“Take care.”
Zhou Yu’ang remained completely calm.
After Air Groove left, he picked up the notebook and sat there reading for several minutes.
Once he was sure she would not suddenly return, he locked the drawer containing the box.
Good thing Air Groove ignored the gacha animation.
I need to disguise that box or place it inside another container.
The more secretively something was hidden, the more suspicious it became.
After this, Air Groove would probably join Rudolf in investigating him.
Given their resources and free time…
As long as he continued working at Tracen, they would find him eventually.
No.
As long as a file about him existed, they could discover him.
I should prepare myself to lose some daily jewels.
I also need a plan for protecting myself from whatever the student council might do afterward.
Another issue was even more important.
The broadcasts.
Stopping time during the stream offered tremendous advantages.
The horse girls would not lose an hour or more of class and training merely to watch a masked Trainer serve time inside a game.
They were students.
They also needed to train seriously.
If other Trainers discovered that their horse girls had skipped class or practice to waste time watching an avatar play a prison simulator, Zhou Yu’ang would face more than horse girls trying to dox him.
After questioning their trainees, those Trainers would also learn about the stream.
The ones whose blood pressure had risen would absolutely come looking for a fight.
The kind where victory meant prison and defeat meant hospitalization.
There was another vulnerability.
Time stopped for everyone outside the broadcast.
The streamer and the horse-girl viewers, however, remained active.
“That means that as long as the streamer is somewhere inside Tracen, we can find AT easily during the next broadcast.”
“Air Groove, you and the other viewers can divide the campus into sections and conduct a complete search.”
When Air Groove returned empty-handed with a bitter expression, Rudolf invited her to sit and drink tea again.
Then she proposed a plan that immediately brightened Air Groove’s eyes.
“This only consumes manpower.”
“It’s much easier than visiting the parents of every Trainer, as you suggested earlier, President.”
As expected of the president.
She always thought of solutions others missed.
“However, Air Groove, you shouldn’t be so impatient.”
Seeing how eager her classmate appeared, Rudolf tried to calm her.
“He acts under the banner of the Three Goddesses.”
“Do you truly believe the Three Goddesses would watch silently while a Trainer harmed horse girls?”
Obviously not.
But concern remained concern.
No matter how reasonable Rudolf’s words sounded, Air Groove still felt an unbearable itch in her heart.
She thought for a moment and decided to remain near Silence Suzuka.
I refuse to believe you’ll abandon her.
AT’s treatment of Silence Suzuka had inspired envy in horse girls.
His occasional scumbag declarations, however, made Air Groove grind her teeth.
Even if she could not punish him directly, she needed to prevent him from corrupting Tracen’s atmosphere.
Another horse girl would probably share the same idea.
“Don’t let me catch you.”
“Otherwise… say goodbye to that vulgar dream of yours!”
Air Groove muttered several curses.
At that exact moment, Zhou Yu’ang sneezed several times while leaving his office.
He rubbed his nose.
“Someone must be thinking about me.”
It was nearly the end of class.
Many horse girls would soon begin moving around Tracen.
As a Trainer, Zhou Yu’ang naturally planned to scout possible targets.
For example, the twenty-eight remaining fiancées.
Or new trainees.
Or potential collaborators.
The broadcast possessed one enormous weakness.
Horse-girl viewers capable of moving during the time stop could immediately conduct searches.
Zhou Yu’ang either needed to stream from an abandoned basement or find a horse girl among the viewers willing to provide cover.
Which was more costly?
Losing fifty jewels once?
Or risking repeated losses of fifty jewels every day?
If only Oguri Cap were a viewer.
He trusted her.
They could also spend more time together and increase her affection.
Unfortunately, she was not.
Zhou Yu’ang wandered through Tracen while waiting for a destined person.
No.
A destined horse girl.
He examined the scattered horse girls on the enormous training field and hoped luck would bring him someone strong from the game.
Then he saw a carrot spirit with long, flowing hair running across the vast track.
Holy—Silence Suzuka!
Oguri Cap transferred to Central in 1988, while Silence Suzuka raced in 1997.
The gap isn’t enormous, but… whatever.
Horse-girl chronology is none of my business.
Zhou Yu’ang abandoned all consideration of the timeline.
He quietly watched Silence Suzuka run in the distance.
She was not yet applying the techniques he had explained during the stream.
She possessed several private motives.
First, she had only written down the knowledge.
