Leonel's eyes widened. Everything suddenly clicked at once.
However, there was simply no time to harp on it.
"Run!" Leonel roared.
The impact of such a massive object hitting the ground from such a height would be enormous. A meteor of 100 kilometers across would be enough to annihilate all life on Earth. Even though this city was only 10 kilometers across and its velocity was much slower in comparison to a meteor, Leonel was absolutely certain that its hardness was far beyond anything a normal meteor could compare with. If this wasn't the case, how would they dare to stay within its walls as they fell from the skies? Plus, this wasn't Earth! It was a small moon!
Leonel wasn't sure how his calculations would change in a true Fourth Dimensional world like this one, but he didn't have the mental space to spare.
Without hesitation, Leonel grasped at Aina's hand and charged out. But, he soon realized that despite his speed, Aina actually had no problem keeping up with him. In fact, she was the one dragging him forward.
'[Swiftness], [Second Wind], [Breath of Wings] –'
Leonel cast as many wind speed spells as he could in quick succession. His affinity for the Wind Element wasn't very high, so the expenditure of his Soul Force was several levels more. But, this wasn't a situation where he had the mind to care about such things.
The Knights around Leonel and Aina were a second later in reacting, but they too shot forward trusting in Leonel's judgment.
With their speed, even covering a few hundred meters wouldn't be impossible by the time the city hit the ground. In this situation, every extra foot they could gain was an extra chance at living.
Leonel's Soul Force continued to surge. He never realized it before, but it seemed that shackles on his own body were loosening greatly as well. His mind felt freer than it ever had before.
Leonel let Aina pull him along, his mind entirely focused on his spell. He dug deep, a violent wind kicking up around him.
"Yip! Yip!"
'Don't worry about me Little Blackstar! Stay in the air and in your incorporeal state! Don't come down here, we'll be fine!'
The little mink skipped through the air, steps of black fog forming before it. But, a clearly distressed expression was on his little face.
Though the little guy couldn't understand what was happening, he had a deep enough connection with Leonel to know that something bad was coming.
The more panicked the knights saw Leonel feel, the more panicked they also seemed to become. The most troublesome part about it all was that they were in a forest, constantly having to dodge around trees and branches. The terrain made them slow down by several factors more than they would have in practically any other landscape.
Without time to care for anything else, they had even gone as far as to abandon the prisoners they had already captured, allowing them to run on their own.
At that moment, the city falling from the skies was already within half a kilometer of the ground. Just the wind pressure of its descent was enough to give Leonel an even stronger tailwind than previously, allowing his spell formation to speed up by several levels.
"Brace yourselves!" Leonel roared.
Leonel pulled back on Aina's hand, stunning her for a moment. All of her forward momentum stalled in that instant. But, Leonel didn't give her time to say anything else.
With one swift motion, he grabbed onto her slender waist and sent the large curved package on her back and the great sword in her hand into the Segmented Cube.
Instead of continuing forward, Leonel launched himself into the air, cradling Aina's body close to his own.
Leonel's body seemed enveloped by a blinding light in that moment. Those who could only catch a faint glimpse would swear that they had laid eyes on a soaring bird.
He leapt from tree branch to tree branch, shooting past a hundred meters into the air in what felt like the blink of an eye.
The instant Leonel reached the tallest canopy, his gaze sharpened, all the strength he could muster bowing his legs and causing his thighs to explosively increase a fold in size.
"HA!"
Leonel flooded Force into his legs and launched himself toward the clouds.
As though he was a bullet, he left a streak of golden light in his wake, a violent cyclone of wind shattering the tree he had used as a springboard.
In the distance, the city reached within a hundred meters of the ground. The wind pressure alone flatted the forest beneath it, uprooting trees and sending them flying in every direction.
SHUUUUUUUUUUUUUU! BANG!
The city suddenly came to a sudden grinding halt. Unlike what Leonel had expected, it never physically touched the ground. However, the damage….
It was one of the most basic laws of physics. For every action, there was an equal and opposite reaction.
A city falling from the skies like a meteor, weighing an impossibly great amount, suddenly coming to a stop like that wouldn't magically make everything better.
The world seemed to fall silent for a moment until the ground suddenly registered just the level of force it was about to withstand.
The earth exploded, surging like a tide along with strong winds to all sides.
If trees were uprooted before, now, even ancient trees that dug hundreds of meters into the ground were blasted away.
The soil, the rock, the greenery, it was all uprooted spreading out as though using the floating city as the epicenter of disaster.
The tsunami of earth seemed to gain speed the further it spread, its momentum increasing and rolling over endlessly.
At this moment, Leonel had reached his apex, just barely 500 meters above the surface. Seeing what was happening below him, his jaw clenched. He wasn't sure if the others could survive, but at the moment, he didn't have time to worry about them. Even he wasn't safe just yet.
Veins bulged out from Leonel's forehead, his strain reaching a new level.
"[FLOAT]!"