At Tracen, Skilled at Doing Time

[Festival Girl]: Die once? Is it really that scary?

[Invincible Lord of Seaside]: It must be a lie. How could a dead person talk?

[Uma Musume Fan]: I really did die, but the thought of having to see such a sweet scene brought my soul back to life. I'm in great shape now. Very great shape. Especially Special—

[Side-Eyeing Lewd Manga Teacher]: She died from the sweetness again. (Sad)

[Hates Flashes and Manic Guys]: You two, what the hell are you talking about?

"Like this... it doesn't feel bad."

Outside the screen, Silence Suzuka looked shyly at herself on the screen, as well as at Zhou Yuang standing opposite her.

This Trainer really is an outstanding Trainer.

She lowered her head and glanced at the densely packed information. She felt that even if she were allowed to train independently, she could still win a few major prizes.

If I met him in real life... perhaps I really would fall for him just like that version of me did.

A Front Runner who could not outrun the Trainer who helped her become one.

But that was fine, too.

She watched the scene on the screen expectantly.

Will my Trainer in real life be this Trainer?

Chapter Eighteen: Never Forgetting the Dream

Will my Trainer in real life be this Trainer?

The Livestream Room was filled with laughter and cheer.

Zhou Yuang and Silence Suzuka looked at each other and smiled as well.

Only Special Week, standing to the side, stared blankly at the Trainer and Uma Musume before her.

The joy between people could not be shared. All she felt was noise.

Perhaps she should not be standing here. She should be hiding under a car.

"Special Week."

At that moment, Zhou Yuang turned toward Special Week.

"Ah, yes!"

Special Week immediately nodded. She looked at Zhou Yuang nervously, then secretly glanced at Silence Suzuka.

At that moment, Silence Suzuka stood beside Zhou Yuang, quiet and elegant.

Yet she had moved even closer to him, as if she had always belonged at his side.

She and her Trainer were inseparable.

"Silence Suzuka is back, too, so let's go celebrate."

Zhou Yuang held out his hand toward Special Week.

Silence Suzuka's ears twitched, but she did not stop him.

Her hand was holding Zhou Yuang's other hand.

"Huh? Oh, all right."

Special Week obediently placed her small hand in Zhou Yuang's.

Zhou Yuang then held the hands of both Uma Musume, leading them along by their tiny hands.

One was dazed and at a loss, while the other raised her head with happiness written all over her face.

And so, Zhou Yuang led them away.

[Uma Musume Fan]: Wait! Why are you still holding Special Week's hand?

The Pink-Haired Girl, who had been doing sit-ups in front of the desk, suddenly came back to life.

No matter how she looked at the scene before her, it seemed strange.

Wouldn't it have been enough to hold Silence Suzuka's hand?

Why were you holding Special Week's hand, too?

Were you planning to marry Special Week as well?

Wouldn't that mean...

"Was I supposed to leave Special Week there?"

After he led the two Uma Musume away, the story ended.

Once he returned to the interface, Zhou Yuang saw that the skill Front Runner had been obtained.

Woohoo! I'd wanted to massacre everything with Front Runner in the third year for ages. Too bad it could only be obtained at the Tenno Sho Autumn in the third year in the game.

Otherwise, Training would have no difficulty at all.

[Uma Musume Fan]: Ah, this...

True, it would be bad for a Trainer to abandon an Uma Musume.

But no matter how you looked at it, there seemed to be something wrong with this Uma Musume called Special Week.

Also, didn't you say you were going to marry thirty of them?

You wouldn't happen to...

Hearing Zhou Yuang's forceful declaration, the Uma Musume in the Livestream Room had nothing to say.

It was indeed inappropriate for a Trainer to hold hands with one Uma Musume and then leave with her while abandoning another.

But holding one with each hand and leaving together was somehow... strange.

Still, there was no point calling it strange now.

Because next came the horse-raising phase.

"Trainer, our promise will definitely continue, right?"

Silence Suzuka on the main interface waved toward the screen with a smile.

It was as if the hard years had already passed and they had become an old married couple.

But Training still had to continue. Zhou Yuang quickly clicked through the turns and carried on raising her.

After that, Zhou Yuang's Training went very smoothly.

Silence Suzuka and the Support Cards also performed admirably, and he did not miss any of the rainbow-circle Training sessions.

