Three years passed.
At the URA Finals, Mejiro McQueen gritted her teeth as she stared at the timer.
She had lost.
It was a bitter pill to swallow.
But this was reality.
At the start of this simulation cycle, her grueling training had secured an incredibly beautiful opening streak. She even captured the undefeated Triple Crown.
However, by the third year, her condition plummeted.
She realized too late that her relentless, high-intensity training had broken her body. Her once-stellar attributes bled away like water through a sieve.
She spent the majority of her third year trying to recover from illnesses.
But her health never improved. Instead, with every race she pushed through, her condition only worsened.
The silver lining was that she could still run.
The tragedy was that her stats plummeted from a board of S-ranks in her second year down to straight A's. Her Stamina and Power even dropped to a measly B-rank.
Because of this, she lost all three of her major races in her third year.
She barely managed to scrape her way into the prestigious URA Finals. Once there, she failed to even place in the top three.
[Current Simulation Cycle Complete]
A synthesized voice echoed in her ears. A moment later, her vision blurred, and her consciousness snapped back to the real world.
Staring blankly at her computer monitor, she felt entirely disoriented. The sudden shift in reality was jarring.
She quickly steadied her breathing and calmed her emotions.
Three years of high-intensity training, grueling race schedules, and the sheer torment of physical illness had forged her mind into steel.
Even though she had been the only living soul in that world, those three years of time and effort were incredibly real.
She clicked open the character card of her completed simulation run.
[Mejiro McQueen]
[Speed: A | Stamina: B+ | Power: B+ | Guts: A+ | Intelligence: S]
[Zone: Unawakened]
[Skills: Betting on the Strongest Name (Iridescent), Fugitive (Gold), Pioneer (Gold), Tactician (Gold), Arc Maestro (Gold), Concentration (White), Sprint (White), Vanguard (White)...]
"If this were the game, this build would be complete trash," McQueen muttered calmly.
But after three years of physical simulation, she understood the massive gulf between the game and reality.
The simulation might look like the game, but its foundations were strictly rooted in real-world physics and biological limits.
In the game, attributes easily broke past the SS-rank ceiling, reaching all the way up to UB-rank.
Yet, to win the URA Finals in the simulation, a runner only needed a single SS-rank attribute. With that, they could break the 1000-meter record in under 45 seconds.
If a real Uma Musume somehow reached UB-rank stats, she couldn't even fathom what kind of terrifying monster they would be.
She estimated that in reality, pushing all stats to the SS-rank was the absolute biological ceiling for the species.
Anything beyond that boundary wouldn't be an Uma Musume anymore. They would be a mythical creature like a unicorn.
Judging by the records shown in the anime, very few real-world horse girls ever touched the S-rank threshold.
Even the legendary Silence Suzuka's top speed was around 57 seconds per kilometer. That didn't even come close to the robotic Seiun Sky she had faced in her URA Finals.
Exhausted, McQueen crawled into bed.
While returning to reality cured her physical ailments and granted her the attributes of her simulation card, the mental fatigue of three years had carried over. She desperately needed a deep sleep to recover.
She slept incredibly well. Ever since she developed her injuries in the simulation, her sleep quality had been miserable, often waking up in the middle of the night from phantom pains.
Now, she was completely free from the agony.
After waking up and taking a hot shower, McQueen sat down at her computer with a mug of cheap instant coffee.
Taking a satisfying sip, she clicked into the [Races] tab.
[Would you like to enter 'Mejiro McQueen' in this race?]
Setting her mug down, she decisively clicked yes.
In the blink of an eye, she was teleported to a bustling racecourse.
Her sudden materialization out of thin air somehow failed to draw a single glance.
McQueen looked at the other competitors milling around.
Unlike the simulation, these Uma Musume did not feel like robots. They radiated life and nervous energy.
Then, she spotted someone wearing a familiar black racing uniform. It was the "original" Mejiro McQueen.
Perhaps the system's cloaking effect was still active, because no one, not even her exact duplicate, noticed her standing there.
McQueen looked up at the giant broadcast screen.
The Kikuka Sho?
She was stunned.
She looked back at the original Mejiro McQueen.
Was the system trying to start a riot? Was she sent here specifically to snipe the original's victory?
If that were true, the original McQueen was probably going to cry after this race.
Wait. Maybe this isn't the actual real world?
Shaking her head, she walked toward the starting gates.
The situation was bizarre, but since she was already here, she had zero intention of losing.
She had tasted enough defeat during her third year in the simulation.
She absolutely had to win. To her, victory was the only thing that held any meaning.
As for how losing might affect the "original" Mejiro McQueen? She didn't care in the slightest.
Three years ago, her lingering affection for the game's characters might have made her hesitate.
But to the person she was now, those sentimental feelings were worthless.
She only wanted to win. The moment she stepped onto the turf, she had a single, unyielding objective.
The championship.
"All Uma Musume have entered the gates."
The heavy metal doors slammed shut. The countdown lights flashed.
Three. Two. One.
The 3000-meter Kikuka Sho had begun.
