"Alright, I'm starting."
In the System Space, Mejiro McQueen addressed the others before clicking the mouse on the flashing silhouette portrait.
[Unlock new character?]
She clicked "Yes," and in the next instant, the entire computer screen erupted in brilliant light.
A demonic laugh rang out: "Oh-hohoho—"
"My name is King Halo. As a first-class uma musume, I will deliver the greatest results on the racetrack!... To show the world my talent!"
A voice line just like the gacha animations in the game rang in everyone's ears.
The next moment, the light faded, and as the group turned their heads, they saw a new figure standing in the empty space.
A young lady with long brown hair, dressed in green.
"Holy crap, Wang Heilou?!"
Gold Ship recognized her immediately.
"Ah, it's King Halo-senpai."
Kitasan Black's expression turned complicated.
A brief introduction to the newcomer:
King Halo—born into a prestigious family, with a noble bloodline. In the game's backstory, her mother was a world-class uma musume of exceptional power.
As the inheritor of a noble bloodline, she'd been hailed as promising even before her debut.
But in reality, after her debut, King Halo had gone winless across all her G1 races. Her record was downright miserable.
Only just before her retirement did she finally manage to grab a single win.
She was known as the "Symbol of Effort."
In the anime, she'd played the even more pitiful role of a first-season pacer, appearing in the story as nothing more than a stepping stone for Special Week.
On top of that, between her tsundere ojou-sama personality and her signature demonic laugh, she'd been branded a comic relief character the moment she appeared.
Despite being pigeonholed as a comic relief character, her popularity in the game wasn't low.
And in the world of real horse racing, thanks to her noble bloodline, she'd built quite a name.
But among the many famous horses, King Halo was at the bottom in terms of both talent and raw strength.
In the game, her original skin was a tier-bottom character not even worth mentioning. It was only after new skins were released that she earned a place in sprint races.
But the System's factory-spec characters didn't follow the game—they copied the original. Which meant...
This newcomer, aside from possibly having some advantages in her skill pool, probably didn't have much talent to speak of elsewhere.
At the very least, they couldn't imagine this "Wang Heilou" transforming from comic relief into a true prodigy.
After processing the information in her head, King Halo opened her eyes. Those red irises fixed directly on the few standing before her.
"...Why are you all looking at me like that? What's so strange? It's a random draw—honestly, you could just as easily have pulled Haru Urara."
Though her entry voice line was the original's, the King Halo standing here now was their [self] aspect. Her personality and everything else couldn't possibly be identical to the original.
King Halo fully understood what they were thinking. It was simply because of yesterday's conversation—they were doubting that as one of them, she might be weak.
But—
"Don't treat me like the original! If we were all just carbon copies of our originals, with that kind of strength level, then what was the point of the cheat?! I, as I am now, am a true first-class uma musume!"
She folded her arms across her chest and tilted her chin up proudly.
Hearing King Halo's words and seeing her current demeanor, the group's somewhat-convinced sentiment instantly shifted back into skeptical uncertainty.
Everything you said is technically correct, but...
...the way you're presenting it doesn't exactly look like someone who's uninfluenced by her body's original self, you know.
Just as everyone was thinking that, King Halo stepped forward and said to McQueen: "Right now—I want to enter Training Mode right now. I'll overturn your impression of me!"
Inheriting these [self]s' powers and experiences, she was brimming with confidence that she could blaze through Training Mode.
Mejiro McQueen looked at the enthusiastic King Halo and gave an approving nod.
Yes, this is the spirit and drive we should all have. As someone with cheat abilities, as long as your mindset wasn't one of giving up, becoming the world's strongest was just a matter of time.
Mejiro McQueen gave up her seat to the newcomer.
King Halo didn't stand on ceremony. She stepped up to the system, familiar with the interface from her memories, and opened Training Mode. Her entire body dissolved into light and entered the computer screen.
The group standing before the system each had their own thoughts.
"Interesting. I hope her strength matches her attitude."
"King Halo, huh. I wonder what her innate talent is."
Inside the Training Space, King Halo curiously surveyed her surroundings. Though the place was familiar from her inherited memories, this was her first time actually being here.
While some others lacked that sense of novelty, King Halo wasn't that type.
As a newly-born newcomer, everything about this world felt fresh to her.
"So this is the training ground and the training menu... and this is my stat panel."
She took a deep breath.
"Let's begin."
Though she had just been born, the pressure in King Halo's heart was actually considerable. She simply didn't show it.
Having just finished digesting McQueen and the others' memories and experiences, waking up to discover her inherited body was King Halo—the comic-relief uma musume—had sent her emotions through an earthquake. But she'd quickly regained control and put on her arrogant front to convince McQueen and the others, and herself.
The original's strength was genuinely weak—that was true.
But she was different. And even if her talent was poor, so what? Didn't she have the System?
Whether it was the [Player]'s obsession or simply this body's refusal to accept defeat, King Halo would never admit she couldn't do it.
In the training that followed, the first thing King Halo tried was her inherited power.
Confidently, she stepped onto the track. As she ran, she could feel that she was different from the McQueen at her starting point—her understanding of the track and her adaptive response were crystal clear, as if she'd been born with universal adaptability.
But this was normal. All the newcomers born after Tokai Teio—Rice Shower and Kitasan Black alike—had this ability.
Innate all-track and all-running-style adaptability!
Once she'd confirmed her understanding was correct, King Halo began trying to reproduce McQueen and the others' skills.
She wasn't foolish enough to assume she could pull off what Kitasan Black did. Kita-chan's kind of imitation was cheat-tier talent that no ordinary person could replicate.
"What? Why is my skill activation failing?"
