People at Tracen, Skilled at Going to Jail

Zhou Yuang said that as he spoke, then backhandedly tapped the mobile game icon featuring Special Week, the protagonist of the first season of the anime, as its avatar.

Uma Musume! Launch!

"Today, I'm going to livestream a game. This game is called... Uma Musume: Pretty Derby."

Who likes going to jail, anyway?

Uma Musume: Pretty Derby

Some people said this game could also be translated as "Uma Musume, Pretty Derby."

They were right. Uma Musume was a horse-racing-girl game developed by Cygames.

Players would repeatedly train different Uma Musume, much like in a Roguelike.

They would watch their trained Uma Musume stay up late, gain weight, lose motivation, fail training, lose races, and perform all kinds of blood-pressure-raising antics.

Then they would promptly restart.

For players, the happiest thing was personally raising an excellent Uma Musume.

But to achieve the results they wanted, players had to keep training.

They had to repeatedly cycle through the three years in the Training mode.

For players, it was three years of endless repetition.

Even switching to a different Uma Musume only meant changing cells.

In short, the rewards were few, the blood pressure was high, Cygames would not even allow people to draw lewd fan art, and it tricked players into spending money. This led both players and die-hard fans to say that the game was "one game dragging along four others," advising newcomers not to play it. That was Uma Musume, aaahhhhhhh...

But Zhou Yuang was having a great time playing it.

Because he was an Uma Musume Otaku.

More precisely, he was an Uma Musume Otaku who liked both real horses and Uma Musume.

"'Uma Musume' needs no explanation. 'Pretty' means the racing process is beautiful... probably. 'Derby' refers to the Derby Stallion races held in Derbyshire, the small county where modern speed racing originated."

Zhou Yuang casually explained the term, then opened the game.

When the game opened, everyone saw Tracen Academy appear on the long-screen interface created by the Three Goddesses, along with the familiar Uma Musume living and training there.

Suzuka was surprised to discover that quite a few Uma Musume she knew were in the game, including herself.

"But I'm not some Uma Musume you see everywhere, am I? Why am I in the game?"

Suzuka was not the only one. Some of the other Uma Musume who appeared also discovered themselves in it.

[Tracen Cold-Joke Master]: What's going on with this game? I can see Tracen and Uma Musume I know.

[Invincible Lord of Seaside]: +1

[Festival Girl]: +1

"This game is based on the real Tracen. You play as a newly hired trainer, choose the Uma Musume you want to train, and embark on a three-year career together as her trainer... Oh, by the way, the game has more than seventy turns in total, and each turn lasts half a month."

Zhou Yuang explained as he waited for the game to finish loading. Once it did, everyone saw the empty hall of Tracen Academy.

"It's empty because I've only just started the game. There isn't a single person here."

When some Uma Musume asked why there was not a single Uma Musume there, Zhou Yuang began explaining.

"This game is a fairly traditional Japanese gacha game. If you want characters, you have to pull them from the gacha pool. Fortunately, you get a selector."

Unlike mobile games that gave you a fake initial pull to show you how the gacha worked before handing you a fixed set of characters, here you had to pull each Uma Musume from the gacha pool yourself.

However, each game took quite a long time, and no matter how many characters you had, you could only choose one to train each time. On top of that, you had to fish for Support Cards from the Support Card Gacha Pool to help train the characters you already owned.

Fortunately, when he started, the Three Goddesses had generously given him about ten thousand Jewels as starting funds.

There was also the most important starter tool: a selector ticket.

It let him choose one of the initial three-star characters as his starting character.

"Since this is my first livestream, I won't waste everyone's time. I'll pull from the Support Card Gacha Pool first, then use the selector and start the game."

Zhou Yuang quickly opened the gacha pools, ignored the Uma Musume pool beside it, and selected the Support Card Gacha Pool.

There were also paid gacha pools in the real-world mobile game, and Zhou Yuang could spend the money he earned as a trainer in real life to buy currency and spend it.

A trainer's base salary was decent. On top of that, when the Uma Musume under his care won races, the trainer could receive a small share of the championship prize money as a bonus.

But using money earned from Uma Musume in real life to charge this game and pull other Uma Musume and Support Cards... seemed a little strange.

So Zhou Yuang chose the Support Card Gacha Pool.

"Support Cards are divided into seven types. Five of them are stat cards, corresponding to an Uma Musume's Speed, Stamina, Power, Guts, and Intelligence."

The remaining two types were Friend and Team.

Friend Cards were essential in the early game, while Team Cards would not appear until after version 1.5.

However, according to the Three Goddesses, whether the game received new gacha pools depended on Zhou Yuang's mood.

Looking at the gacha pool filled with launch-era veteran cards, he rubbed his chin.

There were only a few useful cards among the initial ones.

After all, it was a Japanese mobile game. The veterans would eventually be buried in the graveyard of the times.

Still, there was no shortage of powerful cards that could retain their value.

Fine Motion, for example, was still powerful even after more than two years. She had always remained near the top of the Intelligence Card tier list. Like Kitasan Black, the god-tier Speed Card released a month after launch, she was the kind of ultra-value veteran card that could be used until the game shut down.

She was a must-pull in the early game.

There was also Super Creek, a Stamina Card. Since Stamina Cards were not as heavily contested as the other types, she was one of the best Stamina Cards, retaining her throne until a divine card like Stamina McQueen appeared.

However, the early game focused on Intelligence and Speed. You only needed a few simple Speed and Intelligence Cards to get started. As for Friend Cards?

