Li Ze had been sitting slumped on the floor for twenty minutes.
The place he was sitting in was cramped, and the toilet behind him made it very clear that he was in a bathroom.
Fortunately, there was no strange smell.
At least, Li Ze couldn’t smell anything unpleasant.
Otherwise, even in his current dazed state, he probably would’ve dragged himself somewhere else.
Of course, that would have to wait until he recovered.
The soul-rending pain coursing through him made it impossible to move.
It reminded Li Ze of the agony he’d experienced when he was given anesthesia before surgery, a deep, throbbing pain that seemed to pierce flesh and bone.
It hurt like hell.
Maybe even giving birth wasn’t much worse than this.
The fact that he still had enough leisure to think something like that was probably impressive in its own way.
He vaguely remembered squatting in the bathroom with his phone, scrolling through videos on a certain pink-colored app.
A few days ago, he’d watched some team ride flying swords to victory in a world-class competition, and ever since then his recommendations had been flooded with videos related to that game.
But in the blink of an eye, his phone was gone.
So was the roll of toilet paper that had been sitting on the floor in front of him.
He subconsciously sniffed the air.
The heavy hotpot smell that had clung to his clothes earlier was nowhere to be found.
Stranger still, the bathroom itself seemed to have changed.
Even stranger than that, the squat toilet had turned into a Western-style toilet.
Was he dreaming?
Li Ze pinched his cheek.
It hurt.
So this probably wasn’t a dream.
And in the process, he confirmed something else.
This wasn’t his body.
He’d only gotten a haircut that afternoon.
There was no way his bangs had grown this long already.
And…
He definitely wasn’t this handsome.
Li Ze stood up and faced the bathroom mirror.
A young, strikingly handsome man stared back at him.
It was a face Li Ze had never seen before.
If he’d ever encountered someone this good-looking, there was no way he would’ve forgotten.
After admiring himself for a few moments, Li Ze decided that posing in front of the mirror could wait.
He left through the bathroom’s only exit.
This appeared to be some kind of apartment.
It was tiny.
Someone had clearly made an effort to keep it clean, but it still looked cluttered.
The moment he stepped out of the bathroom, he nearly walked straight into a staircase.
Not far away stood a small desk with an open black laptop on top.
A diary sat beside it.
Several books were piled around the desk, along with a thin summer blanket.
Turning his head, Li Ze saw a heap of clothes piled in one corner and a narrow table serving as a makeshift kitchen.
There was only one electric steamer on it.
Just from this much, Li Ze could more or less imagine the owner’s daily routine.
Sit at the desk and play on the computer.
When bored, read some books.
When tired, lie down on the floor, pull a blanket over himself, and sleep.
But…
Did this guy not even use a pillow?
As he pondered that question, the haziness in his mind gradually faded, like waking up in the morning and splashing cold water over his face.
At last, Li Ze could be certain.
This was not a dream.
Or rather, his brain had completely killed off the vague possibility that it might be one.
“…Holy crap.” After a long silence, Li Ze finally squeezed out half a curse.
The apartment’s only window was set into the wall behind the desk, close to the ceiling and roughly two meters above the floor.
Moonlight streamed through it into the room.
And landed directly in front of the laptop.
Li Ze plopped himself down there.
The laptop screen had dimmed, but the computer hadn’t gone to sleep yet.
He moved the mouse to keep it awake and saw that a video-sharing website was open.
The video was paused.
Li Ze could practically picture the previous owner pausing it before heading to the bathroom.
But now there was one problem.
Why was all the text in the video Japanese?
Was this a raw upload?
Holding onto that possibility, he exited fullscreen mode and saw the entire webpage.
The sentences made of hiragana and katakana appeared to be telling him one thing.
This was a Japanese website.
Had the guy been using a VPN?
Still suspicious, Li Ze clicked the clock in the bottom-right corner.
All right.
Even the operating system was in Japanese.
More terrifyingly…
Li Ze could understand it.
As someone who had always been an absolute disaster at languages, Li Ze knew perfectly well that he did not speak Japanese.
Yet now he could read it effortlessly, as naturally as his native language.
A frightening possibility surfaced in his mind.
Then he seemed to realize something and clicked on the video again.
Play.
Fast-forward.
Fast-forward again.
He was looking for something specific.
Then he abruptly paused.
The screen froze on a human figure standing on a stage.
It was a beautiful woman.
By Li Ze’s standards, she had already surpassed the upper limit of what he felt qualified to judge.
But what caught Li Ze’s attention wasn’t her beautiful face or mature figure.
It was the ears on top of her head.
And the tail behind her.
Yes.
A tail.
After a long silence, Li Ze quietly opened a new tab and went to a search engine.
He typed something in and pressed Enter.
When the results appeared, the young man who had only recently graduated from university suddenly felt like trying cigarettes for the first time.
He had transmigrated.
