Inside the dorm room.
Toru Mochizuki sat at his desk, expression serious.
Spread out across the tabletop were printouts listing the dates and lineups of several upcoming debut races.
Analyzing race difficulty, confirming the strength of the opposition, allocating tactics… that was the true work of a trainer.
Anyone who could speedrun the exams and become a central trainer in such a short time obviously had more than enough knowledge.
It was just that, for the past few months, his team had come equipped with a fully automatic horse girl who would run off to train and do experimental research on her own without him having to worry.
During these months, Toru Mochizuki had spent his time in the clubroom reading, slacking off, watching Admire Vega's experimental research, and skillfully refusing every strange "potion" she handed him.
Life had been very comfortable.
Now things were different. The team had welcomed a second horse girl, so Toru Mochizuki finally began to prepare in earnest.
That newly joined horse girl was… himself.
"Frankel… I have no idea how strong she is."
"This quest really is getting harder and harder."
He couldn't help but sigh, and there was honest doubt in his tone.
No matter what, his first reaction was: doubt everything.
[Third Profession: Horse Girl]
[Quest 1: Participate in a GI race (0/1)]
[Quest Reward: Increases Horse Girl Middle Distance aptitude and Long Distance aptitude.]
[Quest 2: Win any one Triple Crown (0/3)]
[Quest Reward: Unlocks Domain as a horse girl, strengthens the body of the main body, and unlocks the fourth profession.]
[Quest 3: …Locked]
The quest panel hovering before his eyes was nothing short of terrifying.
What should have been an easy first quest had somehow reached the level of "participate in a GI."
You had to understand: Japan only held a little more than twenty GI turf races per year. That number was pitifully small.
Assume twenty runners per race, then subtract the elite few who ran in multiple GIs. At most, only three to four hundred horse girls a year would ever make it onto a GI stage.
Yet the number of active horse girls in Japan was in the tens of thousands.
The odds were worse than trying to pull an SSR in a gacha game with a single roll.
And on top of that, Quest 2 wasn't "participate in a Triple Crown," it demanded he actually win one.
The rewards, however, were equally outrageous. Not only would he reliably unlock [Domain], he would also strengthen his real body.
A horse girl who continually honed herself could grasp the so-called aura.
Above aura was [Domain], a power that existed only in legend, mastered by only a handful of horse girls in history.
Domain, enhanced physique, a fourth profession unlocked… the difficulty and the reward were, indeed, proportional.
"Thank goodness it doesn't specify which Triple Crown."
That was the one thing that made Toru Mochizuki feel relieved.
[Triple Crown] was not a single series. For rookie horse girls, there were three routes they could challenge: the Classic Triple Crown, the Filly Triple Crown, and the Variant Triple Crown.
The Classic Triple Crown and the Filly Triple Crown were series that could only be challenged in one's debut year or the following year. Each horse girl only got one shot in her life.
Moreover, the races in the Classic and Filly Triple Crowns were scheduled only a week apart, so you could only choose one route.
The Variant Triple Crown was any combination of three wins drawn from those two Triple Crown series.
"In terms of difficulty, the Filly Triple Crown is the easiest."
"Next would be the Classic Triple Crown, which has the highest prestige."
Toru Mochizuki didn't bother trying to draw up detailed plans yet. The rivals who would be running Triple Crowns next year were only just debuting now, or hadn't even debuted.
Rather than think that far ahead, he decided it would be better to first check how strong [Frankel] actually was.
Step one: confirm what running style suited his transformed self as Frankel.
Step two: confirm what distance range best fit Frankel.
After that would come the debut race challenge.
Once he had his "preparation plan" sketched out, Toru Mochizuki pressed [Transform].
In the next instant…
Inside the dorm room, a tall, cold-eyed girl with wine-red hair stood proudly.
Her face was stunning, her limbs long and shapely. Every movement was elegant, and yet she radiated an overwhelming, terrifying presence.
She had the noble air of a scion of a great house, but also the lethal menace of a ferocious beast.
That aura, which fused both qualities, was something no ordinary horse girl could ever possess. It was the aura of a king strong enough to rule everything.
Frankel had descended upon this world.
Her beautiful amber eyes dropped to the materials lying on the desk.
Under that sovereign pressure, there was, faintly, the tiniest hint of… airheadedness.
What she was looking at were the dates and lineups for the upcoming debut races.
The "test my ability and aptitude" thoughts she'd just been having vanished in an instant.
"This is…"
On the first debut race sheet, the red-hot favorite was a horse girl named: Vodka.
The moment she saw the name, Frankel's pupils shrank, then her lips curved into a dangerous smile.
"Alright. This one."
It felt like… she had done a lot of thinking before transforming.
Whatever. She would worry about that after this debut race.
That inexplicable competitiveness, and the surge of fighting spirit that came the moment she saw Vodka's name, made Frankel toss her "preparation plan" aside.
