Mejiro McQueen crossed the finish line entirely alone.
Her final time flashed across the massive broadcast screen. She had utterly shattered the previous course record.
The race countdown timer ticked away. Not a single other runner managed to cross the finish line before time expired.
On the massive leaderboard, right below her first-place ranking, every single competitor from second place downward shared the exact same terrifying race result.
Overwhelming Distance!
The original Mejiro McQueen finally stumbled past the finish line. She braced her hands against her knees, gasping for air as sweat poured down her face.
It felt like she was trapped in a suffocating nightmare she couldn't wake up from. When she looked up at the results on the giant screen, her eyes immediately welled with tears.
I lost.
She bit her lip, desperately trying to hold back her sobs, but the tears fell freely anyway.
She had lost the most important race of her career, and it was a complete, humiliating defeat.
It was so incredibly frustrating.
I really gave it my all. But I couldn't even touch her.
Thinking back to the horrifying strength her doppelgänger had displayed, she had to admit the bitter truth. She stood absolutely no chance against an opponent like that.
She had never experienced such a crushing disparity in sheer power.
Right now, the original McQueen wasn't the only one lost in a daze, nor was she the only one crying.
Virtually every runner who participated in that race was reacting the exact same way.
Up in the grandstands, the spectating Uma Musume felt a collective chill run down their spines. The speed that imposter McQueen displayed on the final straight was pure nightmare fuel.
For normal racers, it was an entirely different dimension of power. In reality, only a handful of incredibly gifted athletes could master one or two racing skills, and most of those were only basic white-tier abilities.
This alternate McQueen tossing out iridescent, rainbow-tier skills looked like a god descending to crush mortals.
Despite her overwhelming victory, the protagonist McQueen did not dare underestimate the horse girls of this real world.
According to her system's mechanics, the power of a "Zone" was ranked even higher than her Iridescent skills.
And from what she understood, the absolute top-tier runners in reality had all managed to tap into the Zone to some degree.
While the stadium crowd was still screaming in a frenzy, keeping all their attention fixated on the white-clad champion, something strange began to happen.
Specks of light began to drift away from the protagonist's body. She was becoming transparent at a visible rate.
"What in the world is happening?!"
The roaring cheers died in an instant. The announcer's voice echoed with pure panic.
The other runners on the turf immediately rushed toward her, their faces etched with shock and concern.
The original Mejiro McQueen sprinted up to her doppelgänger and shouted out loud.
"Wait, who exactly are you? And what..."
Before she could finish her sentence, the imposter's figure dissolved entirely into floating motes of light and vanished into the wind.
The bizarre scene left the entire stadium paralyzed with shock. Up in the VIP box, Symboli Rudolf had already signaled security and was charging down to the turf.
Everyone watched in dead silence as the final speck of light drifted into the sky and faded away.
In the very next second, the entire world seemed to flip upside down.
Inside the Trecen Academy dormitories, every single Uma Musume who had been eagerly anticipating the upcoming Kikuka Sho jolted awake in their beds.
The original Mejiro McQueen was one of them.
She stared blankly at her familiar ceiling, completely disoriented.
"Was I just... having a nightmare?" she muttered to herself.
She glanced at the calendar hanging on her wall. The Kikuka Sho was scheduled for tomorrow. That meant everything she just experienced was nothing but a vivid dream.
Realizing this, a massive wave of relief washed over her. She couldn't help but laugh out loud.
"Why on earth would I dream something like that? Me, suffering a total defeat at the Kikuka Sho against someone I don't even know? If you just think about it, it's completely impossible. I am unquestionably the strongest!"
Suddenly, a cold voice spoke up from the other side of the room.
"I just had a very strange dream, too," Ikuno Dictus said quietly. "I dreamed that at the Kikuka Sho, you were absolutely crushed by another McQueen wearing a white racing uniform. Tell me, McQueen. Do you really think that was just a dream?"
"..."
Hearing those words, the original McQueen looked up at her roommate in absolute horror.
Was that not just a nightmare?!
While Mejiro McQueen was having her reality shattered, the aftershocks of this "shared dream" were already beginning to warp the real world.
That morning, a highly unusual thread exploded on the internet racing forums.
[Kikuka Sho! The Strongest! Invincible! Mejiro McQueen (?) Eliminates All Opponents with an Overwhelming Distance!]
Initially, the post was written by a hardcore racing fan who had been deeply rattled by the dream. He wrote that he fell asleep clutching his Kikuka Sho ticket and vividly hallucinated attending the race.
The first few comments brushed it off as the delusional rambling of an obsessed fan.
But very quickly, another user commented that they had experienced the exact same dream. Then another. And another.
