The instant the starting gates flew open, all thirteen Umamusume burst onto the track at once.
In every pair of eyes shimmered a yearning—for the race itself, for victory. They poured everything they had accumulated into this track, calling upon every ounce of strength in their bodies as their feet pounded the earth. Flying blades of grass and cold horseshoes flashed through the air together, reflected in every falling drop of rain.
And yet, among them, there was one heretic.
Unlike the horse girls charging at the front, she quietly dropped to the very back of the pack. Her black eyes were hidden beneath the torrent of rain, like an assassin polishing her blade in silence, patiently calculating the exact moment to strike with a fatal blow.
"The front-running escape runners have already entered the turn. Tokai Teio, running in a forward position, is right behind them, while the rest of the stalkers are still further back."
Xiu Xingmeng silently calculated the flow of the race. The 1200-meter course at Tokyo Racecourse had only one turn: it began around the 200-meter mark, came out of the bend at about 600 meters, and then led into a final 600-meter straight sprint.
She carefully gauged her own condition. The race had only just begun, and she felt no fatigue at all.
"I'll conserve my energy through these 400 meters of turn, look for the best path to overtake, and then decide the race on the final 600-meter straight!"
Once she had made up her mind, Xiu Xingmeng kept herself in a suitable position, watching the trajectories of the stalkers ahead of her. As she adjusted her own planned route, she also tried her best to memorize their movements for the next race.
Three hundred meters.
Four hundred meters.
Five hundred meters.
All the while, Xiu Xingmeng stayed quietly behind the main group, so inconspicuous she seemed to have no presence or threat at all—as if she had already given up on the race and was merely jogging along for fun.
Yet only she knew the amount of planning and calculation hidden within those several hundred meters.
"Number Nine and Number Five haven't changed lines much… Is Number One really running like this at this point?"
Fine beads of sweat gradually formed on Xiu Xingmeng's forehead, only to blend together with the pouring rain until they were indistinguishable.
She gritted her teeth. The thoughts in her head had become such a tangled mess that it felt as though her brain were about to burst apart.
"No good. This is my first time running as a closer—I don't even know what information matters and what doesn't. If I try to record everything wholesale like this, there's no way I can keep up this level of calculation!"
Squinting through the downpour, she searched for the runners ahead. That white crescent had already surged to the very front of the course.
She still hadn't found the perfect timing or route.
But she no longer had time to keep thinking.
"To hell with it!"
Xiu Xingmeng stopped worrying about whether her burst would collide with another Umamusume's line. The instant she came out of the turn, she shot straight down the route she had chosen beforehand.
Her red ribbon streamed behind her as her speed suddenly spiked. Against the gray rain curtain, a streak of red came hurtling from back to front—like a blade at last revealing its murderous gleam as it cut straight through the clustered pack of runners.
"Tokai Teio is still in the lead! Five hundred meters remaining! Can she hold on to this advantage all the way to the finish?!"
The commentator's passionate voice echoed across the racecourse, and every mention of Tokai Teio drew another wave of cheers from the audience.
But she was a professional. Even while satisfying the crowd's yearning to witness the brilliance of a rising star, she never stopped tracking the changes unfolding on the track.
"Oh! Number Three, Nice Nature, seems to have broken away from the stalking group! Can she reach the path traced by genius?!"
Hearing that, Nice Nature—who had only just managed to break out of the surrounding pack—twisted her lips in a self-mocking smile.
"How could an Umamusume like me possibly…"
But before her thoughts could wander any further, the commentator's next cry cut her off.
"Number Thirteen? It's Number Thirteen! Umamusume Xiu Xingmeng is charging up from the rear!"
"She's still accelerating—she's still accelerating! Can this Umamusume pierce through the stalking pack and strike straight for the heart of genius?!"
People longed to see genius display its brilliance. They yearned for that dazzling, radiant spectacle.
But at the same time, they also craved a truly thrilling stage. A one-woman show from a prodigy was certainly bright enough—but if there appeared another challenger with the potential to overturn the script, they would not be stingy with their excitement.
Before anyone realized it, that streaking red figure had drawn all eyes to herself through sheer force alone.
Even Nice Nature, in the middle of the race, could not help but glance back. She wanted to see with her own eyes whether that red figure slicing through the crowd could truly drag a genius down from her pedestal.
Rushing from last place to the front, piercing through everything in her path—
perhaps that was the very charm of the closer's style.
Xiu Xingmeng had no idea that she had unwittingly captured the entire stadium's attention. Borrowing from the crowd's anticipation for genius, this challenger to genius had somehow earned a spotlight no less intense than the genius herself.
She only knew one thing:
She was about to hit her limit.
Every muscle in her body trembled. Her lungs, with air roaring through them like wind through pipes, felt as though they were burning. This was her body's warning—and also the limit reached by the Umamusume named Xiu Xingmeng.
She had never been some exceptionally gifted Umamusume. She had fought with everything she had just to squeeze her way into Tracen Academy.
If anything, the fact that she had made it this far—relying only on fragments of memory from the previous race, even managing to seize the attention of the entire stadium—already meant she had done incredibly well.
Two hundred meters remained.
Her strength was fading.
Her speed was slowing.
Every breath hurt. Every step was agony.
And that white crescent remained ahead of her the whole time, like true moonlight hanging high in the heavens—forever out of reach.
Xiu Xingmeng stretched out her hand, placing it over that distant figure, yet she touched nothing.
Then suddenly, she clenched her fist tight, as if crushing all her strength into that single motion. Ignoring the screams of her body, she forced herself to accelerate once more.
She was not the kind of person who could only lament what lay beyond her reach!
Perhaps it was her Guts—the only one of her attributes ranked D—that finally began to show its worth. Her red ribbon danced once more through the gray streams of rain, and before she realized it, she had already overtaken several of the front-runners.
This black-haired, black-eyed Umamusume had truly become a sharpened blade, driving mercilessly toward the genius ahead.
One hundred meters.
Without any strength left to shout, Xiu Xingmeng charged forward in silence.
Thirty meters.
She even overtook Nice Nature, who had been in second place.
But this was the limit.
Not long after Xiu Xingmeng passed Nice Nature, the blank display board standing beside the track lit up with the first result of the race.
First Place — Tokai Teio
[Stage Objective 1 Complete]
[Reward Distributed]
One second before the world inverted once more, that mechanical voice rang out again by Xiu Xingmeng's ear.
Join here to read ahead.
In Star Rail, Ultra-Beast Armored — Have I Caught "Equilibrium"? l (Chapter 80)
Uma Musume, But I Only Have Five Years Left to Live (Chapter 150)
Zenless Zone Zero: I'm a Doctor, Not a Bangboo (Chapter 115)
Ben Tennyson Wants to Join the Justice League (Chapter 110)
TYPE-MOON: Redemption Beginning with the Holy Grail War (Chapter105)
Yu-Gi-Oh! — Transmigrated into the White Dragon Girl (Chapter100)
"Is this chat group even serious?" (Chapter69)
I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (Chapter100)
Can Playing Games Save the World? 65
Crossover Anime Multiverse: The Demon Hunter of an Unnatural World 70
From Junkman to Wasteland 60
Weekly Refresh of Overpowered 31
I'm Grinding Proficiency Like 40
From Kiana, Lord Ravager, Onwa 60
Honkai: Is This Still the Prev 42
Elf: My Starter Pokémon Is Inc 50
Warhammer: My Primarch Is Remi 50
From Demon Slayer to Grand Ass 50
The Way the Umamusume Look at 31
Uma Musume, but My Cheat Power 26
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