Chapter 306: Only One Year Left—I’ll Become a Legendary Uma Musume! 2 [250]

Gate five—or rather, gate five in a ten-runner field.

Among Runaway Umamusume, there were a lot of unwritten sayings, and one that Gotham Song agreed with deeply was this: for any field size, the two gate positions at exactly half the number of runners were the best gates in the race for Runaway.

A little hard to understand, right?

Simply put, if a race had sixteen Umamusume in it, then gates eight and nine would be the best possible draws for Runaway.

Of course, if it was an odd-numbered field like fifteen, then the answer was even easier.

Gate eight—the exact median—would be the best gate for Runaway.

So why were gates five and six the best in this race?

Because a debut race was basically always run with ten Umamusume per field!

And Runaway had always been the style with the highest debut success rate. Even factoring in some little fillies who lacked the stamina to complete a normal race, Runaway was still the most suitable style for debuting successfully. The highest debut success rate, full stop!

The reason was simple too: with only ten runners, and all of them inexperienced, as long as your stamina and speed were enough to carry you through the whole race, you really would not run into any serious obstacles!

Especially when you were breaking into Runaway from one of its golden gate positions.

So then, why was a gate near the middle the golden draw for Runaway? Under normal thinking, shouldn’t the gate nearest the inside rail be the best possible draw for Runaway?

After all, for the vast majority of Runaway Umamusume, stamina was the greatest test. Only by seizing the innermost part of the track could they minimize the drain on their stamina and thus last to the finish and win, right?

But first of all—yes, the inside really was the most energy-efficient line, but!

It was also the hardest place to run.

For Runaway Umamusume, the race required maintaining a very high speed throughout. Which meant that if anything went wrong, and something sudden happened near the rail on that narrowest inside line, it would absolutely become the sort of thing people remembered about the race. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦

And besides...

If you were a Runaway Umamusume, then the first prerequisite for using the Runaway style in a race was...

That you had the stamina and speed to complete the race in the first place. Not that you needed to cling to the very inside line just to survive it, right?!

So in terms of both stamina and actual track conditions, the innermost line was not truly the most advantageous lane for Runaway. A middle gate was different.

It not only gave you a good angle for breaking free of congestion at the start, but also left you plenty of room, if necessary, to make a desperate surge from the far outside.

More importantly, once you broke clear cleanly, you could still cut inward afterward and claim a line closer to the rail, where the stamina drain was lower. Under those circumstances, of course a gate near the middle was the golden draw for a Runaway Umamusume.

So then—what terrifying thing would happen if an Umamusume who was already overpowered for this race drew the perfect gate for herself?

Simply put, the result was decided before the race even began. The race itself was nothing more than acting out the process!

A perfect break.

At the very instant the gate lights changed—even before the gate doors had fully finished swinging open to either side!

Equinox had already become an arrow loosed from the string, a streak of black and white that, in no more than a single breath, turned into a meteor before everyone’s eyes.

By the time her figure had truly started running, the other Umamusume were only just bursting out of the gates behind her, as if arriving late.

That was not to say the others had broken poorly—certainly not as badly as Gotham Song had deliberately done in the past when she wanted to get out late.

It was simply...

Simply that Equinox was too fast. Far, far too fast!

So fast she tore forward like wind and thunder, leaving behind nothing but a roaring tidal wave of shock!

No one could catch her steps. No one!

Those six hundred meters before the bend became something the other nine Umamusume in this race would never forget for the rest of their lives. If they looked back on this debut race years from now, perhaps they would remember only one thing:

They were running desperately. Desperately!

And yet—even running desperately, they could not catch the Umamusume ahead of them. They could not bring even the slightest threat, even the smallest hindrance, to bear against her!

Resentment? Misery? Pain? The desire to tear their opponent apart?

None of those alone.

Faced with a start defined by such an overwhelming gap, every emotion mixed together into one. Every trace of unwillingness was trampled to pieces beneath Equinox’s powerful, untouchable strides—strides they could neither invade nor chase down.