The instant the gates flew open, McQueen launched forward like an arrow released from a tightly drawn bow.
A brilliant light flashed deep within her purple eyes.
[Concentration]. [Pioneer].
Skill activation!
Through her relentless trial and error in the simulation, she had completely mastered the precise timing and physical triggers for her skills.
It felt similar to activating a combat trance in a mecha anime.
When she first learned the skills, she only possessed the "seed" of the ability. Triggering them was entirely based on luck and circumstance.
But now, she could forcefully activate them at will, wielding her skills with lethal precision.
"All runners are off to a clean start! Taking the lead is number three... wait?"
The announcer's voice suddenly choked.
A heavy pause hung over the stadium before he shouted in pure shock. "What is going on here?! I am looking at two Mejiro McQueens on the track!"
The system's cognitive filter finally shattered. The crowd, the racers, and the officials all collectively realized the impossible anomaly tearing down the turf.
McQueen could feel a barrage of bewildered stares burning into her back.
She ignored them completely.
She had no intention of slowing her acceleration before the first corner.
"Number Three! Mejiro McQueen! She is aggressively widening the gap from the rest of the pack! So fast! Is she attempting a Grand Escape tactic?!"
Watching the figure slicing through the wind ahead of them, the rest of the pack fell into absolute confusion.
They didn't even have time to process why there were two McQueens.
Staring at the rapidly shrinking silhouette, they were baffled. Was Number Three completely insane?
Using a Grand Escape tactic in a grueling 3000-meter marathon?
Her stamina would burn out long before the final leg. There was no way the famously calculating Mejiro McQueen would use such a suicidal strategy.
"Number Eleven! The crowd favorite, Mejiro McQueen, is currently holding third place."
The original Mejiro McQueen locked her eyes onto the white figure dominating the front.
This imposter's sudden appearance had completely shattered her racing rhythm!
Who exactly was she?
Why did she look exactly like her, and why was she wearing an alternate-color version of her own racing uniform?!
By this point, the protagonist McQueen had already built a crushing ten-length lead over second place as she approached the first corner.
Her blistering pace finally began to stabilize.
Seeing this, the runners in the back started to pick up their speed.
But this was a 3000-meter endurance test.
No one who qualified for the Kikuka Sho was an amateur. They refused to be baited by her suicidal pacing and maintained their own steady rhythms rather than chasing blindly.
As they exited the first corner, the gap between second place and McQueen had narrowed to four lengths.
The upcoming middle leg was McQueen's biggest weakness.
She hadn't managed to learn many mid-race skills.
It wasn't for lack of options. The Trecen Academy library in the simulation contained a massive, comprehensive catalog of skills she could have studied. Her innate character pool simply made certain skills easier to grasp.
The real problem was time.
Unlike the game, where you simply spent points to buy abilities, the simulation required her to physically comprehend and master the mechanics of each skill through grueling practice.
Her simulation had effectively ended after two years, with her third year lost entirely to illness.
Because of this, her skill repertoire had a massive, glaring blind spot.
However...
This didn't mean her mid-race performance was weaker than the girls running behind her!
The physical attributes of real-world horse girls were lower than she initially calculated. On a pure stat level, she was more than capable of holding her own!
Furthermore, she had a sneaking suspicion that these real-world racers hadn't mastered nearly as many skills as she had.
"The race enters the final corner, and Number Three is still holding the lead!"
"But the pack is closing in fast! Can Number Three maintain her dominance?"
"Number Three's stamina is starting to look dangerously low!"
The moment the announcer's words echoed through the stadium, it happened.
McQueen hit the final bend and violently accelerated. A massive wake of white air pressure exploded behind her!
She had been saving her gold-tier cornering skill specifically for this exact moment.
Propelled by the massive speed boost, she instantly tore open the gap between herself and the pack, tearing through the final corner at a terrifying velocity.
Panic rippled through the runners behind her. The original Mejiro McQueen gritted her teeth and initiated a desperate, full-power sprint to catch up.
They had no idea that exiting the final corner was merely the beginning of the imposter's true strike.
Iridescent Skill Activation!
Unlike the standard unique skills from the mobile game, the newly evolved Iridescent Skills were devastatingly powerful.
The air pressure surrounding McQueen began to boil.
Her body moved so fast it left afterimages on the turf. A brilliant, multicolored aura erupted from her feet, spreading across the track.
A flash of rainbow light blinded the stadium!
The crowd blinked, feeling as though an illusion had just warped reality. When their vision cleared, McQueen had completely abandoned the pack, leaving an impossible distance between them.
"Number Three hits the final straight! This is absolutely incredible! Number Three has completely blown away the competition in the blink of an eye!"
Deafening cheers erupted from the grandstands.
No one knew who this alternate Mejiro McQueen was, or how she bypassed the strict registration audits to enter a Classic-level race.
But in that moment, none of that mattered. The entire stadium was captivated by the sheer majesty of her run.
Up in the VIP viewing box, Symboli Rudolf slowly stood up. She stared at the phantom figure dominating the track, her eyes filled with profound shock and confusion.