The guest commentator was shouting himself hoarse, while the spectators frantically waved their cheering goods and colorful banners, calling out in support of the two horse girls.
Some of the horse girls wore excited smiles. In their eyes, Kahyasi, upon whom so many hopes had been pinned, would surely answer those expectations, fight Xingyun Liuge to the bitter end, and then defeat her!
Maybe that line of thinking sounded a little overconfident, but it did not take them long to come up with a "solution" that seemed to justify it:
Xingyun Liuge had accelerated on the uphill, then maintained a relatively high speed the entire way afterward. Now the gap between the two girls was shrinking faster and faster, yet Xingyun Liuge still had not shown any sign of unleashing a second burst of acceleration. Clearly, that meant she was running low on stamina, right?
To have broken so far away from the pack before even reaching the middle stages was already an outrageous performance. If all that happened in the closing stretch was that she realized her stamina distribution had been flawed and lost the ability to accelerate a second time, that would still be monstrous. If it were any ordinary horse girl, she would already have collapsed in speed by now.
Nearly every British and Irish horse girl came to the same conclusion: Xingyun Liuge had already proven her strength in this Derby. Even if she finished second, it would still be a glorious defeat. After all, she would not merely have lost to Kahyasi. More than that, she would have lost to Britain's turf itself.
In the end, it was all the fault of insufficient training time. If Xingyun Liuge had been given more time to adapt to Epsom's grass, the result might have been completely different. She might really have recreated the Belmont Stakes with an absurd, overwhelming lead.
But there were also horse girls whose faces turned grave.
Why still no sign of her using her field?
What exactly was she waiting for?
Some of them were so nervous they were sweating from head to toe, their entire bodies drenched. Even their racing uniforms were soaked through, clinging uncomfortably to their delicate skin.
Kahyasi clenched her teeth, ignoring the metallic taste gradually spreading through her mouth. She wanted to grit out one last push and erase the distance between them in a single breath.
Only ten lengths remained.
So long as she closed those ten lengths, the two of them would step together onto the stage of the final showdown, there to challenge the dreadful nightmare that devoured a horse girl's stamina in the last stretch—known as the ultimate uphill of the Epsom Derby.
Whoever first reached the crest of that slope would be the winner of the Derby.
And yet, at that exact moment, Kahyasi felt her body growing heavier, bit by bit.
But she was in the middle of a fully deployed field. Her condition should have been at its absolute peak right now, the very best she could be in this Derby.
Salt-stiff sweat spilled from her hair and traced past her brows, making her blink her left eye on instinct.
Then, all at once, a gust of wind struck from the side.
Her already-fluttering skirt abruptly changed direction, whipping hard against the airflow, snapping taut under the force and then cracking loudly, over and over, like a banner lashing in a gale.
That sharp flapping noise continued, even though the gust itself had already passed and her skirt had returned to its original arc.
What was going on?
Under normal circumstances, Kahyasi, fully focused on the race, would never have cared about such a trivial detail. She would have fixed her eyes only on victory. But right now, Xingyun Liuge's every move felt strange to her, and she found herself desperately latching onto every tiny irregularity, trying to infer what Xingyun Liuge might do next.
That mindset was bordering on paranoia.
And yet it let her catch Xingyun Liuge's tail.
Because she looked up and saw black shapes circling in the sky.
No—not black shapes.
It was a flock of ravens, wheeling above Epsom Racecourse in numbers too great to count.
Sometimes they scattered apart, like torn scraps of dark cloud. Sometimes they drew together into a vast, spiraling vortex. Each raven kept precisely the right distance from the others, and the rhythm of their wingbeats was almost perfectly synchronized, as if invisible threads were guiding them all.
In an instant, Kahyasi understood.
That sound she had heard had not been her skirt flapping in the wind at all.
It had been the synchronized beating of the ravens' wings.
And then she noticed that they were flying low—low enough that she could clearly make out their feathers, black as forged steel and gleaming with a metallic sheen. A wild raven might have feathers that beautiful, but for the entire flock to look like that? Impossible. Someone must have raised them.
Even more uncanny were their cries.
They were not noisy. They were not grating.
Instead, they sounded like a low, husky chorus.
Each raven's voice echoed the others, carrying an ancient, mysterious cadence that made one think of old legends and forgotten prophecies.
Kahyasi suddenly thought back to the ranch near her home. Whenever evening was about to fall, the birds returning to the woods would circle over the trees, painting a grand natural scene that perfectly balanced motion and stillness.
It looked exactly like this.
And the moment that calm, peaceful memory rose in her mind, cold sweat burst across her entire body.
A horrible realization struck her:
When had this flock arrived?
Why had she not noticed it at all?
Was it because she had been too focused on the race?
No. Absolutely not.
