I looked down and hardly recognized the body beneath me. Long legs, slim arms, a tight red racing outfit clung to limbs that didn't feel like mine at first, and my heartbeat thundered so loud it felt like it could rip through the quiet white walls of that unfamiliar room. The whole place: the small bed, a plain desk, the single phone charger dangling from a socket, felt unreal. I wasn't in my own life anymore. I wasn't in my own body. And looking at Marzensky's reflection, I still couldn't believe it.
My hands shook as I grabbed the phone beside me, unlocking it with trembling fingers. Only one app worked, Uma Musume Pretty Derby. Nothing else. I tapped the screen, partly panicked, partly desperate. Character select. Marzensky. The world swayed beneath my feet. My stomach lurched.
Then I saw myself in the mirror, and more than my appearance, something extra hovered over it, a glowing panel that didn't belong in any normal reflection.
Marzensky (Kaiya Sora)
Age: 17
Height: 160 cm
Speed: 92
Stamina: 88
Power: 85
Guts: 90
Intelligence: 78
Skills: None
Ultimate Skill: ???
I could almost feel each number in the air. No skills. Nothing yet. Just the faint promise in that ultimate skill line, something that might grow into a power capable of touching legend. I laughed, half excited, half in panic, and called out to the empty room. "Okay… I can work with this."
But before I could think about winning races or G1 crowns, I had to get used to Marzensky's body.
At first, movement felt surreal. Standing still, my legs seemed long and elegant, like they belonged to someone from a poster, but the moment I took a step, that illusion shattered. I stumbled, wildly off‑balance, as if gravity had changed its mind the moment it met these limbs. I tensed every muscle, feeling things I had never felt before: the lean of a calf under strain, the way the shin rotates slightly inward during a stride, the subtle torque twisting through hips that somehow felt both sturdy and unexplored.
I had to learn how to simply stand, move, and breathe in this new body before I ever thought about racing. I spent hours just pacing in place and walking around the yard behind the dorm. I tried small sprints, focusing first on how every foot landed on turf, how it pushed energy back into the legs, and how the blades of grass bent away under my weight. It wasn't like moving in my old life; it was deeper, more physical, like every part of me had to recalibrate itself.
The room I woke up in wasn't just random, but there was no roommate. It was part of something way bigger. Everywhere I looked felt like Tracen Academy, but not the bright, stylized anime version I'd seen in clips online. This was the game's Tracen Academy come to life: vast training tracks stretching farther than the eye could see, multiple facilities like a library, pool, gym, dance studio, and even outdoor stages, all laid out in neat grids as if designed by some invisible level editor. It felt like a boarding school built inside a strategy RPG map, where each building had a purpose, and every path led back to training. The turf beneath my feet, the way corridors connected rooms like inventory slots, and how NPC umamusume moved robotically between drills made everything surreal. almost like I'd downloaded the game world into reality. And strangely, time seemed to freeze if I wasn't actively training, like the world only advanced while I was logged into my own progress bar.
Eventually, I tried running in earnest, at first just a few dozen meters, and each time, I had to focus on how my torso angled forward, how my hips and back worked together to form an efficient, balanced stride. Each breath became a rhythm, almost musical in its repetition: in, out, in, out. My arms swung in a controlled rhythm, too, bent at the elbow just right, keeping balance but also driving momentum forward.
Then something strange happened. I realized I wasn't just in the body, I was experiencing it from different views, like I could toggle how I felt motion.
The first time I figured that out was after a training run with one of the veteran NPCs. We weren't in an official race yet. It was one of those simulation‑like warmups you find scattered around the training grounds. She was a quiet presence beside me, her own strides smooth, powerful. When she ran, I could almost see her from above in my mind, a god's eye view that hovered a few meters up, like switching to a third‑person camera in a game. It was strange and soothing at the same time, like seeing your own body from the outside while still feeling every muscle working from the inside.
I didn't know at first that I could switch that perspective on command. I just felt it, that intangible shift when you stop watching yourself run from your own eyes and instead feel your body as an object in space, movements almost projected out in front of you. It was like zooming a camera out in a game so you see your entire runner and the track ahead all at once. In the actual Uma Musume Pretty Derby game, players can switch between preset camera angles or zoom levels to get different views of the race or animation scenes, even though races have dynamic cinematic cameras that shift automatically in certain cutscenes or replays.