Everything matched the memories exactly. She couldn't see where she'd gone wrong. But the skill activation failed anyway, as if some tiny detail had misfired.
King Halo refused to accept this.
"I must be nervous. I'll get it next time!"
Saying that, King Halo tried to activate a skill again—but this time she lowered the difficulty, choosing a basic white-tier skill.
This time, she successfully triggered the skill effect. Feeling the power surging from deep within her body, King Halo wiped the sweat from her forehead.
"I knew it. I knew there wasn't a problem—inherited skills can't go wrong!"
Her confidence restored, King Halo immediately tried to activate an advanced gold-tier skill, pouring a thousand percent of her focus into it.
The feeling was incredibly smooth. Power was about to burst forth—
But then, like an engine misfiring at ignition, she felt a distinct wave of helpless powerlessness.
Slowly decelerating, King Halo came to a stop on the training track. She stared at her own legs in disbelief.
"No... it can't be..."
A faint suspicion crept in.
It seemed she could only activate basic-tier skills. Even possessing McQueen and the others' memories and experiences, she couldn't just instantly master higher-tier skills.
This feeling was just like what Rice Shower had experienced when learning Flash-tier skills.
King Halo's pupils contracted sharply.
Is this... the gap in talent?
"No, that's not it!"
Skill learning was clearly tied to one's spiritual power. With her mental strength, there was no way she shouldn't be able to master this inherited power.
And this wasn't the same as Rice Shower's situation. She didn't find any of those memorized skills particularly difficult. Her intelligence let her grasp the key points quickly.
So what was actually causing this?
"The System! Right—I need the System's replay function!"
King Halo quickly pulled herself out of her slump. Her resolve was unwavering.
What followed was days upon days of training.
King Halo, much like McQueen in her earliest days, pushed her body to its absolute limit.
And through repeated training and study, King Halo eventually understood why her skill activation was failing.
It was her body's movements.
While running, she'd thought she was perfectly reproducing the skills from her memories—but in reality, her form wasn't as flawless as she believed. It was actually deformed in places. That was why her skill activation kept failing.
Once she identified the cause, the rest was straightforward—just endless repetition and practice.
True, this meant she had to carve out extra training time to master the skills, but there was an upside: it let the skills fit her own body more naturally.
Because everyone's physical condition was different. If you just copied the form from predecessors' experience verbatim, the skill would always have weaknesses—you couldn't unleash a hundred percent of its power.
But if you practiced until the skill became truly yours, you could unlock its full effect.
While mastering her skills, King Halo occasionally thought about Rice Shower and Kitasan Black.
One of them had [Fusion], the ultimate cheat. The other had terrifying talent. For them, mastering skills was instantaneous.
Kitasan Black, in particular, thanks to her monstrous talent, didn't even need to make the skill her own. She could directly transform her physical attributes into those of McQueen or the others. King Halo simply could not wrap her head around how Kitasan Black accomplished that.
Even with Kitasan Black's memories in her head, even as if she herself were Kitasan Black reincarnated, she still couldn't understand how that ability worked.
All one could say was that the System's inheritance and sharing were genuinely different from the "clone" tropes in some novels.
After half a year of training, King Halo finally faced her debut race.
Though it was only a computer race within Training Mode, standing on the track and listening to those virtual cheers, King Halo felt her blood beginning to burn.
This feeling—as if the goal was right there, within reach—was incredible.
She didn't need to think about anything. All she had to do was pour everything she had into the race and charge for the finish line!
Without any surprises, King Halo won easily.
Back in the System Space, the others watched King Halo's stat panel with a hint of surprise.
"Her stats are growing really fast."
Kitasan Black's eyes widened.
She couldn't imagine how many hours a day King Halo had to be training to raise her stats that quickly.
"Did you think everyone was like you?" Gold Ship said coldly.
After the sharing was complete, Kita-chan's Training Mode slacking from before had been thoroughly exposed. If Kita-chan hadn't delivered satisfactory results in the last race, her life right now would be nowhere near as peaceful.
Kitasan Black smiled awkwardly at that and didn't dare respond.
Mejiro McQueen watched King Halo's performance in training and said with satisfaction: "Not bad."
King Halo wasn't just raising her stats—she was also learning skills. That much was clear from the information on her stat panel.
Inherited skills wouldn't show up on the skill panel. Even if you could reproduce them in a race via memory and experience, that wasn't the same as one hundred percent mastery.
If you were a prodigy like Tokai Teio or Kitasan Black, it was a different story.
But even Kita-chan was merely forcing her way through their skills with raw talent.
Tokai Teio, on the other hand, had actually managed to directly transform most of her inherited skills into her own.
Kitasan Black could theoretically have done the same—but that child's mindset had been off-kilter from the start, and only now was she correcting course.
So one could imagine how seriously King Halo was training right now.
Even if her talent wasn't strong, with this kind of mental fortitude, her strength would absolutely not be weak.
Thinking that, Mejiro McQueen felt a stirring of anticipation.
Meanwhile in Training Mode, after finishing a day of training, King Halo dragged her exhausted body into the bath. Her expression was calm as she savored this moment of rest.
It's not enough.
King Halo had already accepted the fact that she didn't have any extraordinary talent.
But she hadn't fallen into despair. The System itself was the greatest talent. For them, talent was merely what gave them a better starting point.
She firmly believed that with the System's existence, as long as she worked hard enough, she could break through the gaps in talent!
"No talent—but this body suits me perfectly. This fighting spirit that feels like it'll never burn out..."
Feeling the fighting spirit in this body that seemed to come from another soul, King Halo let a confident smile spread across her face.
"Don't worry. I will reach the summit. That's my promise to [you]!"
...
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