Training grounds.
The original King Halo walked out with a face full of exhaustion.
Although the training grounds had the effect of boosting training, all training still needed to be personally experienced.
King Halo gave her a sum of points and instructed her on how to better use the various facilities inside the training grounds. After using the power of item clocks to obtain one year of training time, the original King Halo finally raised her stats to the A+ to S+ ranks.
Only after raising her stats to this level, skillfully mastering her own three skills, and obtaining four Flash Skills did the original King Halo finally gain confidence to challenge her first race.
She arrived at the agreed cafe.
The original King Halo met King Halo.
"Not bad. It seems you really did train seriously."
"Thank you for your guidance."
"Mm. Do you plan to register for a race?"
"Yes."
The original King Halo nodded seriously.
Although she still had points left from what King Halo had given her, and she could continue buying skill books and using the facilities of the training grounds, she felt she had now reached a bottleneck.
After all, skills learned from skill books were only at the beginner level.
If she wanted to use them flexibly in races, she also needed to spend quite a bit of time raising proficiency. But if she kept undergoing hellish training, the mental burden on herself would become too great.
In a game, as long as there were ways to replenish stamina, one could continue training in a relaxed and happy manner. But in reality, long periods of training would also lower mood and produce various negative conditions.
If the original King Halo forced herself into the training grounds again now, she would only start in absolute bad condition and mental exhaustion.
King Halo understood this.
The training grounds only increased the bonus to training effects. But if the original increase from training was zero, then the increase after the bonus would also be zero. In a game, this situation might mean being unable to participate in training for one turn. But in reality, it meant one's mental fatigue had already accumulated to the limit. Next, one either had to recover through time, or break through the mental limit through repeated races.
Of course, if one's will was powerful, such as the original Rice Shower's, then one could forcibly break through the limit. But this method dealt great harm to the body. Even now, with the shop's panacea available to cooperate with it, at most one could break through once.
This was the problem ordinary umamusume needed to face.
The difference between geniuses and mediocrities was the initial potential ceiling, and breaking through the ceiling meant breaking through the original potential.
However, King Halo and the others had not encountered this problem. For cheats like them, who possessed the system and could also share the power of their other selves, the ceiling of potential could not be seen at all. This was also why they could suppress every world.
McQueen had also encountered this problem at first. But that girl McQueen used her cheat, plus her own tenacious willpower, to forcibly break this restriction. Now, what restricted them was not some so-called potential ceiling, but the racial limits of umamusume.
The exchange between King Halo and the original King Halo was rather plain.
Because King Halo disliked socializing to begin with.
In this respect, she and McQueen were very similar.
The original King Halo regarded King Halo as an idol.
In the past, the original King Halo's idols had been her parents. Now, it had become King Halo. Her attitude toward King Halo was like respect toward a teacher.
The two rested for the morning. After eating lunch, they arrived at the race venue. The popularity here remained high. Although it was impossible for people to stay here all day, the scale of this tournament involved multiple worlds together, so naturally there was no shortage of participants and spectators. Therefore, the race venue was operating almost all day.
"I hope I don't randomly draw dirt or long distance!"
The original King Halo nervously submitted her registration.
Although she had been improving her aptitudes, at present, her dirt aptitude had only been raised to C rank.
If she matched into a dirt field, it would truly be difficult.
The registration was quickly accepted, but she had to wait two hours.
King Halo beside her did not register.
She would only register for races when she had trained to about the right point. Recently, King Halo was conceptualizing her own ZONE.
She had already decided to complete her awakening in her next race.
Thinking this, King Halo opened her personal panel and looked at that sparkling divine skill. Although this power now belonged to her, it was still an external force. She wanted to turn this power into her own thing. Deep within her eyes hid a dark ambition.
No matter how respectfully she treated the Three Goddesses on the surface, in her bones, King Halo was still that proud madman. After all, in the system's definition, they were other selves equivalent to the original. So she and Demon King Gold Ship were actually the same.
It was only that Demon King Gold Ship was more naive.
King Halo, by contrast, belonged to the gloomy schemer type.
She did not stay with the original King Halo.
After detecting that McQueen and the others were also here, King Halo approached them after entering the spectator seats.
Demon King Gold Ship was not here.
That girl now seemed to want to establish an independent faction and become the boss. Every time they met, she could not say more than a few decent words.