Some claimed they were in the stands. Others swore they had watched the phantom race live on a television broadcast. Within an hour, the thread skyrocketed to the top of the trending boards.
As the morning progressed, people all over the country began discussing the dream in real life, realizing just how terrifyingly widespread this phenomenon was.
Trecen Academy, Student Council Room.
Symboli Rudolf sat behind her desk like a military commander. She looked at the two student council members sitting on the sofa.
"So, regarding this incident. Air Groove, Brian. What are your thoughts?"
"Was that dream actually real?" Air Groove asked softly.
She looked like she was seriously doubting her own sanity. The entire situation was simply too illogical.
Narita Brian didn't say a word. She just sat in her chair, her posture stiff and her expression cold.
"Well, it is certainly a bizarre phenomenon. But since it has already happened, we have no choice but to acknowledge it," Symboli Rudolf said smoothly, not letting the supernatural elements bother her. "I am simply curious about the power that alternate Mejiro McQueen displayed at the end."
It looked remarkably similar to a power she was intimately familiar with, yet fundamentally different.
She had not sensed the aura of the Zone on that imposter.
The Zone.
In the past, no one truly understood what the Zone was.
Historically, Uma Musume who unlocked it were like shooting stars. They would force open the gates of the Zone for a fleeting moment of glory, and then permanently burn out.
It wasn't until Symboli Rudolf arrived that the ability was finally refined.
As the pioneer who mastered it, the Emperor could activate the Zone at will.
Unlike the others, she figured out how to use the power without cannibalizing her own body and destroying her career.
Narita Brian was the tragic counter-example. She was once hailed as one of the ultimate monsters of the turf and had successfully tapped into the Zone at a very young age. However, she relied on that power far too heavily, causing her body to break down under the strain. Her current strength was only a shadow of her former glory.
Because of this, the Zone was effectively a taboo subject at Trecen Academy.
Within their regional racing circuit, Symboli Rudolf had strictly locked down all research and data regarding the ability.
The power it granted was absolute, but the side effects were far too devastating. Strictly speaking, the Zone operated by literally burning up the physical lifeforce of the Uma Musume, causing catastrophic internal damage.
Many genius runners had permanently lost the use of their legs just by triggering it once.
However, despite banning the research, if an athlete awakened the Zone naturally through their own willpower, it would instantly command her attention.
Anyone who could breach that threshold on their own was undoubtedly one of the greatest monsters of their generation. As the President of Trecen Academy, a raw diamond like that was a temptation Rudolf simply could not ignore.
And now, she had witnessed a completely new domain. Something similar to the Zone, yet distinct.
It was an aura that allowed an Uma Musume to radiate pure light!
Air Groove suddenly realized what her President was implying.
"Wait. Are you saying that wasn't the Zone? But the visual effects were so exaggerated!"
Although she was the Vice President, Air Groove was not classified as a "monster-tier" runner.
She knew about the Zone, but she lacked the innate aptitude to open that door. Until now, she always assumed that any horse girl radiating an overwhelming, dark, glowing aura was a Zone user. Naturally, she assumed the phantom McQueen in the dream was using it.
Narita Brian finally spoke up. "No. I didn't feel the aura of the Zone on her either."
"Exactly. That was not the Zone," Symboli Rudolf said, a flash of fierce ambition gleaming in her eyes. "Furthermore, according to my observations, whatever technique she was using did not impose a severe physical toll on her body."
Rudolf had her eyes firmly locked onto the prize.
If they could study that alternate McQueen's ability, the competitive level of their entire racing circuit would take a massive leap forward. They might even find a safe way to stand against the monstrous heavyweights on the international stage who abused the Zone without any regard for their own safety.
She also had a far more terrifying hypothesis.
Could the Zone and this new iridescent power be layered on top of each other?
Just imagining the possibility made Rudolf feel like she was looking at the ultimate champion. A single runner pulling ahead, plunging the rest of the world into darkness!
"But Emperor," Air Groove sighed, rubbing her temples. "No matter how you look at it, it was just a dream. That version of the horse girl doesn't actually exist in reality."
She hadn't expected Rudolf to harbor such unrealistic fantasies.
Hearing this, Rudolf leaned back in her chair, a look of distinct disappointment on her face. Unwilling to let the idea go, she offered one last theory.
"Do you think it's possible that the dream was actually a glimpse of her true potential? That our Mejiro McQueen will eventually awaken that exact same power?"
"..."
Narita Brian and Air Groove simply stared at her in dead silence.
The chances of that happening were astronomically low, but in a world where millions just shared the exact same premonition, who could really say for sure?