been overtaken. But with only 100 meters left? No chance.
And so, as the spectators watched Rice Shower blast forward in her terrifying final burst, they could only watch helplessly as Mejiro McQueen escaped across the finish line first.
"She's across!"
Ms. Musashi offered her cheer to the winner of this race.
"Taking first place is Mejiro McQueen — what a composed front-run! The rhythm of her entire race never once broke. That flawless pacing was simply beautiful. It really makes you wonder — is there any runner who could ever defeat her?!"
Ms. Musashi clearly adored Mejiro McQueen as a runner, because her strength and bearing were so undeniable.
In the entire race, only Kitasan Black post-awakening had been able to threaten Mejiro McQueen — and even then, no one knew whether McQueen had actually been running at full strength.
Sure, Mejiro McQueen had briefly been overtaken entering the final straight, but Kitasan Black's burst had been a flash in the pan. And Kita had clearly been using abilities that couldn't be sustained in normal racing — her current fourth-place finish was proof enough of that.
Mejiro McQueen had been on another level entirely, dominating the rhythm of the entire race with perfect pacing. That poise looked exactly like the embodiment of the strongest.
Seeing her calm, unruffled expression, you almost had to wonder whether she'd ever gone all out at all.
What genuinely disappointed Mejiro McQueen about the race was this: realizing that Kita's burst didn't pose enough of a threat had meant she'd never felt enough pressure to push open that second gate.
If only Kita could have held on just a little longer, McQueen might have recovered her old mindset and pushed open ZONE's second door.
Just as Mejiro McQueen had turned to go offer Kita some words of encouragement, she'd watched Kita cross the finish line and then collapse, strength gone from her entire body, falling toward the ground.
'!'
Fortunately, this was a track generated by the System. In the instant before Kita's body hit the ground, she dissolved into a ghostly image and was pulled out of the arena.
After that, Mejiro McQueen and the others had lost all interest in attending the Winner's Stage.
Ignoring the System's warning pop-ups, they'd all chosen to exit the race.
The consequence of that choice was that all of their results from this race had been voided and the rewards confiscated.
Not that any of them had cared about those rewards.
Afterwards, they'd brought Kitasan Black back to Mejiro McQueen's world.
Mejiro McQueen had even been prepared to cash in her reward from the last tournament to pay for treatment.
But after examining Kita, the doctor had given a reassuring answer.
"She's just suffering from severe exhaustion. With her exceptional physical constitution, the damage is minimal. As for why she lost consciousness — her mind simply couldn't withstand the impact of that fatigue. It's nothing serious, and there are no impact injuries from a fall."
The doctor had actually been a little puzzled. The girl's condition was clearly the result of massive over-exertion, the kind usually seen in high-intensity races. But if it had happened during a race, why were there no visible injuries anywhere on her body?
That was thanks to the System tournament's safety protection.
Without it, if Kitasan Black had actually hit the ground at the end, serious injuries would have been inevitable.
After treatment, the next day had come — meaning now.
Kitasan Black had woken up.
She could feel a dull, aching tenderness from strained muscles throughout her body, but injuries at that level really were nothing serious.
In fact, thinking about the state she'd been in during that burst, she could hardly believe her injuries had turned out to be so minor.
Honestly, once her head had cleared, her very first thought had been lingering dread.
When her consciousness had cut out yesterday, she'd genuinely thought she was about to die.
After all, she'd thrown herself into forbidden techniques without regard for consequences.
First, there had been Senior Teio's skill-stacking technique, which carried enormous risks on its own.
Then there had been Senior Gold Ship's Overload Mode — a skill whose dangers didn't even need explaining.
Both of those moves were used by Senior Teio and Senior Gold Ship as trump cards. And yet yesterday, she'd deployed them like ordinary skills.
And that hadn't been all.
The moment her ZONE had awakened, she'd pushed that power to its absolute limit, successively invoking the ZONEs of Senior McQueen and Senior Rice Shower.
On top of all that, she'd even dared to use Senior Teio's signature trump card.
Every time she thought back to the things she'd done yesterday, a chill ran through her.
Yes, racing sometimes called for "running with your life on the line" — but yesterday, she'd literally put her life on the line.
She hadn't even realized she was this much of a madwoman.
Now, waking up again, mixed with the dread was gratitude — gratitude that she was still drawing breath under the sun of this second day.
But, thinking about it more carefully now…
'Was that really power I could call my own?'
For all her lingering terror, Kitasan Black knew perfectly well — that passion was still smoldering in her heart.
There was no doubt about it. Yesterday, she had become a true uma musume. She had achieved what it meant to be the true [self]!
That rush of emotion still hadn't faded, even now that she'd calmed down.
Sure, it had been terrifying — because it really had been reckless, and the fear of death is an instinct shared by every living being.
But—
That feeling of unleashing her true nature had been absolutely sublime.
For the first time, she wanted to go run like that again.
And even though she'd lost the race, she had successfully challenged the strongest.
Just thinking about that made even a slacker like her stir with excitement.
Outsiders wouldn't be able to understand how she felt right now. To them, all she'd done was briefly pass Senior McQueen during a race — and that was no big deal, since position changes happen all the time in racing. Only the final victory mattered.
And yes, she had briefly passed Senior McQueen, briefly stolen the lead from her — but in the end, she'd collapsed from injury. Undeniably, that was Kitasan Black's defeat.
But—
That had been Senior McQueen, after all.
The Senior McQueen who was the strongest among all of them.
The Senior McQueen who, from the moment Kita had been born, had been the default strongest uma musume in her heart.
To face such an overwhelming senior — even just to briefly surpass her — was enough to leave her overcome with emotion.
Yes, she'd lost the race. But for Kitasan Black, this was the first race she'd ever truly considered meaningful.
Every race before this paled in significance compared to this one.
'Still, that state… I probably can't master it.'
After the rush came the harsh reality.
Kitasan Black knew perfectly well that the impulse from yesterday would be hard to replicate.
That had been a power that only erupted after she'd been pressed to her limit and her rationality had finally snapped.
She had, in fact, mastered an awakened ZONE now. But without yesterday's mindset, she probably couldn't match that level of performance.
And as for yesterday's Flow — she couldn't make heads or tails of it either.
'I should go watch the race replay.'
With a student's mindset, Kitasan Black slipped out of the hospital room and back to the System Space, where she used the System interface — a computer — to replay yesterday's race.
Pulling up the race records, she realized that the results of yesterday's race had all been voided for her seniors as well.
'Is that because of me?'
The thought left her a little touched.
The replay began.
Watching the [herself] in the video, Kitasan Black felt her skin prickle even now at that terrifying aura.
'Was that really me?'
Watching her [self] running through the race like a berserker, Kitasan Black was genuinely surprised. So that was what she'd looked like from a third-person view.
The System's race replay was far more advanced than any real-world recording — it could even perfectly capture the light of skills and auras.
No camera in the real world could do that.
As the race entered the middle stage, she watched her own burst begin, and focused her concentration to study it.
'I see — it's extreme self-centeredness. Discarding everything irrelevant and treating my own victory as the single highest priority.'
In that state, even her own physical safety had become something to ignore.
Just like those news stories — a mother, seeing her child in danger, loving her child so desperately that she erupted with power beyond her physical limits.
This mutated Flow was exactly that kind of state.
In that state, pushing one's strength to 100% was merely the starting point — it would keep climbing past the body's limits, ignoring every warning.
If an uma musume's body weren't already far stronger than an ordinary human's, and if Kitasan Black's constitution weren't significantly above the average uma musume's…
She might have ended up just like that mother in the news — post-burst, she'd have been reporting to the afterlife.
...
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