"Gah—!"
When Oguri Cap shook her awake, Glittering Dyna reacted like someone who had just been dragged up from the deep sea. She coughed violently, then started gasping as if she were in the middle of a severe asthma attack.
The sight genuinely terrified Oguri. On top of that, Dyna had grabbed her arm so tightly that it hurt enough to make Oguri feel as if the bone in her forearm might crack.
"Boss?"
"Oguri Cap, what happened to the boss?!" Changying twisted around from the front passenger seat, panic flashing across her face. Even so, she was the only one of the three whose reason hadn't completely vanished.
The driver caught sight of Dyna in the rearview mirror, and his expression turned grave.
"I'm changing route. We're going to the hospital."
That was the last thing he said before rolling down the windows. The rushing air flooded the inside of the car, and Dyna seemed to feel a little better for it—but her heart was still hammering with an almost unnatural ferocity. Her blood seemed to be racing through her body at impossible speed, and the amount of oxygen she needed had already gone beyond what normal breathing could provide.
The second person in the car suffering just as badly was Oguri Cap.
Her forearm had already gone purple where Dyna was gripping it. Under normal circumstances, there was no way a horse girl like Dyna—one who had never particularly specialized in raw strength—should have been able to bruise someone as sturdy as Oguri like this.
But at that moment, Dyna's grip felt as though someone else entirely had borrowed her body.
With the driver flooring the accelerator, they reached the hospital in no time at all, and Dyna was rushed straight into emergency care.
Only after an oxygen mask was fitted over her face did her symptoms start to ease.
Once her breathing finally settled, she gradually calmed down.
"Acute asthma," the white-coated elderly doctor said at her bedside, turning to Changying and Oguri Cap. "Is this the first time she's ever had an episode like this?"
He naturally recognized both the patient on the bed and the gray-haired horse girl beside her, but in a doctor's eyes, there were only two kinds of people: the sick and the healthy. He had no intention of asking about anything unrelated.
Oguri, who had known Dyna the longest, nodded immediately.
"Yes. The boss has always been healthy. She literally just won the Satsuki Sho—how could she suddenly come down with something like this?"
Oguri didn't know much medicine, but even she understood this much: if a horse girl developed a respiratory disease, it was basically the same as being handed a death sentence for her racing career.
"Sometimes these illnesses don't show themselves," the doctor said. "You don't even know you've got them until they flare up. We'll wait until the patient is fully awake before we talk more. She's no longer in immediate danger. The detailed evaluation will have to wait a bit. Do you girls have somewhere urgent to be?"
Changying looked at Dyna, who was still breathing through both nose and mouth, and shook her head.
"No. Thank you, doctor."
The old man set the medical chart down on the table where Dyna would be able to see it the moment she woke, then stepped out of the room.
He had already guessed more than he was saying, but there was no need to bring it up yet.
Even so, more than anything, he wanted every horse girl who entered his hospital to leave healthy, without any lingering consequences.
But asthma—an illness that could only ever be managed, never truly eradicated—was far too cruel a diagnosis for a horse girl.
He paused at the tightly shut door to the room and muttered to himself before leaving.
"I hope the girl has fortune on her side. Even my granddaughter wants to see her take the Classic Triple Crown."
Inside the room, Oguri Cap was completely lost. She kept pacing in circles, unable to settle for even a second.
She had never imagined that shaking Dyna awake while she was suffering would lead to this. If Dyna ended up being forced into retirement because of it, Oguri felt certain she would carry the guilt for the rest of her life.
"Oguri, stop circling. You're going to wear a ring into the floor. The boss will be fine. Calm down," Changying said.
But despite the steady voice, there wasn't much confidence behind it.
Today's entire schedule had been shattered, and besides the two of them, nobody knew that Glittering Dyna was currently lying in a hospital bed.
"All… alright…" Oguri answered distractedly, finally stopping by the window.