In that instant, the nine different runners all shared the same emotion.

Or rather, what remained after their distress had been crushed to pieces.

The very first thing Equinox made her opponents feel was...

Numbness.

Complete, utter numbness. A numbness so deep they no longer even knew how to chase her—or worse, no longer wanted to, because in the depths of their hearts they already believed they could never catch her!

It was too terrifying.

This was never an opponent we were supposed to be able to beat at all...

This was the Umamusume trained by that legend—the one most likely to become a new legend herself!

Equinox’s charge continued. She was like an army of thousands by herself—and there was no one who could chase her, and no one who could stop her!

Everyone in the racecourse could do nothing but watch the Umamusume at the very front. Even those who had come to cheer for other runners had their eyes stolen away by Equinox for that brief stretch. She was simply too fast, too astonishing. Compared to the shock Gotham Song herself had once delivered at the opening of a race, this was not weaker by much at all.

After all, when Gotham Song had debuted—back in that grass debut race in America that so many people would later watch again and again—she had not displayed this kind of outright domination.

The first bend was right in front of her, and Equinox did not even have the desire to look back at her opponents. She remembered clearly what Gotham Song had told her.

If you believe you can beat every opponent, then run Runaway without hesitation. There is no need to look back, no need to watch the other Umamusume.

The ones who should be watching are them.

And as for you, Equinox—the Umamusume destined to seize victory on the track—you only need to run. You only need to prove your strength.

"IT’S UNBELIEVABLE! BEFORE THE BEND—NO, PRACTICALLY FROM THE BREAK ITSELF—EQUINOX SEEMS TO HAVE CRUSHED THE FIGHTING SPIRIT OF EVERY LAST OPPONENT! THIS IS SIMPLY IMPOSSIBLE TO BELIEVE! IT’S FAR TOO INSANE, ISN’T IT?!"

"BUT WHO COULD HAVE IMAGINED THAT EVEN IN A SITUATION LIKE THIS—EVEN AT THIS SPEED, EVEN WITH VICTORY ALREADY ALL BUT SECURED—EQUINOX IS STILL ACCELERATING?!"

"MY GOD, WHERE IS HER LIMIT?!!!"

There was no such thing as Equinox’s speed easing off. Entering the bend, she even brought out the technique Gotham Song had taught her—the one she had drilled until it was almost instinct, the savage technique that let her take the corner without slowing at all, the kind of thing other Umamusume could never learn even if they wanted to.

So what exactly did Equinox’s performance in this race look like?

Unconcealed brilliance.

She made no attempt to hide her technique or her raw specs for the sake of strategy or tactics. Instead, she displayed with savage abandon every single thing that future opponents might study, target, or guard against.

Her despair-inducing Runaway. Her despair-inducing speed. Her despair-inducing break from the gate and cornering...

Yes, enough to induce despair. At that level of Runaway and that level of speed, how was it something people could simply decide to target and then successfully target at all?!

The premise of targeting an Umamusume was that you first had to qualify to sit at the same table as her. Otherwise...

Imagine that one day, someone discovered Gotham Song’s weakness, then told a surefire method to a little filly who had only just debuted, and said:

You—go take down Gotham Song.

Even thinking about it, something that absurd could never possibly be carried out, right?!

So looked at from the other direction, maybe Equinox was not simply showing the rash sharpness of youth at all.

Maybe, on the contrary, it was a savage declaration that she simply did not care about any opponent.

If you can do it, then by all means come and conquer me.

I’ll be right here waiting for you. If you truly have the courage to believe you can beat me, then come at me with everything you’ve got.

That kind of boldness. That kind of wild confidence that did not care in the slightest whether her opponents could trouble her at all.

Or perhaps, deep down, Equinox simply believed that no opponent could ever cause her much trouble to begin with.

Gotham Song watched the race in silence the whole time, quietly observing amid the cheers of all the fans around her.