Her body had not yet learned to apply it.
Second, she wanted to run several laps and see whether AT would approach her.
If he did, she would sign with him immediately.
There was also another reason.
Running genuinely made horse girls happy.
She circled the track with complete delight.
At this moment, running was so enjoyable that she had forgotten about AT.
One more lap first.
Surely refusing to act immediately would not result in another horse girl meeting, knowing, and falling in love with AT before her.
Silence Suzuka released her natural desire to run.
At the same time, she carefully avoided placing excessive stress on her body.
Even a running fool would not injure herself recklessly.
Silence Suzuka ran while Zhou Yu’ang watched from the side.
Exactly like the stream.
Even when Silence Suzuka remained unaware of his presence, Zhou Yu’ang continued standing there and observing her.
“Running really is wonderful!”
After completing another lap, sweat appeared on Silence Suzuka’s forehead.
The sensation of perspiration flowing down her cheeks felt almost like a massage.
It filled her with happiness.
She ran while admiring the surrounding scenery.
Then—
Hm?
During her run, Silence Suzuka noticed someone standing beside the track.
Who else could it be but Zhou Yu’ang?
Only a small number of horse girls and Trainers occupied the field.
Zhou Yu’ang’s presence stood out clearly.
That man… and that atmosphere around him?
Silence Suzuka glanced at Zhou Yu’ang.
At that moment, she experienced a strange sense of familiarity.
Without question, she had paid the greatest attention during the previous broadcast.
She had carefully observed both the alternate version of herself and AT.
They were, after all, another version of Silence Suzuka and the important Trainer who had entered that girl’s racing career.
Silence Suzuka slowed to a stop.
She remained where she was and turned to stare at Zhou Yu’ang in the distance.
When Zhou Yu’ang realized that she had noticed him, he remained perfectly composed.
It’s fine.
Silence Suzuka wasn’t one of the viewers.
There’s nothing to fear.
Zhou Yu’ang turned toward the other horse girls.
Silence Suzuka was not the only runner on the field.
A Trainer standing beside the track and observing every horse girl was completely normal.
He immediately examined the others.
On the opposite side of the field, another horse girl was training.
At first glance, she appeared ordinary.
Only her back could be seen.
However, her brown twin tails were unmistakable.
Even people who had barely played Uma Musume recognized her through the countless memes.
That was right.
She was the source of some of the franchise’s most famous reaction images.
The horse girl previously mentioned by name.
The one nicknamed Failure Falcon.
Smart Falcon.
She possessed another impressive title:
The Silence Suzuka of Dirt.
Zhou Yu’ang could not approach Silence Suzuka because of the current circumstances.
But why couldn’t he find a substitute version of her?
Failure Falcon possesses both beauty and strength.
She was also an idol.
Unlike most horse girls, she explicitly dreamed of becoming one.
She was not a particularly famous idol in the game, but Cygames had mercifully given her a dedicated event.
The event was called the Top Horse Girl Idol Project for Everyone.
Its rewards were mostly useless, including a Smart Falcon SR card with provocative artwork and absolutely no practical value.
The event counted the total number of fans accumulated by every player during its duration.
Those fans became Smart Falcon’s fan count.
Through the combined efforts of the entire Japanese server, Failure Falcon obtained 3.3 trillion fans.
That number exceeded the entire population of Earth by an absurd margin.
Thus, she gained the title of Cosmic Idol.
Of course, most players had farmed the event using the simple and convenient Oguri Cap.
Therefore…
The Church of Oguri remained supreme.
That was beside the point.
Smart Falcon was an aspiring idol who had not yet developed her career.
She lacked fame but possessed a genuine idol’s sense of responsibility.
She cared deeply about professional conduct.
Because she placed such importance on her idol identity, she never dared to make bold romantic advances toward her Trainer during the game’s story.
Her miserable performance in romance confirmed her identity as Failure Falcon.
Zhou Yu’ang considered the situation.
Smart Falcon had not been drawn into the first stream.
But what about future broadcasts?
He could recruit her by claiming that the Three Goddesses had chosen him as an idol.
Cross that out.
He could explain the situation honestly.
He would become both her Trainer and producer.
In exchange, Falcon could protect him from being arrested.
She was extremely easy to negotiate with.
She lacked aggression and spoke reasonably.
Even if cooperation failed, Smart Falcon remained an excellent horse girl.
How could a Trainer not desire her?