The flock was far too enormous. It could never have gathered in just one or two minutes. By all rights, they should have noticed it before the race had even begun.
And if a flock like this had really appeared over the racecourse, the commentators would absolutely have made a meal of it. They would have spun it into atmosphere and spectacle, decorating it with every possible dramatic phrase. There was no way they would have ignored it and said nothing at all.
So then—what could the commentators not see, while the horse girls alone could?
There was only one answer.
Fields.
Fields!
Everyone had thought Xingyun Liuge still had not deployed hers.
But the truth was the exact opposite.
She had already opened it long ago.
They simply had not realized it.
Kahyasi murmured under her breath, "So she's using the power of her field to hold her speed in place... to stop herself from slowing down?"
A single phrase surfaced in her mind:
The last strength of a spent crossbow.
If her guess was correct, then this was the best possible chance she would ever get to end Xingyun Liuge's undefeated legend.
She had to seize it.
Driven by that thought, she pulled the distance between them even tighter—
and broke into Xingyun Liuge's ten-length range.
And in that instant, heaven and earth changed.
The bright sky dimmed into a murky gloom.
The last light of day spilled across the earth, casting broken, mottled shadows.
When she lifted her head, towering ancient trees intertwined overhead, their bare branches cutting the sky into jagged fragments.
The air had turned damp and cold.
There was a smell of wet soil mixed with rotting leaves, and from somewhere far away came the cries of unknown birds—yet the sound faded quickly into the wind, along with the wind's own mournful sigh.
The forest was unnaturally silent.
Kahyasi felt every hair on her body stand on end.
Her entire being went rigid.
"W-What is this?"
Weren't they in the middle of a race?
Where was this?
Had Xingyun Liuge's field really transformed the entire course itself?
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 178)
Zenless Zone Zero: I'm a Doctor, Not a Bangboo (Chapter 165)
Ben Tennyson Wants to Join the Justice League ( 126 )
TYPE-MOON: Redemption Beginning with the Holy Grail War (Chapter110)
Yu-Gi-Oh! — Transmigrated into the White Dragon Girl (Chapter220)
"Is this chat group even serious?" (Chapter125)
I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (Chapter250)
Can Playing Games Save the World? 65
Crossover Anime Multiverse: The Demon Hunter of an Unnatural World 77
From Junkman to Wasteland 66
Weekly Refresh of Overpowered 31
I'm Grinding Proficiency Like 46
From Kiana, Lord Ravager, Onwa 220
Honkai: Is This Still the Prev 42
Elf: My Starter Pokémon Is Inc 65
Warhammer: My Primarch Is Remi 185
From Demon Slayer to Grand Ass Volume2/20
The Way the Umamusume Look at 68
Uma Musume, but My Cheat Power 248
Naruto: Weaving the Future, Be 65
Zenless Zone Zero, but Kamen R 76
Multiverse Crossover: The Perf 66
My Cyberpsycho Girlfriend 65
Uma Musume: The Dark Trainer 230
Uma Musume: A Calamity Born fr 154
I, a Reincarnation-Loop Player Volume4/40
The Violent Girl Group Is Beat 125
Uma Musume: The Horse Girl Who 67
Uma Musume: From Beginner 145
Becoming a Horse Girl, I Will 85
Uma Musume: I Want All 120
I Can Copy Unique Skills 115
Summoning an Evil God, but the 75
Supernatural Multiverse 110
My Harem Is Indescribable 100
Jujutsu Kaisen: Heroic Spirit 105
"I'm just a Valkyrie passing through." 67
Uma Musume: Today Is Another Romantic Battlefield 105
Still playing traditional Honk 80
The Most Filial Son Under Heav 85
What Should I Do After Switchi - Volume2/3
Reincarnated as a Demon, Skill 78
Hell-Difficulty Dungeon? 55
Transmigrated as Sukuna 80
Checking In in Demon Slayer 85
The Reincarnating Trainer of Tracen Academy 100
I Refuse to Become a Heroic 85
My Best Friend Into a Slime? 80
A Saiyan Stands Above Marvel 90
What Do You Mean by Using a Lab Mod to Be the Hero? 75
Tanya Starts from Re:Zero 80
Why did they assign me to Uma 75
MYGO Beauties 70
DanMachi: Emiya the Giant Hero 70
The Gacha Merchant Who Started 80
Honkai's Otherworld? Wait—Who Are You People?! 80
Emiya Shirou, Determined to Slay Every Curse and Evil Spirit 57
The Uma Musume Who Became 55
I'm Definitely Not the King of 60
After Maxing Out Every Class 45
Naruto: I'm Konoha's Local Men 35
Honkai: World Modulation Mode 34
I, the Elden Sword Saint 27
Dio Brando Is Challenging FGO 24
No One Knows Pokémon Better 18
I, Sakazuki, Won't Go Down Tha 20
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