Equinox shot out of the bend like lightning.

And her opponents were only just beginning to enter it!

A three-hundred-meter corner, and then nine hundred meters of wide-open straightaway!

Equinox’s speed continued to climb little by little, until only at the final five hundred meters did it seem to reach its maximum and settle into a stable pace. And at that point, the Umamusume behind her had no choice but to make the most direct decision possible.

Which was to give everything they had...

To fight for second place.

And really, that made sense.

How wide had the gap between them and Equinox become?

About two hundred meters.

Equinox’s charge continued. In the end, the others managed to close the distance a little once their final spurts kicked in, but it did not matter much. Because when Equinox crossed the finish line, there was a very specific term for the margin by which she had won.

The lead Equinox took in this race was...

A full Twilight Song gap.

A Twilight Song gap—honestly, even that ranking term left Gotham Song feeling both amused and helpless. It came from the fact that after nearly every race, Twilight Song would leave her opponents about a hundred meters behind, so among Runaway Umamusume, a special term like that had come into being.

It was used specifically to refer to a Runaway Umamusume leading the second-place runner by a full hundred meters.

At first, it had only been something people said privately.

But now, it seemed that even many official magazines had started treating it as a recognized term, occasionally using phrases like "a Twilight Song gap" to describe certain races.

Thankfully, Runaway Umamusume were rare to begin with, and Umamusume capable of putting more than a hundred meters between themselves and the field in an actual race were so rare they were nearly nonexistent. Otherwise, if "Twilight Song gap" started flying around everywhere all the time, Gotham Song felt she would probably be so embarrassed she’d want to crawl straight into a crack in the ground.

It was way too embarrassing!

Still, there really had not been any surprises at all in Equinox’s debut race.

Gotham Song looked out toward Equinox standing silently near the finish in the distance, then curled her lips helplessly.

Her little charge still seemed to be standing there blankly, as if she had not quite come back to herself yet... even though the race was already over. The last Umamusume in the field was practically about to cross the finish line.

The next part Equinox should be doing now...

Was probably the Winner’s Concert.

Eh—wait, the Winner’s Concert?

Gotham Song awkwardly hunched her shoulders, then suddenly remembered the thing she had been forgetting all this time.

Normally, Trainers managed their own Umamusume’s participation in the Winner’s Concert. If the Trainer was a woman, then quite often she would even personally guide it herself—

And in recent years, even male Trainers had increasingly started learning dance and guiding their Umamusume for the Winner’s Concert too.

And if they did not want to guide it personally, then they could hire a dance instructor, or ask a senior for help with preparing the Winner’s Concert.

But!

That was only under normal circumstances.

So for Eternal Beat, what kind of ecosystem did the Winner’s Concert exist in?

Uh, simply put—

It didn’t.

Gentildonna did go on the Winner’s Concert stage, yes.

But Gentildonna practiced it by herself. She had never told Gotham Song about it, and Gotham Song herself had no intention of going on a Winner’s Concert stage a second time...

All right—put more simply and directly, Gotham Song had completely forgotten that Equinox would also have a Winner’s Concert, AAAAAAH.

Gotham Song went completely numb. She braced both hands on the railing and stared out at the distant blue sky.

Did this count as her leading her own charge astray and sending her down the path of not doing Winner’s Concerts too...?

Gotham Song did not dare think about that. She could only force her attention back to the matter at hand and come up with some kind of solution for the current situation.

A-anyway, once they got backstage later, she should ask little Equinox, right?

Ask her what kind of attitude she had toward the Winner’s Concert, mm...

As if making some tremendous decision, Gotham Song clenched a fist.

At worst, if her charge wanted to do it, then she’d just stake her life to accompany her and see whether she could cram enough into one or two hours to get little Equinox ready at top speed.

And if even that kind of crash course didn’t work, then wouldn’t she have no choice but to go onstage herself and dance in Equinox’s place?

No way, not that!

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T/N: hmmm winners live or winners concert.