[Escape Artist](Trick of the Lead)
[Runner's Pride](Pioneer)
[Runner Straight]
Blue light shimmered, and the air resistance was blasted away by the wave of qi.
Seiun Sky felt the explosion of some power within her body, a confident expression appearing on her face.
'This power... as long as I have this power, I can win too!'
She had obtained the same power as that Demon King.
Even if there was still a gap, she definitely possessed the qualification to contend.
And the Demon King had a fatal weakness.
'You are too arrogant, Demon King. As long as I open up a gap at the start of the race, even you can't catch up from behind!' Seiun Sky thought calmly.
Through countless replays of the Demon King's race records, she had finally found a tactic to defeat her.
That Demon King's fatal weakness was her excessive arrogance!
Not only did she reveal the skills to everyone, but even in races, she chose to stay at the back, insisting on waiting until the race was nearly over to start her sprint. The absolute confidence brought by that powerful strength was the Demon King's fatal weakness!
'This time, I will win!'
Seiun Sky changed her past running style and began sprinting at full power right from the start.
The power of skills gave her the confidence to make a "Great Escape" opening.
The two escape horses behind her watched Seiun Sky, wrapped in waves of qi, their eyes widening. They hadn't expected Seiun Sky's strength to reach this level in just one month.
'Is that the power of skills?'
'Damn it! So fast! She's in a completely different dimension from before.'
The two who hadn't mastered skills yet clearly recognized the gap between them and Seiun Sky.
"Seiun Sky leads alone! She has opened up a huge gap with the pack!" The commentator said excitedly.
Could it be that horse girls who mastered skills truly possessed the qualification to challenge the Demon King?
Seiun Sky's performance today was distinctly different from the past!
The race was only in the latter part of the first section, but Seiun Sky was already three lengths ahead of second place.
In the Betweener (Senkou) group, Tosen Jordan fell behind, looking at Seiun Sky running ahead of the Escape group with an ugly expression.
'That is a skill. Damn it! If only I could master one too...'
The horse girls who could master skills within this month were ultimately a minority. Skill learning was difficult at the entry level, then became easier, and finally hit a bottleneck when advancing skills. So for horse girls like Seiun Sky who completed the entry level, their strength would enter a significant growth period in a short time.
This gave the impression that after mastering skills, one's strength was reborn compared to before!
First, it is worth mentioning:
The Skill Manual compiled by Agnes Tachyon was not exactly the same thing as the skill book Demon King Ship gave her initially. The skill book from Demon King Ship pointed directly to a standard skill. But during her experiments with Manhattan Cafe, Tachyon found that this training plan pointing to a specific skill effect actually deepened the difficulty of training. So, she opened up a new path: she deleted the directional training from the skill book and summarized a brand-new Skill Manual herself.
The advantage of this was that the training intensity was lower, reducing the burden on the horse girl's body. The disadvantage was that one couldn't accurately obtain the desired skill; the acquired skill ended up being completely random.
Although the Skill Manual pointed out various training directions like Speed Skills, Acceleration Skills, and Gating Skills, because this was modified by Tachyon, the accuracy couldn't be guaranteed. So even if one trained according to the directions, the acquired skill might not be the effect desired from the start. However, this also meant the range of skills was no longer limited to the ones in Demon King Ship's book; brand-new skills could potentially be awakened.
Of course, what Demon King Ship saw was:
Through the Skill Manual, these guys seemed to have unlocked the skill pools innate to their characters, allowing them to randomly awaken new skills from within their pools. Sometimes, Demon King Ship suspected that this Skill Manual developed by Tachyon had the blessing of the Three Goddesses behind it. Otherwise, this was going too smoothly.
She felt the Three Goddesses had noticed her plan and were helping behind the scenes to upgrade the world.
For example, Seiun Sky, who had activated skills and was running at the front.
If it were truly random awakening, there was no reason she would coincidentally awaken skills perfectly suited for an Escape runner. Connecting this to the innate skill pools every character had in the system, perhaps real-life horse girls actually had innate skill pools too; they just didn't know how to unlock them before. And the Skill Manual Tachyon developed from the skill book was the key to letting real-life horse girls open their skill pools.
Only this could explain why, despite randomly awakening skills, they always seemed to awaken skills that fit their own running styles perfectly.
'Not bad! Truly not bad! Without using skills, this great one can finally feel a little pressure!' Regarding Seiun Sky's performance, the corners of Demon King Ship's mouth curled up in excitement.
Seiun Sky's stats were probably around A-rank.
But with the stacking of basic skills, the speed she was currently displaying had reached S-rank.
Although there was still a rank difference between her and Demon King Ship, in reality, a difference of one or two ranks in stats wasn't too huge. If one had more experience with the track and faster acceleration, winning against a stronger opponent was definitely not impossible.
Demon King Ship actually had quite a few weaknesses.
And Demon King Ship knew these weaknesses herself.
For example, the mandatory late start at the beginning.
Although this was to ensure the effect of a Glimmer skill, it was indeed a flaw in a race.
However, Demon King Ship was trying her best to overcome this, and had chosen the Chaser running style.
This way, even with a late start, it wouldn't have too much impact on the race as a whole.
Also, although Demon King Ship had Mejiro McQueen's memories and possessed terrifying intuition regarding running styles and handling the track, because she hadn't studied this knowledge much in the past, there was still a certain gap between her and those world-class veterans in handling these matters. She was working hard to learn this; participating in massive numbers of races was precisely to perfect this weakness as quickly as possible and upgrade it into a strength.
Demon King Ship had absolute confidence in her learning ability.
Aside from these...
Demon King Ship herself had no means to be immune to skill effects.
As a "Great Gate Horse," Demon King Ship could actually be "gated" herself. Previously in the other world, the reason she could break through Trêve's gate was that her mental strength was stronger than Trêve's. But even so, she couldn't ignore Trêve's gate from the start. If there hadn't been just Trêve as a gate horse in that race—if several runners had opened gates together—then even Demon King Ship couldn't have immediately broken through the blockade of multiple gate horses.
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