"We are now watching the GI, 1,600-meter Yasuda Kinen. Eighteen runners in all. What kind of spectacular performance will they bring us today? Thank you to the staff on-site. All runners have entered the gates, so let us wait just a moment!"
As the signal sounded and the gates sprang open, King Halo rushed out with the field.
She had been considering many things, but the instant the race began, King Halo still made the extremely rational choice to use her usual running style. It was not that she could not take a risk and try some other style. But right now, she was very calm, and she understood that doing so would not help her break through her limits.
"Explosive awakening" was a privilege reserved for geniuses and protagonists. King Halo knew very well that she did not possess Special Week's protagonist halo, nor was she a true genius. There was no hidden potential inside her waiting to burst forth. If she failed to remain rational, what awaited her would be the pathetic end of someone without talent. Even a so-called willpower-driven burst required the person to possess that possibility in the first place.
So even though she had more or less finished practicing White McQueen's skill pool, she did not use those abilities in this race. Those skills did not suit her running style. She could indeed use them to seize first place at the start, but what meaning would that have? She did not possess Kitasan Black's talent and could not imitate White McQueen's Flash Skill. Even if she forced herself to imitate it, she would only produce a crude defective copy.
Suppressing the many stray thoughts in her heart, King Halo did seem to have fallen into a state resembling an "inner demon," but in truth that state did not affect her much. At most, it occasionally made her feel irritated and impatient. It could not possibly affect her racing.
"For now, I should focus on the race in front of me."
King Halo calmly watched the opponents ahead of her.
It felt impossible, but if she were overturned by these small fry because she had lost focus, she would truly become a joke.
A dim light flashed through her eyes, and King Halo began to calculate.
King Halo had no intention of fighting for position in the early stage, but her opponents were different. The pressure King Halo brought was simply too great. As a result, the moment the race began, the Leaders and Runners entered an intense struggle. Each of them wanted to claim a more forward position, believing that if they wanted to challenge King Halo, they had to gain enough of an advantage in the early stage.
Within that fierce fight, runner number seven emerged at the front.
"The first to break out is number seven! As expected, King Halo, the favorite, has chosen her usual Betweener running style. She is currently preserving her strength in the middle of the pack. The corner is up ahead..."
In the spectator stands, Nishizaki Ryuya watched the situation with some surprise. "She really is strong. The overall pace of the race has gone up, but King Halo feels so steady. She has kept that same gap the entire way, without the slightest sense of impatience."
The runners near the front were all running with everything they had in order to secure enough of an advantage, yet King Halo seemed to be following behind them with ease. The gap between her and the others had barely changed since the start of the race. While the positions of the other runners kept shifting, King Halo remained near the outside lane like a crouching cheetah, waiting for the moment to hunt.
From a third-person perspective, Nishizaki could only say that King Halo was truly strong.
Moreover, if he had not been paying special attention to King Halo, it would have been very easy for him as a spectator to have his attention drawn by the outstanding performances of the front-runners. One careless moment, and he would have forgotten King Halo entirely. This was undoubtedly the method King Halo had used in the Japanese Derby to rush out at the end and steal the victory. Who would have thought that King Halo, now Japan's strongest, would actually use such a method?
Hiding her presence. Lurking behind. Waiting for the right moment to unleash a fatal strike. A running style like an assassin. Generally speaking, the ones who chose such a running style were weaker competitors whose strength was insufficient. Because they lacked enough raw ability, they desperately needed to hide themselves, letting stronger opponents overlook them and burn themselves out competing with others. Then, when those opponents relaxed, they would launch their one and only attack. The outcome had to be decided in a single strike.
"Spe-chan, watch carefully and learn carefully. If you can learn even thirty percent of King Halo's craft, you'll be able to contend for number one in Japan," Nishizaki said with a sigh. Even without those powerful Flash Skills, the methods King Halo was displaying right now were already enough for some umamusume to spend their whole lives studying.
This was especially true for an umamusume like Special Week, whose fundamentals were poor and who raced entirely on her own talent and instinct. If she could learn even a little from King Halo, it would benefit her for the rest of her life.
"I understand, Trainer. I'll study seriously!"
Special Week widened her eyes and fixed them firmly on King Halo.
Although she could not see through any of this at all, it did not matter if she could not understand it right now. She only had to record it firmly in her mind.
Her Trainer was definitely not wrong.
And King Halo really was strong.
Over on Rigil's side, El Condor Pasa watched King Halo's performance and said unhappily, "What a boring running style."
She truly could not understand why King Halo would study these little tricks. These were clearly things only the weak would study. King Halo was a strong runner who had defeated her. El Condor Pasa felt that King Halo was degrading herself and wasting time. Rather than study such useless little methods, she should refine her own skills and running style. El Condor Pasa believed King Halo should overcome her skill restrictions.
Not study things like this.
"It is true that little methods like hiding one's presence are not exactly grand techniques, but if they can be refined to this degree, they become a truly frightening ability."
Symboli Rudolf turned her head and gave a different view.
Even through her eyes, King Halo's running style was exceptionally perfect among Betweener tactics. Among all the umamusume she had seen use the Betweener style, King Halo was the strongest. Even Symboli Rudolf herself could not reach King Halo's level in this area.
That said, Symboli Rudolf also understood her own situation very well. She liked using the Betweener running style because her skills and ZONE could display stronger effects under that style. But she was not inherently limited to it. Before awakening ZONE, the style she commonly used had been Leader. So even though she admired King Halo's research into running style, she did not think she would lose.
Their circumstances were different from the start.
Still, Symboli Rudolf was rather curious about why King Halo had researched these things. Could it be that King Halo truly could not run in any other field, and that was why she had studied them?
What a pity that would be...
With such a large weakness, challenging the world would be very difficult.