When the sun rises, you forget about yesterday!
A few hours later, at the racecourse.
A buxom girl with bright red twin tails entered dressed in stylish clothes, every inch the refined young lady, blending into the crowd as just another spectator.
She was Daiwa Scarlet, a newly debuted rising star considered a strong contender for next year's Filly Triple Crown.
She was also a fan of Admire Vega, and one of the few horse girls who actually interacted with Vega.
Today, Daiwa Scarlet had come to watch the debut race of the rival she acknowledged: [Vodka].
Normally, debut races were low-grade affairs with only a few hundred people in the stands.
This time, however, the crowd was large enough to require queueing, with nearly a thousand in attendance. That was extremely rare for a debut race.
After all, this race featured a much-talked-about new star, and her opponent: Vodka.
"Vodka's definitely going to win, right?"
"I heard she's really strong, one of the prime candidates for next year's Filly Triple Crown."
"Apparently Admire Vega's favored junior, Daiwa Scarlet, goes back and forth with Vodka in their training races!"
"This debut race is a foregone conclusion. The only question is how many lengths Vodka will win by."
The nearby spectators chatted excitedly.
It was clear the race was drawing a lot of attention.
"Let me see just how much you can win by, Vodka."
While waiting in line, Daiwa Scarlet tilted her head back, looking up at the big board showing the runners for today's race.
[Newcomer Race · 1600 meters]
Aside from Vodka, there were several familiar classmates.
Her eyes ran from top to bottom, and at the very end she found a completely unfamiliar name.
[10th favorite · Frankel]
A short while later.
Inside the starting gates.
In gate six, the black-haired girl with a single ponytail, Vodka, grinned broadly, taking a deep breath as she waited for the final moment.
Most of the other horse girls on the track were focused on, or even wary of, Vodka.
Until…
From the far outside, gate ten, stepped a tall, wine-red-haired girl with a cold, commanding air.
She stood there calmly and arrogantly, every gesture still elegant, her gaze indifferent and icy.
She had both noble bearing and a crushing, terrifying presence that made even Daiwa Scarlet in the stands feel her pupils contract.
That aura, blending those two extremes, was not something an ordinary horse girl could possess.
In that instant, Daiwa Scarlet instinctively felt that the winner of this debut race…
From this moment on, was no longer a foregone conclusion.
"Number ten, horse girl Frankel, has loaded!"
…
Tenth favorite. Gate ten.
Since Frankel had slipped in at the last possible minute, it was only natural she would be the least favored in the field.
Unfortunately for her, she had drawn the far outside stall.
On the track, the wine-red-haired girl who had just entered the gate kept her face expressionless and her eyes fixed on the course ahead.
This was Toru Mochizuki in transformed form, stepping onto the stage of his debut race under the name Frankel.
Frankel's gaze slid sideways, falling on Vodka to her left, and she studied the girl with slightly more focus.
She didn't know the details of horse girls as a whole, but she had at least watched the anime.
Anyone who made it into the main cast was a genius whose name echoed through history. Vodka was one of them. She didn't even need to think about it to know Vodka was incredibly strong.
A demon empress who defied common sense. That was how the anime had once praised Vodka.
With such a great opponent, then why… wasn't she afraid?
In Frankel's heart, there was not even a trace of nervousness. Her huge heart was only beginning to beat a little faster, throbbing in response to the grand stage and the powerful enemy.
Would she…
…win?
Nerves, surprisingly, were nowhere to be found.
It was as if what flowed through her veins was the blood of a king who crushed all enemies beneath her hooves. Even in front of the future demon empress, she did not retreat; she simply grew calmer.
Whatever. She was here now.
She'd just use this race to test her own potential… and Vodka's true strength.
With battle lust in her chest, Frankel quietly turned her own odds of victory into a single, simple symbol: a question mark.
…
At the same time, the announcer's voice rang out from the stand.
"The race countdown begins!"
The gates were about to open.
…
"Huh?"
Vodka, in gate six, froze for a moment in surprise.
Where did this uninvited guest come from?
She distinctly remembered that, at the close of entries, there had only been eight or nine runners. Had this one rushed her application in at the very end?
While every other horse girl's wary gaze was fixed on her, the wine-red-haired girl's eyes were different. Too different. Her gaze was utterly calm, without a ripple.
More than that, the aura pouring off that straight-backed figure was astonishing, like a monster poised to tear everything apart.
Just from her stance alone, you could tell: this one was terrifyingly strong.
"What kind of monster is she…?"
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N/T: Hi everyone, I'm Zuru, an inexperienced translator and non-native English speaker, so if you notice any mistakes in the text, please let me know in the comments so I can fix them. By the way, I have a Patreon. There isn't much there yet, but it would really help me if you could consider joining.
[email protected]/ZuruZ