Zhou Yu’ang remembered his first day at Tracen.
Competition among the Trainers had been terrifying.
A mock race had taken place that day.
The moment the horse girls crossed the finish line, a crowd of Trainers rushed toward them.
They made extravagant promises and praised themselves shamelessly.
At the same time, they never stopped mocking and insulting their colleagues.
The spectacle made Zhou Yu’ang question the ethical standards of certain Trainers.
Thankfully, only horse girls could watch his stream.
If Trainers were included, some might harass the horse girls appearing in the game after seeing their stats and stories.
The thought alone was disgusting.
Horse girls were generally kind.
Humans were not necessarily the same.
Rice Shower’s storyline in the second anime season and Kawakami Princess’s game story clearly proved that the horse-girl world did not contain only good people.
That was one reason Zhou Yu’ang had approached Oguri Cap so quickly.
Incidentally, the real Oguri Cap had experienced many hardships.
Especially concerning her owners.
She changed hands several times.
The first owner treated her like a beloved daughter.
Unfortunately, he lacked the qualifications to race her in Central.
For the sake of Oguri Cap’s future, he listened to the Central owners attempting to persuade him and selected a second owner.
The second owner was later exposed for tax evasion and faced losing his owner’s license.
Other wealthy owners immediately became interested and began making offers.
Possibly for profit, the second owner leased Oguri Cap for three hundred million yen per year.
However, he retained her breeding rights and all related income.
That enormous cost led the third owner to send Oguri Cap into an extremely heavy racing schedule.
The arrangement nearly qualified as abuse.
Oguri Cap was forced to use hot-spring treatment repeatedly merely to preserve her health.
The hot springs temporarily reduced the vitality of her athletic heart.
Fortunately, she eventually recovered.
Otherwise, her career might have ended there.
Zhou Yu’ang worried that the horse-girl version of Oguri Cap might experience a similar fate.
What if she entered Central and encountered an unreliable Trainer?
What if that Trainer committed some offense and was expelled from Tracen?
What if the next Trainer forced Oguri Cap to race constantly?
Trainers received a guaranteed salary.
Whenever their horse girls won races, however, they also received a percentage of the prize money.
It resembled how roughly ten percent of real racing prizes were distributed among jockeys, stablehands, and other personnel.
Even if a horse girl merely finished in the money, racing repeatedly could earn her Trainer enough additional income to live extravagantly for a long time.
Some Trainers might pressure horse girls into constant racing for money.
During Make a New Track, every player had done exactly that.
That scenario provided so much currency that no player suffered from a shortage of money.
Zhou Yu’ang had also behaved that way in the game.
But that was merely a game.
Only models and data were involved.
In reality, his horse girls would decide whether they wanted to race.
Zhou Yu’ang would discuss every plan with them.
If Oguri Cap wanted a heavy schedule, then she could race frequently.
Maintaining her body would become Zhou Yu’ang’s responsibility.
That was beside the point.
Because Zhou Yu’ang knew the original history, he understood the difficulties many horse girls might face.
Allowing people to overcome hardship through their own strength was admirable.
However, Zhou Yu’ang wanted to accompany them as a Trainer.
What was wrong with that?
The Silence Suzuka of Dirt.
Thirty-four starts and twenty-three victories.
The record isn’t flawless, but how many horse girls could survive such a schedule?
She was a genuine veteran of countless battles.
Without question, Smart Falcon was extremely powerful.
Zhou Yu’ang had considered organizing a team resembling the competitive mode from the game.
Three runners for each category:
Sprint.
Mile.
Medium.
Long.
Dirt.
Establishing such a team would be difficult.
But once he began training several stars, horse girls like Special Week would eventually approach him on their own.
I can’t approach Silence Suzuka right now.
So I’ll recruit the dirt version instead.
Zhou Yu’ang immediately stepped forward.
Then he stopped.
A horse girl had blocked his path.
She stared silently at him.
Under Zhou Yu’ang’s surprised gaze, she asked:
“Um, Mr.
Trainer… you were watching me just now, weren’t you?”
Silence Suzuka stood directly before him and delivered the question that struck at his soul.
You were secretly watching me run, weren’t you?
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[Ss2 378 Chapter ]
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[ 204 Chapter ]
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Great.
Now we’re definitely screwed!
[Ss3 113 Chapter ]
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A Dimensional Journey Adrift with the Current [ 100 Chapter ]