"As expected of King Halo. Isn't she running too perfectly?"
"It feels even more impressive than what the textbooks describe."
Although people did not understand why King Halo had entered this race, that did not stop them from coming to watch for her sake. Some Trainers even had their own umamusume watch carefully and learn carefully. King Halo's running style did have skill-based restrictions, but it had to be said that in the field of Betweener tactics, King Halo's performance was simply too splendid. It was even more perfect than what textbooks taught.
Meanwhile, the camps of King Halo's opponents were studying how to defeat her in the next race.
In the race, King Halo's opponents brought out one hundred and twenty percent of their strength. Aside from a few deadweight entrants who were only there for participation prize money, nearly everyone was full of energy and wanted to run a better performance, to challenge King Halo, who was now Japan's strongest. Because of that, the pace of the race rose to an even higher level.
The race passed 550 meters!
They entered the corner.
This race was 1,600 meters in total. There were only two corners altogether, and those two corners were connected. So although they were technically two corners, once the runners came out of them, what awaited them was the final-stage straight of 500 meters. Because of that, the instant they entered the corner, the runners in the rear began activating skills and chasing forward.
Because the front runners had used burst skills in the early stage, they were in a cooldown period just after entering the corner. The slightly stronger ones could maintain their speed without dropping, but the weaker ones could not even hold their original pace. Their speed began to decline slowly.
At this time, quite a few runners from the rear had already drawn close to those in front. The formation looked as if it had gathered together. Most runners wanted to rush into the inside lane to secure better position. Although the outside lane made it easier to break through, the distance was also longer.
Generally speaking, the inside lane was the fastest.
The outside lane consumed more stamina.
This was especially severe on corners.
Because of that, few people came to fight King Halo for the outside lane she preferred. The outside lane was not only harder to run; even if someone truly wanted to target King Halo and came over to fight her for position, the outside lane was so wide that it could not truly prevent King Halo from breaking through. Doing so was genuinely meaningless.
If one truly wanted to target King Halo, the correct move was not to fight her for position, but to force her into the inside lane in the early stage and block her there. But doing that was extremely difficult. It required several runners to coordinate, which was simply unrealistic. If a single runner wanted to accomplish it alone, they would need extremely high perception and power.
But in this world, how many people could surpass King Halo on the stat panel? One could say there were essentially none. So trying to control King Halo was genuinely difficult to achieve.
As for blocking skills...
In truth, very few people used blocking skills against Betweener runners, unless they were Chasers who specialized in blocking.
But that type of runner was far too rare. If a Chaser specialized in blocking skills, not everyone could be like Gold Ship, mastering blocking skills while also possessing terrifying strength.
Under normal circumstances, if a Chaser also learned blocking skills, their strength simply would not improve enough. They would have no chance of appearing in a GI race.
Moreover, blocking skills truly had little meaning against Betweener runners. Betweener runners preserved their strength in the early stage of the race, and their stamina and skill consumption were low. If you blocked them early, they had not been planning to fight for position anyway. Even if they were blocked, they would just take it, and it would not affect their later sprint. If you waited until their later sprint to block them, there would indeed be some effect, but how much influence it could create was hard to say.
If one wanted to block a Betweener runner, the starting point had to be a Flash-class blocking skill. But Flash-class blocking skills were not common even among GI umamusume. For native umamusume without the system, the number of skills they could learn in a lifetime was limited, let alone Flash Skills. And while blocking skills were powerful, they did nothing to improve the user directly. In practice, very few umamusume would research Flash-class blocking skills.
That was why the Betweener style was genuinely useful for weaker umamusume. It was suitable for initiating blocks, could avoid being targeted by opponents' blocks, and could even hide the runner herself, allowing her to step out of fierce competition and wait for the chance to deliver a killing blow.
The race reached the final corner.
King Halo was alone in the outside lane. Although the gap between her position and first place looked somewhat large, once she began releasing skills, that gap quickly began to shrink. What was most terrifying was that because of the distance, the runners ahead could not sense her presence before she caught up to them.
Very few runners were in the habit of looking back during a race. One could even say that looking back in a race was a bad habit to begin with. It distracted the runner and affected performance. That was also why perception was so important for umamusume. Without strong perception, one was essentially blind in a race, unable to notice the positions of other runners. One could only run one's own race, not knowing how to win or whether an opponent had caught up.
King Halo was using precisely that point. Perception was not true "sight," after all. No matter how powerful one's perception was, it could not observe the entire field. Even perception at Mejiro McQueen's level could only calculate gaps through an opponent's aura. But as long as one learned how to hide one's own aura, even perception at Mejiro McQueen's level could not detect an opponent during the race.
As the Black Assassin, Rice Shower had quite a few insights into techniques for hiding from perception. To Rice Shower, this was a natural talent. But with King Halo's current knowledge, researching such an ability was not difficult. Combined with the advantage of her running style, she truly could become a "ghost" on the racetrack, launching a killing blow while no one noticed her.
Flash Skill activated!
Only then did the nearby runners react.
But King Halo had already completed the overtake.
Her aura leaked only in the instant the skill activated. After the skill finished activating, King Halo's presence remained at a low level. Only when she closed to within less than one length could her opponents react.
And by then, it was already too late.
King Halo completed one overtake after another, like a swift gale. In an instant, she went from the rear of the pack to first place. By this point, her skill had completed its maximum burst. Once the runners ahead had been passed by her, they could forget about catching her again. After all, if she could still be caught after this, would her restricted skill not be useless?
"Across the line!"
"King Halo has surged from tenth place all the way to first, completing an astonishing comeback! This is the strength of Japan's strongest active runner!"
King Halo felt no joy after winning the race.
Because she was still far too weak.
Researching these things was proof of her weakness.
She had to find a new path.
...
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