"Halo, has your special training finally ended?"
Tokai Teio spoke with a smile.
She knew this little sister of hers was a training maniac just like McQueen. Because her panel was temporarily behind, after participating in this event, she had been staying in the training grounds the whole time.
"Mm."
King Halo nodded.
"Are any of our races today?"
She then asked.
Tokai Teio shook her head.
"No. But look over there."
Tokai Teio pointed toward the participants on the race field.
King Halo saw several familiar figures.
The main world's Mejiro McQueen.
Duramente from Kitasan Black's world.
And Mihono Bourbon from Rice Shower's world.
She immediately understood why everyone had gathered here.
At this moment, the final participant of this race entered the field.
It was Agnes Tachyon, wearing a green coat and round glasses. In another section of the spectator seats, Demon King Gold Ship smiled.
King Halo saw the familiar spectators.
The main world's Mejiro McQueen.
Duramente from Kitasan Black's world.
And Mihono Bourbon from Rice Shower's world.
She immediately understood why everyone had gathered here.
At this moment, the final participant of this race entered the field.
It was Agnes Tachyon, wearing a brown coat and round glasses. In another section of the spectator seats, Demon King Gold Ship smiled.
"Interesting."
Mejiro McQueen and the other runners who possessed ZONE all tensed their expressions. Another opponent whose strength was not simple had appeared.
Although ZONE was not considered a very powerful ability in this tournament, and there were even many runners whose ZONE strength was inferior to some skills, it could not be denied that runners who possessed ZONE and could survive their first race were not simple.
At present, this tournament had several tiers.
The top tier was naturally Mejiro McQueen and the others.
One tier below were Secretariat, Dancing Brave, and other legendary umamusume who had originally been limited by their world ceilings.
The third tier was runners with powerful domain abilities.
The fourth tier was runners who had awakened ZONE and passed their first race. No matter whether the ZONE ability was strong or weak, being able to awaken ZONE represented completing a breakthrough of potential. As long as they could survive their first tournament race, they could rapidly become stronger.
The fifth tier consisted of runners with special talent skills, or runners like the original King Halo who had investor support.
As for levels below that, there was no need to mention them.
And this classification was not detailed.
One could not truly refer to this classification to predict victory and defeat.
After all, even the original King Halo, currently in the fifth tier, did not necessarily lack a chance to defeat third-tier runners such as the little gourmand.
Moreover, each race had at least twelve participants.
It was possible that in a race, experts would target each other, ultimately leading to a weak runner lucking into victory.
King Halo opened the stat panels of each participant. Although she could only see rough information, it was already enough.
"McQueen, do you think that you can win?"
Tokai Teio asked curiously.
From her observations, there were quite a few participants of similar strength in this race. Victory and defeat were currently still difficult to discern.
"..."
Mejiro McQueen did not give an answer.
She thought of what she had heard from the sisters of the Mejiro family about the little gourmand's situation. She knew that after the little gourmand participated in this event, although she had also been enjoying the tournament, she seemed to be enjoying it a bit too much.
Of course, Mejiro McQueen was still training hard. But that kind of effort, from McQueen's perspective, was the same as playing house.
If not for the fact that training no longer had much use for McQueen now, then with the items in the shop, she could stay in the training grounds all day without sleeping, training herself to the strongest state before coming out.
As for so-called mental pressure and fatigue?
Things like that would not kill her.
But clearly, normal people were not as insane as McQueen.
And because there were clocks that could accelerate time, the little gourmand had completely lost the pressure of enjoying herself. Even if her weight increased a lot overnight, she could use a clock the next day to run to the training grounds and use the weight-loss training course to press her weight back down.
So basically, the little gourmands from every world could not resist the temptation. Those who had not indulged themselves had only failed to do so because they had lost their participant qualifications and had no way to continue.
However, perhaps from their perspective, fully enjoying races, enjoying training, and enjoying all kinds of entertainment facilities was precisely the meaning of participating in this event. After all, umamusume races were not life-and-death battles, and this event would not affect their racing careers. Since that was the case, they could naturally do as they pleased.
But precisely because of this, Mejiro McQueen found it somewhat difficult to blend into this atmosphere.