Fortunately, players only had to provide five Support Cards themselves, while the sixth had to be borrowed from someone else.

Each time, you could simply borrow whichever card suited the current version.

"Since I'm the only one playing this game, I'll just pull casually. There's no need to compete with anyone."

Zhou Yuang spoke in a rather smug tone.

The screen quickly filled with some dissatisfied comments.

[Uma Musume Fan]: That's too much! So you're saying only you can play this Uma Musume game? I want to simulate spending three years with Uma Musume too!

Not only did this Uma Musume, whose username looked incredibly degenerate, say that, but the other Uma Musume also showed great interest in trying it.

Forget about training themselves. They might even be able to try training their own idols, upperclassmen, or friends. That alone was enough to pique the interest of many Uma Musume.

"Well, about that..."

Playing Uma Musume? That was like making someone play Dark Souls.

Zhou Yuang watched the indignant comments from certain Uma Musume and wanted to laugh at them.

This game was famous for raising blood pressure.

Some Uma Musume might get so angry after playing that they would seek out the ones they had trained, point at their noses, and demand to know why they were slacking off.

Others might realize how spoiled their own Uma Musume were, lose sleep over it, lie in bed thinking about it, slap themselves a few times, and say they were truly awful people.

"Low blood pressure, huh? Play Uma Musume?"

"After this, I'll ask the Three Goddesses whether they can install the game on every Uma Musume's phone."

Fine. Sharing joy was better than enjoying it alone. Everyone could go to jail together!

But Zhou Yuang's attention was drawn to the enlarged screen.

"Oh, something good came out."

R was a white card, SR was a gold card, and SSR was a rainbow card.

Although the game had only three rarity levels, it often took two hundred pulls to hit pity, and you could still end up with only one SSR.

That SSR might even be one you had exchanged for with the two hundred pity points.

A rainbow label appeared on the album representing the Support Cards.

Zhou Yuang moved the mouse and fast-forwarded immediately.

The card he pulled surprised him. It was a Friend Card.

In other words, it was the secretary to the Chairperson, the one called Hayakawa Tazuna.

The scene seemed to show a new trainer joining Tracen, with Hayakawa Tazuna handing over some work documents.

[Tracen Cold-Joke Master]: Isn't that Miss Hayakawa? And what's going on with this scene?

"By the way, the illustrations on the Support Cards are photos of various events involving the Uma Musume, trainers, and other people at Tracen. But don't worry, there won't be any embarrassing scenes."

Zhou Yuang added that to reassure the Uma Musume watching.

Some Uma Musume who were usually carefree around Tracen all breathed a sigh of relief when they heard that.

They did not want their terrible moments turned into pictures and placed in someone's deck.

Then he continued pulling.

Japanese mobile games perfectly demonstrated the principle of saving for an entire year and spending fifteen minutes pulling.

The initial ten thousand Jewels quickly dwindled by more than half.

It was not as if he had failed to pull any rainbow cards. Aside from Hayakawa's Friend Card, he had also pulled cards like Fine Motion.

Unfortunately, Support Cards in this game needed to be uncapped to be useful. If you did not have enough duplicates, they were not even worth using in a wheelchair deck.

Whales could casually put together a six-SSR deck, while ordinary players could only use SR cards as their backbone.

For a starting lineup, having Fine Motion, the strongest early-game Intelligence Card, was enough. Having Hayakawa as well was even better. After that, as long as you had Speed Cards like Bakushin or Nishino Flower, you could start playing.

After making another casual pull, Zhou Yuang swiped the mouse and switched to the Uma Musume pool.

Everyone immediately saw scenes of various Uma Musume unleashing their unique skills.

The people at Tracen were no strangers to them.

Uma Musume were not merely athletes who competed in races. They were also idols in this world.

Whenever an Uma Musume was about to step onto a G1 track for the first time, Tracen would issue her a Victory Outfit designed specifically for her.

Under the protection of the Three Goddesses, it did not matter how outrageous the outfit was. Instead, it would increase the Uma Musume's strength.

At the same time, Tracen would have the Uma Musume wear her Victory Outfit to film promotional videos with special effects.

The unique-skill animations were those promotional videos.

"There are only three thousand Jewels left, so I'll leave it to fate."

Support Cards were far more important than Uma Musume in this game. Not every Uma Musume could be used in PvP, after all, so powerful equipment was a must-have.

Zhou Yuang lightly tapped the screen, and the animation began. Hayakawa waved toward the screen as she ran down the corridor toward a red door. After she opened it, a grassy racetrack appeared.

At the end of the track stood the Starting Gate. Uma Musume stood inside each closed gate, though only blurry silhouettes could be seen.

Among the cluster of white gates, a few gold gates appeared.

White meant a one-star character, gold meant a two-star character, and the difficult-to-obtain rainbow color meant a three-star character.

This was the wildly unconventional ten-pull system of Uma Musume.

Countless trainers dragged their Jewels over and threw them in, only to watch the Green Demon Hayakawa open the red door and reveal a dull scene with nothing but white and gold gates.

[Supersonic B70]: Miss Hayakawa opens the door, and there's a grassy racetrack behind it?

Suzuka felt that the process was rather amusing and opened the comment panel to send a message.

But when she turned her head and looked at the comments, Suzuka froze.

She saw the ID in front of her own comment. It seemed... strangely eye-catching.

B70?

Was that the name of some kind of missile?

Comparing an Uma Musume to a missile? She supposed they were pretty fast... Hm?