Chapter 113: The Magician – Derek Su VS Crown Ace – Leon Li
“Master, those two rotten eggs have caught up!”
With only a 30-second gap between starts, Stella warned Derek Su the instant she sensed the surge of psychic energy.
“I know.” Derek Su nodded. He had already heard the spatial tremors from Snowpeak’s jumps.
Three jumps in total.
The last one…
Put them right on their tail!
Boom—hum!
The howling engines of two Mecha Girls overlapped, the explosive roar rattling Derek Su’s eardrums. A deafening bang followed. He glanced at the rearview mirror just in time to see Snowpeak burst out of a silvery spatial maelstrom like a frenzied beast, whipping into a savage drift. Her tail slammed into the volcano wall—rocks sprayed everywhere, dust and smoke billowed—yet she tore straight through the debris as if nothing had happened.
“Holy hell…” Derek Su felt his scalp go numb.
Leon Li was really playing dirty!
Can’t steer? Just tank it with collision resistance.
Clearly, a circular track like this wasn’t ideal for Snowpeak’s frequent spatial teleports. Every jump gave her a massive speed boost. On straightaways, that wasn’t a problem at all—but corners were another story. The sudden surge in speed couldn’t be bled off in time, leaving no margin to breathe through the turn. Leon Li could only grit his teeth and muscle through it.
Loss of control was inevitable.
But for Snowpeak, it didn’t matter.
Maybe all those daily impact-resistance drills had been preparing for exactly this kind of moment.
Use collisions to slow down. Use collisions to correct the chassis. Use walls to make the turn. Use a wrecked track to doom everyone behind you to eight lifetimes of bad luck.
Stella had an impact resistance rating of 80, yet in her debut race she’d been battered from start to finish, practically totaled.
Snowpeak, on the other hand, seemed to have lost nothing more than a bit of paint…
Derek Su felt like he was about to crack. Up ahead, Stella had already gotten her pineapple shells ready.
Against Leon Li and Snowpeak, even throwing ten thousand pineapple shells wouldn’t be enough!
Snowpeak was a straight-up monster among speed-type Mecha Girls.
“Caught them!” Inside Snowpeak’s cockpit, a sharp glint flared in Leon Li’s cold eyes.
Catching up to Derek Su and Stella meant erasing a full 30 seconds.
But that still wasn’t enough.
The Loren Vortex was his and Snowpeak’s home turf. He had to open up a gap here—one so big it couldn’t be recovered.
Once they left the Loren Vortex, Derek Su and Stella’s straight-line acceleration and cornering speed would put tremendous pressure on him and Snowpeak.
He truly cared about keeping things fair. He’d given Derek Su and Stella plenty of hints, laying all his intentions right out in the open.
But he was just as serious about completing his boss’s assignment.
You eat what others give you, you take what others hand you. Everything he had came from the Crown Club. Snowpeak belonged to the Crown Club. The contract was signed with the Crown Club. If he wanted to stay with Snowpeak forever, then all he could do was apologize to Derek Su and Stella.
“Three seconds…”
“I’ll tear you apart!”
Both Mecha Girls dove into the corner at the same time. Derek Su and Stella took the inside line—the optimal racing trajectory.
That position also ran dangerously close to the edge of the Loren Vortex circuit.
The nearest obstacle wasn’t the volcano wall.
It was the cliff.
The Loren Dead Volcano rose 600 meters high. At its base lay a naturally formed subterranean lake. The Silverstone Advanced Race had full medical teams on standby—falling off the cliff wouldn’t kill you, at worst you’d be injured. But being forced off meant immediate disqualification.
If he could just shove Derek Su and Stella off—
Then he and Snowpeak would win!
Leon Li pressed his lips together and pushed Snowpeak harder, cutting in from the outer line near the volcano wall and slamming brutally into Stella’s flank.
If this hit landed solidly, Stella would be sent flipping straight off the cliff.
Snowpeak would use the impact to bleed speed and stabilize through the turn.
And even in the worst case, she still had Spatial Frog Jump.
The entire grandstand went silent.
Neither Derek Su’s cheer squad nor Stella’s fans had it in them to shout anymore.
Taimei and Kool Kenny forgot to commentate altogether, mouths hanging open, eyes bulging as strange choking sounds escaped their throats.
Purple Lightning’s heart thundered in her chest, the air around her feeling as if it were being sucked away.
Time seemed to freeze. Suffocation closed in at the same moment.
She wished more than anything that she could switch places with Derek Su and Stella right now.
Chloe and Howard Wang hadn’t expected that before their own people even made a move, someone else would already start targeting Derek Su and Stella. It was a strange feeling—hardly satisfying, more dull and disappointing than anything.
“Checkmate?”
Derek Su, who had been tracking Leon Li and Snowpeak’s movements the entire time, let a smile creep up at the corners of his mouth.
“Heh. Still too impatient, kid.”
He yanked the control stick to the right and pulled the handbrake at the same time. Stella’s chassis snapped out of the turn, twisting into an opposing arc and lunging toward the volcano wall. The tires screamed, thick black smoke pouring out as they scraped the ground. That sudden twist skimmed past Snowpeak by a hair’s breadth, cleanly slipping past the incoming ram.
Boom—!
Snowpeak flew straight off the cliff.
At the instant Stella was about to slam into the volcano wall, Derek Su executed a sharp Z-shaped flick, snapping her back onto the racing line.
Their cornering speed dropped significantly.
But they’d successfully dodged the most dangerous threat—Leon Li and Snowpeak.
Through the side window, Derek Su met Leon Li’s eyes in his peripheral vision.
Even as Snowpeak plunged downward, the calm in Leon Li’s gaze remained cold and unshaken.
“As expected of the Magician.”
Leon Li drew in a deep breath and ordered Snowpeak to activate Spatial Jump.
Spatial Jump had to be used in time. It couldn’t cancel out gravitational acceleration—trigger it too late, and it was no different from smashing straight into the ground.
This jump was pure self-rescue!
With a low hum, Snowpeak reappeared more than three hundred meters ahead of Derek Su and Stella.
Explosive acceleration surged through her once again.
There was no avoiding it.
Because the jump had been released along the tangent of the crater’s curve, she landed facing the volcano wall head-on.
Leon Li stomped the brakes and fought with everything he had to stabilize Snowpeak, barely keeping her from drilling straight into the rock face. By the time he regained control, Derek Su and Stella had already seized the opening, erasing the three-hundred-meter gap and overtaking them.
Buzz—!
Another Spatial Jump.
The fifth one.
Snowpeak’s jump distance had shrunk drastically, yet she still clung stubbornly to Stella’s tail.
Relying on bursts of explosive speed, she charged aggressively toward Derek Su and Stella.
Both Derek Su and Leon Li knew it.
Only now had the real fight begun. Everything before this had been nothing more than probing and testing.
Derek Su glanced at the rearview mirror, fingers tapping calmly against the control stick.
“Still daring to attack recklessly, kid?”
“Careful not to take a cliff-side flight.”
Leon Li couldn’t hear Derek Su’s voice.
But he knew all too well how troublesome Derek Su was. The next attack had to be decisive.
He absolutely couldn’t afford another reckless collision with Snowpeak…
Only four Spatial Frog Jumps remained. The chances left for him and Snowpeak were running out.
Staring at Stella’s taillights ahead, Leon Li took a deep breath. His gaze grew deep and predatory, like a cheetah slipping into hunting mode.
“Snowpeak. From here on out—follow my commands!”
Author's Note
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