"The race currently underway is a 2000-meter middle-distance turf race under sunny weather and firm going. Let us look at this race's popular runners. First in popularity..."
First in popularity: Duramente.
Second in popularity: Mejiro McQueen.
Third in popularity: Mihono Bourbon.
Moreover, this race was basically full of Japanese runners.
Because recently, many local umamusume had also participated in this event, the lower limit of the participants' level had been lowered quite a bit again. Some lucky runners truly could rush out by chance.
However, the runners on the points leaderboard were all not simple.
Because of the point-deduction elimination system, if one could not place in the top three every race, it was difficult to stand out on the leaderboard.
At present, Demon King Gold Ship was still far ahead on this ranking.
If not for wanting to target King Halo and Rice Shower, Demon King Gold Ship might long since have gathered 100 points. But now, Demon King Gold Ship was deliberately controlling her points, wanting to match with those two in the next race.
Although the divine skill gave Demon King Gold Ship great confidence, if she only had one divine skill, she had only fifty-fifty confidence against McQueen. If she wanted full confidence in defeating McQueen, she had to obtain the other divine skills too. If she could manipulate the matching mechanism, she would have wanted to directly control the matching system from the back end.
Naturally, she had also privately provoked Rice Shower and King Halo. However, neither of them paid attention to Demon King Gold Ship's provocation.
After all, Demon King Gold Ship's simple thoughts were clear at a glance.
Returning to this race.
Kitasan Black said seriously, "No matter how you look at it, Duramente will win, right? Her average stats are the highest in the field. It can't be denied that the little gourmand, because she has some kind of connection to McQueen, inherited quite a few of McQueen's skills, and her ZONE's effect is not weak. But Duramente is one of the few runners on my side who could barely catch up to me. She will definitely win."
"..."
King Halo looked at Kitasan Black speechlessly.
Was this girl joking?
Tokai Teio also smiled.
"I still think the little gourmand will win."
Even if she only obtained part of McQueen's power, that was still McQueen's power. Naturally, her odds of victory were very high.
Mejiro McQueen understood what Teio meant and glanced at her. Although Teio was very confident in her, the problem was that she did not have much confidence in the little gourmand. Moreover, her intuition told her that in this race, the one with the highest odds of victory was probably...
She looked toward Agnes Tachyon.
Although she thought this, Mejiro McQueen did not say it.
After all, that mad scientist runner's strength was truly hard to judge.
Tokai Teio also smiled.
"I still think the little gourmand will win."
Even if she only obtained part of McQueen's power, that was still McQueen's power. Naturally, her odds of victory were very high.
Mejiro McQueen understood what Teio meant and glanced at her. Although Teio was very confident in her, the problem was that she did not have much confidence in the little gourmand. Moreover, her intuition told her that in this race, the one with the highest odds of victory was probably...
She looked toward Agnes Tachyon.
Although she thought this, Mejiro McQueen did not say it.
After all, Agnes Tachyon's current strength was still an unknown.
She had not paid attention to the other party's previous races either.
At this time, Rice Shower also spoke.
"I support Bourbon."
She did not know who would win, but she wanted to see her friend win. It was only such a pure blessing.
"The current data is insufficient. I will not make a judgment."
King Halo did not participate.
For her, this was a meaningless prediction. She was also not like McQueen, who believed so deeply in intuition, that sixth sense sort of thing.
At this moment, in the race, all runners had already entered the gates.
Mejiro McQueen's expression was serious.
"I absolutely cannot lose under that person's gaze. She must be watching my race right now. I absolutely have to win!"
Although hope was slim, Mejiro McQueen longed to enter the top eighteen and race together with her in the final. That was her current goal.
Mihono Bourbon's eyes were calm. She had already entered Flow.
In her field of vision, ahead was a pitch-black figure treading a blue-rose track. That was the Hero she wanted to chase.
Duramente emptied her mind.
The fighting spirit rising throughout her body revealed her heart.
She only wanted to continue climbing.
Never retreat.
The strength or weakness of opponents? Predictions of victory or defeat?
All of those were useless.
In her eyes, there was only the finish line, only the strongest.
She was born to become the strongest. Her bloodline existed for this purpose. This was the meaning of her life.
Agnes Tachyon smiled.
"None of the opponents are weak. But that is what makes it interesting. Then let us begin the experiment."
The race began.
...
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