The races that followed were also effortless massacres of all the random Horses in Training, thanks to the Front Runner skill.

Invincible. What else could he say? Invincible!

After massacring everything in the third year, this Training session was finally coming to an end.

The final Twinkle Series race was about to begin.

Silence Suzuka continued to Front Run all the way. Her commanding lead delighted the Uma Musume in the Livestream Room.

Uma Musume simply loved the feeling of crossing the finish line first.

This Training session could be said to have ended perfectly.

Zhou Yuang selected the skills, then brought this Training session to an end.

On the results screen, there was a racetrack. Silence Suzuka ran while waving toward the screen.

"Trainer, I'm so glad I met you."

Come to think of it, with this camera angle, if it were another Uma Musume...

Zhou Yuang still remembered how, whenever Training ended, the Uma Musume would run past at an extremely close distance.

And some Uma Musume... like Narita Top Road, the new Horse from the game's two-and-a-half-anniversary update.

Because she had such prominent headlights, they swayed constantly in this running scene.

Of course, the other Uma Musume did the same, but Silence Suzuka...

It was enough to look at her legs and her beauty.

"All right, that wraps up this Training session."

Zhou Yuang spoke to everyone in the Livestream Room while continuing on.

After watching this Training session, the Uma Musume had gained a much better understanding of how the game worked.

However, Zhou Yuang had plenty of experience doing time in prison. As for the other Uma Musume... it would probably send their blood pressure soaring.

He continued clicking, and the Factors interface appeared on the screen.

The Three Goddesses had been improved here as well, and the Factor reroll function that had only been added long after launch was now available.

"There's something called Factors here."

One of the most evil mechanics in the game.

It was one of the roots of countless players' suffering.

Uma Musume was a very special game.

In other games, once you pulled a character, you could start training them.

But Uma Musume was different. The character you pulled was only a seed.

Once you had one, you could train that Uma Musume.

Every Uma Musume completed through Training then went directly into a warehouse called the Hall of Fame.

In other words, she was finalized. Whenever you wanted to start the game afterward, you had to continue training from that initial embryo.

And because every result was affected by all sorts of probabilities along the way, it was like a Roguelike game. You could easily run into situations where everything went wrong and you had no choice but to start over.

To train better Uma Musume, the game therefore included a system for stacking the results of previous Training sessions.

Factors were the feature responsible for giving players at least a slight sense of accumulation within that system.

Every time an Uma Musume completed Training, Factors were attached to the completed character.

Blue, red, and green were the basic Factors, while white Factors were additional ones.

Blue represented attributes, red represented track aptitude, green represented the character's ultimate skill, and white represented skills, attributes, and all sorts of miscellaneous things.

Blue Factors were the most important. One-star blue Factors gave one point in the corresponding attribute, two-star ones gave twelve points, and three-star blue Factors gave twenty-one points in the corresponding attribute.

One-star blue Factors appeared very frequently, two-star ones appeared rarely, and three-star blue Factors had only a single-digit chance of appearing.

When training, people generally chose nine-blue parent Horses—that is, both parent Horses used to produce that parent Horse had three-star blue Factors.

They selected two nine-blue parent Horses for Training, which provided eighteen blue Factors at the start.

Those eighteen blue Factors provided a full 126 points of starting attribute bonuses.

Then, every April, Factors were inherited again, adding the parent Horses' Factors and giving you more attributes.

Raising a Horse with eighteen blue Factors was basic practice. Without them, things became very painful.

Blue Factors were only the foundation. You also had to farm red aptitude Factors.

White Factors, meanwhile, were essential for the experts trying to optimize important Horses.

So it was not only the Horses that needed optimizing; the parent Horses had to be optimized, too.

Whenever a Champions Meeting began, some casual players would repeatedly optimize a batch of Horses they could use to muddle through.

The experts, on the other hand, first kept farming parent Horses, then used the parent Horses they obtained to train their Champions Meeting Horses.

In short, it was an absolute prison sentence.

After Zhou Yuang explained things to the Uma Musume, one of them immediately spoke up.

[Tracen Version Higuchi Madoka]: Isn't this system a little too much?

Are they idiots? Who came up with this prison-sentence mechanic?

This meant that luck would gradually widen the gap in the players' experiences.