"Yahoo!"
When Derek Su and Imperial Scale were officially declared the champions, Tunbao was so excited that she did a somersault on her seat.
"Awesome! In that case, I won't blow up the tournament organizers. At least they know what's good for them~"
The nearby spectators were speechless when they heard her.
The Mecha Girl Restriction Ordinance was still in effect, yet she wanted to blow up the organizers?
And she was bouncing around all over the place..
Had she not been a Mecha Girl from the Stella Club, they would have given her a piece of their minds.
"Derek Su truly deserves the title of Champion King." Leon Li looked at the beaming Derek Su on the podium and sighed.
Had Derek Su not been around, the Champion King title might have belonged to him and Snowpeak instead.
"Master, do you know what this means?" Snowpeak suddenly muttered beside him.
"What?"
"It means we haven't done enough Impact Resistance training." Snowpeak blinked, then pulled a small square packet from her bag with a serious expression. "It's the latest model. It's extremely stimulating and can greatly improve Endurance!"
Leon Li's expression shifted. After a long pause, he forced a smile and affectionately patted Snowpeak on the head.
"Th-that sounds great. How many did you buy?"
Snowpeak raised one finger.
Leon Li breathed a sigh of relief. A hundred was still manageable. Snowpeak was becoming more considerate, finally understanding how difficult things were for her pilot.
"A whole truckload," Snowpeak said calmly.
Leon Li fell silent.
Sometimes silence was not consent, but a wordless protest.
However, as he looked at Snowpeak's adorable face, his heart immediately softened.
"Fine."
Gulp!
Another handful of Rehmannia Pills went down his throat. Only then did he realize that his fate was in his own hands, not heaven's.
The atmosphere between Swain Li and Silver Mirror was considerably more serious.
"Silver Mirror, do you think we'll have a chance of defeating Derek Su and Stella if you copy Eternity's special skill during the provincial-level track race?" Swain Li narrowed his eyes. He had already identified the key point.
Eternity-01 was certain to participate in the provincial-level race.
That special skill of hers, which filled the entire track with dazzling, sparkling light, had to be incredibly powerful.
If her result had not been invalidated, she would have finished far ahead of Derek Su and Imperial Scale.
Judging by that performance, she was clearly even faster than Stella.
Wasn't this the perfect opportunity?
"Master, I don't recommend copying Eternity-01's skill." Silver Mirror pushed up her glasses and rejected the idea outright.
"Why not?"
Silver Mirror did not answer immediately. Instead, she took out her laptop and opened the recording of the Mermaid Bay Advanced Race.
Race recordings were now uploaded in real time.
By the time Eternity-01 crossed the finish line, the footage had already appeared on the official website of the Mermaid Bay Advanced Race organizers.
Silver Mirror set the video to twenty times normal speed and quickly reviewed the entire race. Eternity was so fast that she looked like little more than a blur in the footage. At twenty times speed, she moved too quickly for the naked eye to follow.
However, this posed no difficulty for Silver Mirror. She quickly selected several key moments, enlarged them, and showed them to Swain Li.
"Master, look. Whenever Lucy Luo pilots Eternity-01 toward a corner or certain obstacles, she slows down beforehand.
"The amount she slows down is also unusually large. Some sections only have minor bumps, and she could get through without reducing her speed so drastically, yet she still chooses to slow down...
"Don't you find that strange?"
Swain Li narrowed his eyes, a dangerous glint flashing within them.
"You mean Eternity-01 may have absurd speed and an outrageous skill, but she can't afford to collide with anything?"
"You could interpret it that way, but that isn't the most important issue." Silver Mirror's expression was grave.
"Then what is?" Swain Li lowered his head slightly, his face darkening.
Silver Mirror pursed her lips and rolled her eyes before replying without the slightest mercy.
"The important thing is that you don't have Lucy Luo's driving skills. If I copied Eternity-01's skill and gained her extreme speed, we'd crash like idiots."
Swain Li froze, then gave her a bitter smile.
Ever since the Xiangshan Advanced Race, Silver Mirror had learned how to tear people down. Once she had the upper hand, her sharp tongue showed him no mercy whatsoever.
Not far away in the stands, Chloe Qin's expression shifted between pale and flushed.
She was irritated that Derek Su had earned the Champion King title.
But then she remembered that the title would become hers as long as she defeated him, which made her feel rather pleased.
After swinging repeatedly between irritation and excitement, even she could no longer tell how she felt.
Elton Chen, the ace of the ESW club, stared at the young man on the podium with a solemn look in his eyes.
The Advanced Races during the first half of the year had been packed with monstrous competitors. He had participated in them himself, so he knew that better than anyone.
The racers from those top clubs were no pushovers.
Yet Derek Su, the Champion King, was in no way inferior to them. Even among the competitors from the first half of the year, he would have been considered a monster in his own right.
"Derek Su..." He silently repeated the name, a battle-hungry smile appearing on his lips. "What a formidable rival."
"Shay Guang, let's go!"
Beside him, Shay Guang's lips twitched. She stepped back twice to put some distance between them, her face filled with disgust.
"Honestly, that harmless face of yours really doesn't suit acting cool. It was so embarrassing that I could dig an entire castle with my toes."
Elton Chen fell silent.
What should someone do when his own Mecha Girl was always undermining him?
Waiting online. Urgent.
...
The Mermaid Bay Advanced Race came to an end, leaving some people delighted and others disappointed.
However, Derek Su's title as Champion King had now spread throughout the entire racing community.
Those who had already been following him began paying even closer attention. Even people who had never cared much about titles such as The Magician or King of Knox started taking notice of Derek Su.
Five Advanced Races and five championships.
Such a brilliant record could no longer be dismissed as mere luck. It was proof of absolute strength.
For a time, countless people rushed to download recordings of his races.
The organizers of the various Advanced Races seized the opportunity and began openly setting prices.
The condensed version of an entire race recording cost five hundred. Private distribution was forbidden, and anyone caught doing so would be permanently blacklisted.
The detailed edition cost one thousand.
The Derek Su close-up edition cost five thousand. Aside from a few special sections that could not be recorded clearly, such as the fog-covered area of Xiangshan, it contained every shot of Derek Su throughout the races.
Within an hour of going on sale, tens of thousands of copies had been sold.
Meanwhile, Derek Su, the man at the center of it all, had already returned to the Stella Club with his Mecha Girls.
It was already two in the afternoon when they arrived.
After driving throughout the night, Derek Su's head was buzzing, and even his steps felt unsteady.
The first thing he planned to do was sleep.
However...
The moment he opened the club's door, he saw Zane dressed in a suit, standing solemnly before a mirror and muttering something under his breath.
A bouquet of flowers had been placed behind him.
The smell of something burning hung in the air.
"My dearest Lily! I love you!
"You have set my soul ablaze!
"I can feel the flames of love burning, burning, burning..."
"Wait. Is something burning?" Zane took a deep breath and sniffed the air.
Derek Su's vision went dark. He covered his face and said in exasperation, "Burning, my ass! Zane, did you forget to turn off the stove?!"
...
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