Outside, the sunlight was bright and warm, spilling in through the glass.
The only thing Dyna could feel was pain.
Her head hurt. Her legs hurt. Her chest hurt. Her lungs burned.
She had escaped from that prison-like racecourse.
In the dream—or whatever it had been—the racecourse had been breached, one wall collapsing under the force of some invisible giant hand. Beyond it stretched a narrow path with no visible end.
The moment Dyna realized she could move toward it, she stepped onto it—and the racecourse vanished behind her, leaving only the road beneath her feet.
"So… I'm supposed to keep running, right?"
That was what she thought as she began down the path.
The ground was covered in fine gravel. Every step produced a dry, sandpaper-like crunch. The sound was monotonous, endless, irritating.
At first Dyna walked. Then she broke into a jog. Then, before she even realized it, she was running.
Soon she found that she could no longer control her pace. The road seemed to stretch endlessly in response to her will, while her legs remained fixed at the fastest speed she had already reached.
Gravel was neither turf nor dirt. Running on it for long periods was torture. Dyna was wearing ordinary flat shoes, not racing footwear, and the discomfort only got worse and worse.
Right then, she wanted to see another person—anyone. Even a hallucination would have been enough.
But there was nothing around her except the scrape of gravel beneath her feet and the ragged sound of her own breathing.
The burning in her lungs didn't fade. It grew fiercer with every stride. Each breath felt like inhaling molten grit that spilled straight into her chest and churned there.
This was supposed to be her own mental world. So why couldn't she control it anymore?
The only explanation she could think of was that one of the two others—Cody's Wish or Sea the Stars—must have been emotionally unstable, or psychologically shaken in some way, and that disturbance had resonated with her own mind, creating this obstacle. This prison.
Then, finally, a familiar voice came from behind her.
"If you're tired, then stop and rest for a while."
Dyna halted at once, as if the words themselves had cut the strings controlling her movement. Her throat was full of sourness and the taste of iron. Her stomach heaved so violently she thought she might throw up.
By the roadside, beneath a withered tree that definitely hadn't been there before, stood Sea the Stars.
She was leaning lazily against the trunk, staring up at the sky.
When Dyna looked at her, she saw those deep, star-filled eyes turn back to meet her own.
"Cody's Wish has been in bad shape lately," Sea the Stars said quietly. "That's probably why this place turned into this."
Dyna could only glare at her, because she was still too out of breath to speak.
Sea the Stars pushed herself away from the tree and walked to the roadside—only for her hand to meet something invisible. A barrier.
"But this road…" she went on, fingertips resting against the unseen wall, "this is something your own consciousness built. No one else can interfere with it."
She looked at Dyna.
"But honestly? It's just another cage. It got stronger after resonating with Cody's Wish's regrets, and that's why this happened. Still—you already smashed through these shackles once before, didn't you? So even if they've come back, you can crush them again. Right?"
Before Dyna could answer, Sea the Stars' body had already begun crumbling away from the feet up, turning into sand and gravel like the road itself.
"You and Cody's Wish have similar regrets," she said, voice fading with her body. "Think about that drawer you opened before. This time… it really isn't any different."
And then she was gone.
Dyna was alone again.
She reached toward where Sea the Stars had stood and touched the same glass-like invisible wall.
"My regret… and Cody's Wish's regret…"
She understood now.
It had come back, yes—but only because it had borrowed Cody's Wish's weight and sorrow to strengthen itself.
That was all.
And since Dyna knew exactly what it was now, she no longer needed to be afraid of it.
She had beaten it once.
If it came again, it would meet the same end.
Inside the inner pocket of her coat was the card case she always carried with her.
She had never tried opening it in this world before. But now, she needed that strength.
She unclasped it.
There was only one card inside.
It showed herself kneeling alone in that room, holding the letter high in both hands.
