As the award controversy gradually died down, the JRA announced the name of this year's recipient of the JRA Special Award after all the annual honors had been finalized—
Light Dyna!
At the very least, that was enough to quiet the voices still complaining about why Dyna had been left out of the regular annual awards. Still, the fact that this award had not even been included in the main JRA ceremony felt baffling.
No matter how one looked at it, though, Dyna had finally received the first award of her Horse Girl career.
And a "Special Award" truly lived up to its name. It was not something handed out every year; it was only considered when a competitor's achievements had been unusual enough to fall outside the normal categories. In that light, it was not so strange that it had been excluded from the standard process.
The New Year holiday vanished in the blink of an eye, and their lazy days quickly came to an end. The expanded shop reopened for business once more.
Dyna hired several pastry chefs and replaced all the bakery's old machines with new ones, massively increasing production capacity.
And thanks to her partnership with Kalen-chan, fans from all over the country had started placing orders through her livestream. Many of them, after trying the products, immediately wanted to buy again. Little by little, the bakery's reputation spread farther and farther.
As for Dyna herself, being Tracen's wildest free-range Horse Girl came with one major perk: even if she skipped training entirely, no one could really say much about it. Still, if she was caught wandering around campus during class hours by President Rudolf, she herself might be fine—but poor Trainer Wada would definitely be the one made to suffer for it.
After all, Rudolf was one of the few people who knew that, technically speaking, Dyna more or less counted as part of Wada's team. Even if she said nothing outright, she would probably still put a bit of pressure on him.
So Dyna decided that, at the very least, she should go check in with Wada today.
As expected, Kireijun was in the middle of extra training. Two weeks earlier, at the Tokyo Daishoten, she had suffered a crushing defeat, ending the year with zero graded wins.
Faced with that result, both Kireijun and Wada had reflected deeply. Perhaps, they concluded, Grandma's finishing kick had simply been too slow and too soft. And so they decided to adopt a new training method—one apparently inspired by a senior's spirit and grandly named "Fighting Spirit Infusion."
Before Dyna's figure appeared, what arrived first in Wada's section of the training grounds was the shrill, urgent blast of a whistle, followed by Kireijun herself barreling toward her, desperately trying to hold a sprinting form together.
Why did Grandma look like she was being chased by death?
Then Dyna spotted Wada behind her, riding what seemed to be every trainer's standard-issue little motor scooter. He kept the scooter just half a body length behind Kireijun, and every time the older Horse Girl's form loosened, he blew the whistle to force another burst of acceleration.
The moment Dyna took in the scene, her legs nearly developed minds of their own and tried to flee with the rest of her body attached.
Once Kireijun thundered past Dyna and completed one full sprint, Wada circled back. Seeing Dyna there, he looked pleasantly surprised.
"Miss Dyna, long time no see. As it happens, you also have a tendency to come alive late in the sprint and go soft at the finish, and Kireijun's working on exactly that right now. Want to join in? Or would you rather I make a separate plan just for you?"
"Um… has Mr. Wada always been like this…?"
Dyna was honestly a little afraid of what she was seeing. By all common sense, a Central trainer should not be using this kind of method on Horse Girls, right? It was not exactly against the rules, but it still looked a little…
Her ears drooped over her head, and she swallowed.
Even so, after wavering for a moment, she ultimately chose to join Kireijun and experience this bizarre method for herself—this so-called infusion of fighting spirit.
"But if I'm training two Horse Girls at once, whistle signals will interfere with each other. Let me see if there's a better cue…"
Taking that into consideration, Wada sat on his scooter and began thinking.
Then, before Dyna's horrified eyes, Trainer Wada pulled out a short riding crop from the scooter's storage compartment and snapped it through the air several times. The sharp cracks it made were piercing enough that just hearing them conveyed force.
Dyna shrank on reflex at the sound, while Kireijun barely reacted at all, as though she were already used to it.
This thing is legal for Horse Girl training?! Let me go—I'm reporting this to the President!
"Ah, don't worry. I filed this method with the President in advance. It won't hurt a Horse Girl. It only looks scary. The President herself once said that, as a targeted training method, it's one of the most effective."
Only looks scary?
Dyna stared at the crop, privately doubting every word of that explanation. But at this point, she had no choice except to believe him.
As Wada urged Dyna and Kireijun into a shoulder-to-shoulder chase run, the phantom pain of being whipped in her dreams returned with startling vividness.
