"Damn it!"
Fiddling with the brand-new MacBook she'd just bought, Barbatos felt like cursing out loud.
Should've just bought a Huawei laptop instead. Who knew the damn Apple OS wouldn't support League of Legends?
She opened the browser and started searching for info.
Turns out, to run League, she'd have to install Windows. Following the online tutorial, she began the step-by-step process. Urara had already headed back home.
Her plan for tonight was to try streaming some PC League gameplay, hoping to scrape together enough Blue Essence to buy a few more champions before officially enrolling at Tracen Academy.
Besides that, on the system interface, coin earnings had already started appearing after the entrance re-tests concluded.
She'd initially thought exams wouldn't count towards the system's coin income, since they weren't really competitions, strictly speaking.
But now it seemed any large-scale event, even if not an official race, got factored in.
While the MacBook was busy installing Windows, she pulled up the system interface.
[Ding! Race results being calculated...]
[Total: 16 Ordinary Uma Musume, 16 Standard Uma Musume, 0 Popular Uma Musume. Final Placement: 1st.]
[Calculating...]
[Congratulations! Reward: 1600 coins. Current coins: 1600.]
'With this much, I could buy a B.F. Sword,' she mused, staring at the settlement. She'd assumed coin income would only start after entering the academy and running debut races, so she hadn't looked into the equipment shop's gold store before.
'No idea if the system's equipment shop follows the mobile version's items or the PC version's.'
The items were mostly the same between the two, but there were differences in the details, especially with Boots. In the PC version, you could get a basic pair for 300 gold, but the mobile version's cheapest item cost 500.
The value for money on many small items wasn't great. She wondered if she could just buy five pairs of boots, wear them all at once, and outrun Liu Bei, the damn straw-shoe seller himself.
Opening the Gold Shop, she browsed the items.
She found it was divided into two sections, just like the Champion Shop: PC items and Mobile items. Unlike the Champion Shop, though, both used the same gold currency for purchases, leaving the choice up to her.
However, unique passives with the same name didn't stack, and you could only buy one of each item. So much for her beautiful dream of wearing five boots at once.
She ignored the other items and started comparing the boots between the two shops. Both PC and mobile versions had one thing in common: when it came to cost-effectiveness for movement speed, boots were unbeatable. And the PC version's boots were cheaper than the mobile version's.
'Alright then, I choose you!'
She tapped on the system interface, and a 'Purchase Successful' message popped up.
Barbatos bought a pair of [Boots of Swiftness]—the so-called "Tier 3 Boots"—which provided the most practical movement speed bonus.
However, she bought them from the Mobile shop. The finished [Boots of Swiftness] were not only 100 gold cheaper than the PC version but could also be upgraded a second time.
She spent another 500 gold, upgrading the [Boots of Swiftness] into [Righteous Glory - Boots of Swiftness].
Total cost: 1500 coins. Only a lonely 100 coins remained in her system interface.
A simple purchase had turned her from a nouveau riche spendthrift into a pauper, but it was worth it.
[Righteous Glory - Boots of Swiftness]: Passive - +50 Movement Speed. Slow resistance: 30%. Active - Grants +15% Movement Speed. When moving towards enemy champions, this bonus increases to 75% for 4 seconds.
To be honest, she wasn't sure how much of a boost 50 flat move speed was for her current self, but that last 75% burst of speed was an absolute steal.
Her capabilities had definitely leveled up with this purchase, but future equipment buys would be hard-pressed to match this level of value.
The MacBook was still chugging away installing Windows, the progress bar crawling along at a pathetic pace.
She hopped directly onto the treadmill, eager to test out the new speed boost and see what that +50 move speed actually felt like.
Her body felt lighter without any change in weight, her legs and feet moving with less resistance. As she ran, Barbatos felt her baseline speed had increased by a solid 15%.
Crunching the numbers, that meant her pre-boot speed was probably around 330.
That had to be pretty decent among Uma Musume. If only she had some kind of scouter to check the others' move speeds.
But at 330, there were probably plenty at Tracen Academy faster than her. She could tell just from watching race broadcasts. Against the Popular Uma Musume in those G1 races, even with all her skills activated, she'd be left in the dust, eating her peers' dust.
'If I want to live a carefree life at Tracen Academy, I've still got a long road ahead,' she sighed.
'In a mile race like today's, if the front-runner isn't too strong, I can activate my skills and catch up. But in a long-distance race, even if I exhaust the girls behind me, my skills might run out before I can reach the leader, and I'd end up dead last.'
Her biggest weakness right now was her mediocre base stats. She was entirely reliant on her skills to compete.
She could still show off in short or mile races, but when it came to long distances, forget stamina—the duration of her active skills was a huge problem. Their cooldowns were brutally long, often over ten hours, making it impossible to use them multiple times in a single race.
'I need to get a champion with a passive move speed boost. Miss Fortune and Janna both have passives that increase movement speed; they should be priorities.'
'Miss Fortune costs 3150 Blue Essence. Janna is... 998?'
998? There's no champion priced at 998! It should be 1350.
Running on the treadmill, Barbatos spaced out for a second, puzzled as to why '998' popped into her head. Along with it came a vague phrase like 'feels so good I can't breathe,' which might have been one of Janna's voice lines.
It's been too long since I've played support; I can't really remember Janna's lines anymore.
...
Time flew by, and in the blink of an eye, it was the eve of the new semester.
--+--
T/N: While I am an inexperienced Translator, I have a Patreon! While it may seem empty as of now, webnovel will get 1 Chapter Every Day, and advanced chapters will be uploaded on Patreon.
It may not seem worth it now, but maybe in the future. Who knows!
[email protected]/AspenTL
If you guys wanna check it out.