Looking at it, Dyna pressed the card to her own forehead. She had no idea what would happen if she used her own power here. It certainly wouldn't raise any physical stat the way the others did. But then again, ordinary stats meant nothing in a place like this.
"If you think you can lock me in here with this," she muttered, "then I don't mind stomping the whole thing to pieces."
The card dissolved into specks of light and merged into her body.
When Dyna opened her eyes again, tiny points of gold glittered within her crimson irises.
She had no intention of merely escaping this cage anymore.
She was going to tear it apart.
Not just for herself.
For Cody's Wish too.
The burning in her chest was suddenly wrapped in warmth. It didn't vanish, but it stopped being agony and became power instead.
And then something else changed.
For the first time, Dyna realized that even the path beneath her feet could be chosen.
That instinctive sense of footing, of route selection, bloomed through her like something she had always possessed but never truly awakened—as if the core instinct of a horse girl's body had finally come alive inside her.
Never before had running of her own accord felt this easy.
This time, she wasn't running to flee.
She was running to crush the road itself.
For the first time, Dyna left a clear footprint on the path. Though it was gravel, the force of her step drove a depression several inches deep into the ground.
The sheer strength of it sent ripples through the invisible walls to either side.
Her speed rose higher.
Wind screamed past her ears, sweeping the sweat from her forehead and, with it, the last of her hesitation.
She could feel the power in her body surging upward without end.
That exhilaration of breaking through a limit was stronger than any last spurt she had ever made in a real race.
The burning in her lungs vanished completely, replaced by overwhelming lightness—as though every chain binding her had broken at once.
Origin of Light: Glittering Dyna
Break the shackles. Cast off the fetters. Release the horse girl's true nature.
There were no external buffs.
No borrowed stats.
This was simply the pure release of Glittering Dyna's own power.
And that alone was enough to make the entire place tremble.
The only word Dyna could think of was:
Freedom.
As her strength kept climbing, each step hit harder than the last. Every landing left a deeper scar in the path until, at last, one final stride sent cracks racing outward like a spiderweb.
The road split.
The air split.
The whole thing shattered like glass and fell away beneath her into a blank white void.
When someone falls in a dream without warning, they wake up.
Horse girls were no exception.
"Ugh—!"
Dyna's whole body jerked violently on the hospital bed, and she snapped awake.
An unfamiliar ceiling.
A familiar smell of antiseptic.
"Hah… hah…"
She ripped the oxygen mask off her face by reflex and had barely started sitting up before Oguri Cap lunged and shoved her back down, forcing the mask over her face again.
Dyna froze.
But Oguri's strength was greater than ever, and Dyna—who, strangely, no longer felt pain anywhere at all—couldn't fight her off.
It was only then that she really registered what was going on.
Why was she in a hospital bed?!
"Doctor! Dyna's awake!"
Oguri hit the call button while still pinning her down.
The doctor returned almost immediately. Seeing Dyna sitting up already, he stroked his beard with a thoughtful expression.
Oguri stood beside the bed, nervously bending her fingers one by one.
Because in order not to ruin the original plan entirely, Changying had decided to continue on with the scheduled trip herself and leave Oguri behind here.
"How is she, Doctor?"
"Don't rush. Let her rest first," the old man said. "She woke up quickly, but we still don't know whether there are any other symptoms. We'll do a thorough examination again this afternoon. I'll handle it myself."
His calm tone soothed Oguri a little.
Dyna, meanwhile, remained completely baffled.
On his way out, the old doctor pointed at the oxygen mask.
"If it's uncomfortable now, she can take it off."
Only after getting the doctor's permission did Oguri finally allow Dyna to remove it again.
"Hah…" Dyna took a breath. "Oguri… why am I here?"
Oguri scratched her head awkwardly, then explained everything from the car ride up to the hospital admission.
When she finished, Dyna fell into silence.
So all of that had looked, from the outside, like she was about to die?
That was horrifying.