And he’d transmigrated into the world of Uma Musume.
The world of Uma Musume.
Before transmigrating, Li Ze had been thoroughly addicted to the game.
Even though he couldn’t understand the language and couldn’t read any of the story, his love of anime had been enough to make him charge headfirst into it anyway.
As an otaku, arriving in a world like this should’ve made him ecstatic.
But right now, he couldn’t feel happy at all.
He had none of the original body’s memories.
Wasn’t a transmigrator supposed to inherit the original owner’s memories automatically?
He didn’t even know the man’s social relationships.
How was he supposed to survive like this?
Should he turn himself in to the government?
Uma Musume were so pure and kind.
Maybe the government in this world was unusually competent too.
But then he remembered this country’s traditional mastery of the art of bowing.
Li Ze immediately abandoned the idea.
He’d rather gamble on the original owner being one of those “improper people” who kept a diary.
And so, Li Ze began searching the room.
Praise the Three Goddesses.
The original owner really was one of those “improper people” who kept a diary.
This solved an urgent problem.
Li Ze clutched the diary like a traveler finding water in the desert and greedily absorbed everything written inside.
A long while later…
When he finally finished reading the last entry, Li Ze understood his current situation.
The world of Uma Musume did not belong only to Uma Musume.
It also belonged to Trainers.
Every drop of sweat an Uma Musume shed on the racetrack carried the results of a Trainer’s efforts behind it.
And the body’s original owner was one such Trainer.
As a newly graduated Trainer, he needed to find an Uma Musume willing to partner with him within a short period of time.
Together, they would compete independently, striving for glory and prize money.
Even if they didn’t make it very far, it would still be enough to earn a living.
Which raised the obvious question.
How the hell did you train an Uma Musume?
Li Ze closed the diary.
He had none of the original owner’s memories.
There was probably no way he could continue working as a Trainer.
And his Trainer license would likely be revoked in three months.
This world had strict requirements for Trainers.
If a newly graduated Trainer failed to sign with even one Uma Musume within three months, their license would be revoked.
Sorry, man.
Looks like I can’t carry this baton for you.
The original owner was named Natsume Sawa.
He had grown up in a children’s welfare home.
After enduring countless hardships, he’d finally managed to become a Trainer.
During school, he’d worked several part-time jobs every day to pay his way through his studies, struggling relentlessly until he finally earned this one certificate.
It was his ticket.
A ticket to the future.
It represented more than a decade of blood, sweat, and persistence.
Unfortunately, the founding emperor had died before his campaign was half-finished.
Perhaps years of overwork and malnutrition had finally caught up to him.
The young man had gotten up from the toilet, blacked out, collapsed to the floor, and died.
And in the end, a transmigrator had profited from it.
So his next objective was simply to stay alive.
For now, maybe he should return to his old profession.
Try writing novels?
Japanese light novels…
First, he’d better look into what genres were popular in this world.
Just like that, the transmigrator quickly established his new objective.
Surely nobody genuinely believed that with no memories, no system, and no cheat ability—a full triple handicap—a transmigrator could somehow become an excellent Uma Musume Trainer.
Lacking experience would already be bad enough.
But he didn’t even possess the relevant professional knowledge.
Even if he somehow got an Uma Musume to acknowledge him, whether he could actually help her was another question entirely.
As long as he didn’t actively make things worse, that would already be a blessing.
A Trainer who knew absolutely nothing should at least have enough self-awareness not to ruin the futures of those girls chasing their dreams.
If his incompetence delayed someone’s career…
He’d deserve ten thousand deaths.
Unless, of course, a cheat ability appeared in front of him right now.
And then…
Under Li Ze’s stunned gaze, a translucent screen appeared before him.
Displayed on it was a figure he knew very well.
Except the person who had originally been human now appeared as an Uma Musume.
Beneath that Uma Musume’s image was a single button.
And the two words written on that button explained the system’s function with perfect clarity.
Transform.
So…
This was his cheat ability?
Li Ze thought.
This was the world of Uma Musume.
So having a system that transformed him into an Uma Musume wasn’t unreasonable.
He experimented with it a little.
There was no AI assistant or anything like that.
The system was just a rigid machine.
Did that mean he was supposed to transform into an Uma Musume and enter races himself?
Uma Musume prize money should be pretty good, right…?
Thinking back to horse racing in Japan in his previous life, where prize pools could easily reach tens of millions of yen, Li Ze tried extrapolating what the sums might look like in the world of Uma Musume.
He just didn’t know whether runners who failed to take first place still received money.
Li Ze fell into deep thought.
Should he preserve his dignity and remain a man?
Or surrender to the system for the sake of money, transform into an Uma Musume, and start racing?
There could only be one answer!
Research first!
Late at night, with the lights turned off, the glow of the laptop screen reflected across Li Ze’s thin face.
It made his smile look especially sinister.