Wada still followed behind the Horse Girls, but now there was a difference: the moment one of them slackened, he could precisely snap the crop through the air beside her. Out of the corner of her eye, Dyna could even glimpse the very tip of it slicing across her vision.
Driven on by that sound at her back, Dyna ran as though her life depended on it. It felt like instinct engraved in this body itself—whenever she heard that sound, she could not stop herself from accelerating.
There was nothing soft or mushy about her finishing kick now. The wind rushing past her ears was already loud enough to nearly swallow the sound of Wada's crop, and then, at that exact moment, Wada put even more force into his wrist and cracked it again with explosive violence.
For Dyna, who was experiencing this nightmare of a training method for the first time, the result was astonishing: by the end of it, she felt as though even if Gold Ship herself lay across the turf, dead center in her path, nothing would stop her from trampling straight over her and continuing the sprint.
Still, seeing that Kireijun only needed the faintest whisper of air to respond and accelerate—while also using subtle movements to create tactical space—Dyna could not help but suspect that Kireijun and Wada simply had a much deeper rapport.
That puzzled her greatly, but Kireijun's answer was completely unexpected.
"My trainer uses the crop a lot in daily training. I'm used to it now."
So this kind of training could accumulate bit by bit, conditioning you to make the sharpest possible response to the slightest cue?
In that case, Kireijun's real problem still lay in the softness of her finishing kick. Her reactions, at least, were already incredibly sharp.
"So because my trainer varies the timing and style of the crop, I can tell what kind of movement he wants. He says his goal is for me to hear the changes in airflow caused by another Horse Girl's movements during an actual race, and respond the same way I do now."
That explanation made Dyna relax a little.
So the crop was not really meant to drive them on with pain—
At least, not exactly.
Of course, Kireijun was fundamentally a pace-pressing Horse Girl, so she had the conditions necessary to catch the sound of movements from behind her. Dyna, on the other hand, did not.
A closer could only use something like this once she had already come through on the outside and needed to guard against someone coming up from behind on the final stretch. For most of the race, her back was just open air.
Wada, however, seemed extremely satisfied with the training's results. Stopping the scooter, he came over to the two Horse Girls.
"Dyna's sensitivity in training is really impressive. She reached in one session what took Kireijun over a year to build."
"And I can tell now—your finishing kick needs pressure at your back before it can explode sharply. Otherwise, it goes soft as cotton candy. This kind of training should strengthen your competitiveness on the final straight."
"Yeah, I can feel that too! But I don't want to go through that again. It was terrifying…"
Dyna slapped both cheeks with her palms. Once had been enough. She only needed to remember the sound of that whipping air. That was already enough.
Wada nodded.
"If it works, that's what matters. Mm… have you decided what race you want to enter next? If you're aiming for the Classic Triple Crown, my recommendation would be the Yayoi Sho Deep Impact Memorial. Of course, going straight to the Satsuki Sho would also be perfectly fine."
"Well… I haven't decided yet. A prep race isn't absolutely necessary for me."
Dyna smiled faintly. After all, the entry rights were in her own hands, and it was not even the end of January yet. She still had plenty of time to think.
In the hazy fragments of her memory, she felt sure that something major had happened to Gold Master during her Classic year. But her recollection was too broken, and back when she had first watched the series, she had known embarrassingly little about the real-life horses anyway. She had spent most of her time just wanting to cuddle the Horse Girls instead.
The only thing she clearly remembered was that before the Satsuki Sho, Gold Master had run in the G2 Spring Stakes…
—
[Trainer Wada's training has produced excellent results!]
[Skill set expanded!]
[True Fighting Spirit Infusion!]: When locked in competition at the finish, speed increases. (Value: 0.45)
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 115)
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 (Chapter116)
"Is this chat group even serious?" (Chapter82)
I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (Chapter144)
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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 118
Honkai: Is This Still the Prev 42
Elf: My Starter Pokémon Is Inc 65
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From Demon Slayer to Grand Ass 80
The Way the Umamusume Look at 68
Uma Musume, but My Cheat Power 112
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 95
Uma Musume: A Calamity Born fr 89
I, a Reincarnation-Loop Player 53
The Violent Girl Group Is Beat 61
Uma Musume: The Horse Girl Who 65
Uma Musume: From Beginner 61
Becoming a Horse Girl, I Will 37
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