"Wow!"
The onlookers applauded, treating the display like a street performance.
Tohka Todo sighed in admiration. "You even exercise and apply your abilities in daily life. No wonder you can always control the rhythm of your matches."
Applying abilities to daily life.
It sounds simple, but in reality, it is far from easy.
Take her own lightning ability. She can use electromagnetic waves to search for enemies, sense their deep psychology, and emit lightning for precise strikes.
She can also apply destructive lightning to her own body to strengthen her physical attributes.
But even doing all this, there are still "simple" things she cannot accomplish.
For instance, she easily fries electronic appliances but cannot repair them.
Being able to perfectly command power in battle, yet having it cause trouble in daily life—this is proof of immaturity.
An ability is a part of oneself, just like hands and feet.
If one cannot fully control this power, can they still be called a first-rate Mage-Knight? A person who does not understand their own limits cannot overcome all difficulties.
They will eventually be crushed.
"I learned a lot. Thank you, Noah-kun," Tohka thanked him sincerely. "By the way, why haven't Renren and Utsutsu come back yet? Utakata, could you go look for them?"
"Ugh—what a pain."
"Utakata!" The President raised her voice.
The usually cynical Vice President obediently listened. In the blink of an eye, he vanished.
This startled Stella. "Wow! He's gone!"
"Honestly. Abusing his power like that again," Tohka sighed.
...
Five minutes later.
Stella looked around the empty campsite and asked with concern, "Could the senpai have run into some kind of danger? Like... giants?"
Tohka placed her hands on her hips. "I know the strength of those three. Setting Utsutsu's situation aside for now, if Utakata and Renren want to retreat, it is difficult for opponents to stop them. They must just be slacking off."
"But the cooking ingredients are already prepared. All we have to do now is wait, right?"
"Huh. You're right." Tohka realized something was wrong.
She untied her apron and threw the prepared ingredients into the massive pot.
"Noah-kun, Stella-san, please come with me. Kanata, we will leave this place in your care for now!"
Kanata nodded. "Rest assured. Leave it to me."
The three quickly darted through the woods.
During this time, the President kept trying to call Utakata on her terminal, but the signal seemed to be blocked.
"It looks like something did happen!"
Tohka pushed off with both legs, her body shooting upward to land on a high tree trunk.
She turned back. "I'll go on ahead."
Arcs of electricity wrapped around her feet, and she rapidly advanced by leaping between the branches.
Noah looked at the figure high above and noticed her short skirt exposed what was underneath.
Stella noticed this as well and hastily shouted, "Don't look!"
Noah stopped.
He tilted his head back and stared at the sky.
Seeing this, Stella grew anxious. 'I told you not to look, yet you stopped to stare!'
"It should be much more convenient to search from above."
Just as she approached him, Stella heard him mutter this.
In an instant, she realized what he was planning to do.
"Don't!"
She was about to refuse when she felt an invisible force expand outward with Noah at the center.
Stella felt her body lose its weight, and she was forced to float upward.
Weightlessness.
'He really is planning to do that!'
Noah's body flipped in the weightless state.
He shifted into a posture with his feet pointing toward the sky and his head facing the ground.
He aimed at the sky, reversed gravity, and changed the direction to "downwards."
The next second, his figure accelerated with a roar, breaking the sound barrier and shaking the surrounding vegetation.
A few leaves caught in his control broke the sound barrier along with him, shooting straight up into the air.
Hearing the sonic boom, Tohka turned her head and saw a scene that shocked her.
"Ahhhhh!!!"
She saw Noah and the screaming Stella ascending rapidly into the air.
Relying solely on her kinetic vision, she couldn't keep up with those high-speed figures.
'They're flying?'
The ability Noah used in his public match against the Lorelei: Flight!
However, this speed was absurd. It was like they were falling toward the sky!
Feeling dizzy, Noah counted four seconds, then stopped his ability.
'Stop, stop!'
Whoosh!
He and Stella were flung out of the supersonic momentum. Noah grabbed the girl and pulled her into his arms, a blue glow lighting up in his eyes.
Then he saw it.
Several blue souls in the direction north of them.
Noah locked onto that location, then found Tohka below. He changed direction and activated his ability again.
Breaking the sound barrier once more~
...
He and Stella plummeted downward like two missiles.
Watching the two drop toward her with the momentum of a meteor strike, Tohka stood dumbfounded.
'Should I dodge right now, or do something else?'
Before she could hesitate further, Noah and Stella stopped right in front of her.
The kinetic force vanished in an instant, and the two floated quietly before her eyes.
"Noah..."
"President, I found them. The situation is urgent, so I will take you with me."
"Eh?"
Before Tohka could finish her thought, she felt the gravity on her body vanish, her feet leaving the ground.
The next second, she felt an acceleration she usually only experienced when using her Noble Art, Raikiri.
BOOM!
Both Stella and Tohka grew pale.
They felt themselves plummeting toward the sky, unable to move their bodies, before stopping a few seconds later.
At this moment, they realized they had been thrown hundreds of meters high into the air.
Before they could feel fear, they experienced the same thing again.
The world spin.
By now, they couldn't distinguish which way was up and which way was down, unable to tell left from right.
In a world with abnormal gravity, their sense of direction was rendered useless.
This was a world with only one direction, "Down."
Gravity Fall.