To put it simply, Luocheng had transmigrated.
He had only gone out to buy groceries.
One moment his eyes were closed, and when he opened them again, he found himself standing inside an unfamiliar office.
Before him stood a brand-new wooden desk.
The protective film had not even been peeled off yet, and sitting on top of it was a book titled Uma Musume Trainer’s Handbook.
Clearly, he had been transported into the world of Uma Musume.
There was no chakra here, no Oripathy—just a bunch of adorable girls constantly clamoring to race.
As far as transmigration danger ratings went, Uma Musume should have been among the safest possible destinations.
There was just one problem.
Other transmigrators usually entered a real world that merely resembled the setting of a game or story.
Luocheng, on the other hand, seemed to have been dropped directly into the game itself.
Or, more precisely, into a world that was half reality and half game.
Everyone had a status window floating above them, displaying things like [Mood], [Stats], [Affection], and [Skills].
That alone would have been manageable.
The truly bizarre part came when Luocheng approached the girls with horse ears and tails and tried talking to them.
“Good morning.”
“Good morning, Trainer.”
They would answer.
But if he followed up with anything else—
“You dropped something.”
No reaction.
They would simply continue toward class as though they had never heard him.
Every single person behaved the same way.
That was why Luocheng called this a world that was half real and half game.
He was apparently the only “player,” and his interactions with the characters were restricted to specific predefined inputs.
If Luocheng said, “Good morning,” they responded.
If he said something outside the system’s expected dialogue, they ignored him completely.
They were incapable of understanding anything beyond what the system permitted.
Luocheng tried leaving the academy to see whether the outside world worked differently.
He couldn’t.
Something invisible blocked his path at the boundary.
An invisible wall.
An actual game-world invisible wall!
He had been trapped here and forcibly assigned the role of a “Trainer.”
Yes.
In this world, Luocheng was a Trainer.
“Trainer, what are we doing for training today?”
A young horse girl with a ponytail entered the room.
She had impossibly fair skin, lively sky-blue eyes, and energetic brown hair tied behind her head.
A crescent-shaped white streak adorned her bangs.
Above her head floated a status panel displaying her name:
Tokai Teio.
Seeing her in person for the first time left Luocheng speechless.
She was far cuter than any 3D model!
Unlike everyone else, Tokai Teio would respond to Luocheng’s commands.
There was a catch.
He had to begin with the phrase:
“Today’s training is—”
It worked almost like a command line in Minecraft.
As long as Luocheng prefaced his instruction with those words, Teio would follow it.
There were still limitations.
He could tell her to do push-ups, but he couldn’t order her to solve Fermat’s Last Theorem.
He could give her simple physical instructions, but he couldn’t make her freely say whatever he wanted.
The moment a command involved complex language or thought, Tokai Teio would simply freeze.
She was a little like a semi-intelligent robot designed only to receive instructions.
After sending Teio to run ten laps around the training field, Luocheng carefully observed her condition when she returned.
Her green stamina bar had dropped slightly.
Her Speed had risen from [90] to [91].
But what mattered more was something far more fundamental.
She was sweating.
Her body showed the normal signs of physical exertion.
That proved one thing beyond doubt.
The people of this world possessed genuine biological functions.
They weren’t merely computer models.
They were alive.
They simply lived according to game logic.
Eventually, Tokai Teio’s status changed to [Hungry].
When mealtime arrived, the horse girls headed to the cafeteria.
They talked to one another normally, laughed normally, and behaved exactly like living people.
But Luocheng couldn’t join their conversations.
None of them responded to him outside their preset interactions.
Even the cafeteria staff behaved the same way.
At that moment, Luocheng finally understood.
He existed outside this world.
He was its “player.”
Holding his head in disbelief, Luocheng checked and rechecked everything countless times.
But no matter how absurd it seemed, this was the reality he had been thrown into.
Why was his transmigration so different from everyone else’s?
He had no idea how long this situation would last.
Caught between excitement and unease, Luocheng began his life at Tracen Academy.
Three months passed in the blink of an eye.
By then, he had grown accustomed to using Tokai Teio as his only reliable means of interacting with the world.
“Trainer, what are we doing for training today?”
“Today’s training is to sit here quietly.”
“Yes.”
Months of experimentation had taught Luocheng that Tokai Teio was the only horse girl over whom he currently possessed command authority.
Whenever he tried giving orders to someone else, a translucent message appeared before his eyes:
[You are not currently in a trainer-trainee relationship.]
The obvious solution was to sign contracts with more horse girls.
Unfortunately, Luocheng had no idea how.
He had even tried forcing a pen into someone’s hand and making her sign a contract.
It didn’t work.
What was the point of him being here?
Was he supposed to treat the whole thing like some real-life character-raising game?
With no real objective, Luocheng simply did whatever occurred to him, training the horse girls much as he would have in the game.
Over these three months, Tokai Teio’s stats improved considerably.
Speed, Stamina, Power, Guts, and Wisdom had all risen above 120.
Even if this resembled a romance simulation, Luocheng couldn’t spend every waking hour fooling around.
He still needed something to occupy his mind.
So in his spare time, he read the Trainer’s Handbook.
According to it, the central objective of this world was racing.
And Luocheng had begun wondering what would happen if he failed.
Would he simply disappear?
Would the world reset?
Luocheng had always been the sort of person who prepared for the worst.
According to the Uma Musume Trainer’s Handbook sitting on his desk, Tokai Teio’s first race was approaching.
Failure might mean that he vanished entirely.
And perhaps that wouldn’t be so terrible.
The world looked vibrant.
Yet beneath that surface, it felt utterly dead.
Luocheng couldn’t sense any true vitality from the people around him.
He couldn’t converse with them.
Couldn’t communicate.
Couldn’t receive meaningful reactions.
There was nothing.
As the sky beyond the window gradually darkened, Luocheng closed his eyes.
Every night, he imagined waking up to find that the world had finally become normal.
He was sick of living like this.
Confined inside such a narrow world, he felt like a bird trapped in a cage.
Luocheng was approaching his limit.
There was no internet.
Electronic devices were unusable.
Every screen displayed only blank white, like an unfinished texture in a game.
More and more, Luocheng feared that the world was changing him too—that eventually, he would become just another empty body moving according to routine.
The hour grew late.
The clock passed midnight.
Then, within the darkened world, a chime rang out.
A message appeared inside Luocheng’s mind as he slept.
[Story Quest Triggered: Debut Race]
…
“Trainer…
Trainer!”
“Wake up, sleepyhead!”
Luocheng slowly opened his eyes.
Blocks of color shifted and reassembled before his vision.
And then he saw a little horse girl puffing out her cheeks while shaking his shoulder.
Tokai Teio.