Still, since Changying had already gone ahead to carry out the day's original plans, Dyna decided she should simply follow the doctor's instructions for now—rest until the afternoon, finish the tests, and only then decide what to do next.
Then she noticed a tiny red dot on Oguri's clothes.
At first, she had the childish urge to poke it with a finger, just to see what it was. She didn't, of course. Instead she focused on it more carefully—and realized it wasn't a stain at all, but one of the familiar floating prompts from her system panel.
Skill Acquired: Beast Breaking Free
After being surrounded and pressured during a race, the horse girl will break the cage at the final corner and release her instincts.
"Beast… breaking free?"
Dyna muttered the phrase under her breath.
So now she was being compared to a wild animal?
It was crude.
But after what she had just done in that place… maybe it wasn't wrong.
"Boss… are you actually really sick?" Oguri asked nervously. "You're talking to yourself again."
At this point, Oguri honestly thought that after Dyna's physical tests were done, she might need to drag her off for a psychiatric evaluation too.
Sure, there were horse girls in Tracen who muttered to themselves.
But saying things like a trapped beast?
That was on a different level.
Had Dyna been possessed by a brown bear or something?
"No, no. It's nothing." Dyna waved her hand. "I just woke up. My head's still fuzzy."
She lay back down.
The name of the skill seemed to suggest one thing, at least: in a race, she carried even more untamed instinct than Orfevre did.
For now, that was the only interpretation Dyna could come up with.
Gaga.
Goo-goo.
Today, I'm skipping one PE class! Then there won't be any classes left!
Join here to read ahead.
In Star Rail, Ultra-Beast Armored — Have I Caught "Equilibrium"? l (Chapter 80)
Uma Musume, But I Only Have Five Years Left to Live (Chapter 178)
Zenless Zone Zero: I'm a Doctor, Not a Bangboo (Chapter 138)
Ben Tennyson Wants to Join the Justice League ( 126 )
TYPE-MOON: Redemption Beginning with the Holy Grail War (Chapter110)
Yu-Gi-Oh! — Transmigrated into the White Dragon Girl (Chapter160)
"Is this chat group even serious?" (Chapter98)
I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (Chapter175)
Can Playing Games Save the World? 65
Crossover Anime Multiverse: The Demon Hunter of an Unnatural World 77
From Junkman to Wasteland 66
Weekly Refresh of Overpowered 31
I'm Grinding Proficiency Like 46
From Kiana, Lord Ravager, Onwa 163
Honkai: Is This Still the Prev 42
Elf: My Starter Pokémon Is Inc 65
Warhammer: My Primarch Is Remi 150
From Demon Slayer to Grand Ass 100
The Way the Umamusume Look at 68
Uma Musume, but My Cheat Power 170
Naruto: Weaving the Future, Be 65
Zenless Zone Zero, but Kamen R 76
Multiverse Crossover: The Perf 66
My Cyberpsycho Girlfriend 65
Uma Musume: The Dark Trainer 145
Uma Musume: A Calamity Born fr 125
I, a Reincarnation-Loop Player 69
The Violent Girl Group Is Beat 90
Uma Musume: The Horse Girl Who 66
Uma Musume: From Beginner 100
Becoming a Horse Girl, I Will 70
Uma Musume: I Want All 90
I Can Copy Unique Skills 65
Summoning an Evil God, but the 52
Supernatural Multiverse 65
My Harem Is Indescribable 55
Jujutsu Kaisen: Heroic Spirit 55
"I'm just a Valkyrie passing through." 66
Uma Musume: Today Is Another Romantic Battlefield 55
Still playing traditional Honk 35
The Most Filial Son Under Heav 35
What Should I Do After Switchi 24
Reincarnated as a Demon, Skill 35
Hell-Difficulty Dungeon? 27
Transmigrated as Sukuna 27
Checking In in Demon Slayer 32
The Reincarnating Trainer of Tracen Academy 44
My patreon : patreon.com/queen_sin