For one brief instant, Kitasan Black felt as though her heart had stopped.
Third climb, fourth turn, acceleration, final sprint...
Months of day-after-day effort were being poured out in full at this moment, displaying everything she had accumulated. She believed she had not slackened in the slightest.
She knew that her own refusal to slacken was not enough.
Every opponent who had set foot on this track had been giving it their all as well. She had witnessed it before, and she was witnessing it now.
Yet she had not expected that, having only just shaken off the pursuit, she would be pursued again without even a moment to catch her breath.
No, it was no longer pursuit.
She had been caught.
Her gaze involuntarily drifted toward the Outer Lane, where she happened to meet a pair of eyes glowing crimson.
Her heartstrings trembled. Only in the next second did she see clearly that they were Duramente's familiar yet unfamiliar eyes.
Her irises were still the violet-blue gradient that Kitasan Black had always found so distinctive, but the whites around her pupils were densely webbed with vivid red bloodshot veins.
Her blue-violet pupils had contracted into pinprick-sized black holes, as though they would swallow all the light ahead—including Kitasan Black's silhouette.
The bloodshot veins flashed incessantly like bolts of lightning, as if they intended to split everything apart. The air itself seemed to take on the acrid smell of something scorched.
Swept by the light spilling from those eyes, Kitasan Black felt an unprecedented, uncontrollable fear rise within her.
It was not just her eyes.
At this moment, Duramente's entire body carried a familiar yet alien terror that made others recoil at the sight of her.
Her sharp, forceful breaths were so short they sounded like metal scraping against glass,