I spent hours just learning that, switching between feeling my feet pound the turf directly in first person and imagining myself from above as if I could see my entire Marzensky silhouette from outside. That dual sense, inside voice, and outside view gave me an instinctive understanding of distance, balance, and movement that no mere training manual could teach. At first, it was unsettling, like looking at your reflection while you're still thinking with someone else's brain. But over time, that split perspective became a strength, something I used to correct my stride mid‑run, anticipate every undulation in the turf, and feel my own acceleration as it happened.
I even tried testing the body's limits, how far my calves could push me, how long I could run without breaking form, how deep I could breathe without stumbling. It was both physical and mental. I could feel the texture of each blade of grass underfoot, hear the slight slide of dirt and turf beneath each strike, and feel my quads tighten and release in a long, rolling wave of force. My lungs burned, but my mind felt clearer than ever when I matched every rise and fall of my breath with every rhythmic footstep.
One day, after an especially long run that left me in a near‑collapse, I found myself in the infirmary testing something I once thought impossible: healing mechanics. I tripped during a rough sprint and felt a sharp pain in my ankle, and for a moment, panic flooded me until I remembered that this world wasn't normal. Just like real horses' healing powers, the infirmary here could mend even a broken leg, a game mechanic that seemed so surreal until I tested it. I was skeptical at first, thinking how could a place in a world that feels like a game literally heal me? But after I lay on the crisp white bed and the nurse looked at the panel hovering beside my reflection, that panel flickered, glowed, and then I felt an odd warmth spread from where I'd strained myself. When I stood again, carefully, afraid at first, I felt the strength return. The pain was gone. It was astonishing and unnerving at the same time.
But what really solidified my sense that I wasn't just dreaming was the first running experience after that healing. I didn't just feel the impact of the turf, I saw it in my mind's eye from both inside and outside at once. I learned instinctively how to lean into a sprint, how my shoulders tightened and relaxed in sync with my hips, and how the way I held my head influenced my balance. At first, it felt disorienting, like switching camera perspectives in a game, but eventually it became effortless; first person gave me texture and immediacy, third person gave me spatial awareness and broad vision. I even imagined triggers like the Red Shift / LP1211‑M, a powerful burst that increases acceleration when positioned to surge near the front on a final corner in the game's mechanics, and felt a tingle at the thought of how that would look if it activated in real movement.
Every day, discovering how Marzensky's body felt was like learning another layer of reality. The first time I started running laps on the grass in silence, I felt the gentle give of the turf underfoot, the slight slip before traction snapped back. I learned how to adjust my strides, shortening them when my muscles tired, lengthening them when I needed burst speed. I taught myself to feel where my feet would land before they hit, as some radar in my bones gave me subtle warnings. It was visceral. I felt alive in a way I never had before.
Nervousness never fully left me, even when I got used to movement. I was always aware, always alert, feeling the weight of every moment. But there was also thrill, the same thrill I used to feel in a game when your runner finally hits top speed and bursts toward victory. Here, it wasn't pixels. It was me, my breath, my heartbeat, my limbs carrying me across real turf. And when I reached the end of those first long runs, gasping for breath, heart pounding in a rhythm I'd never felt in my old life, I understood something profound: this wasn't a simulation. This was existence molded around the rules of something like a game system, but tangible and alive.
Eventually, I ran with other NPCs, testing races that felt like simulations. That's when I truly discovered I could switch perspective at will, slipping from first-person focus, where every breath felt sharp and real, to a god's eye view that let me see my form, my body's angles, and the field stretching out all around me. It was like toggling between two realities, being inside the body and being above it, seeing the whole track as if I were watching from a camera set high above the grass. It was surreal and exhilarating, a mechanic I never thought a body could support, yet there it was: instinctive and natural after enough practice.
And every time I learned something new, how to adjust stride, how to lean into a curve, how to breathe in a rhythm that matched the run, I felt myself closer to mastering Marzensky's body. I wasn't just inhabiting it. I was becoming it. The surreal feeling of being in a world that felt like a game faded gently into something more stable, something real and urgent and deeply mine.
I took a deep breath, fists tight, and stared into the reflection during one of those training days. The panel hovered over the reflection of Marzensky, but now I knew her body, her movement, her existence. I knew I could run in ways that felt instinctive, that felt right and true. And in that moment, I whispered, "Let's see how far this system can take me."