11 Where Is The Ground?

"... Running… seems hard…" Jingo muttered while facing Nagan on the back, as if she was expecting some sort of wisdom to be poured on her little skull.

Nagan took a good look at Jingo's running form, only to realize that all this time, Jingo was running like a constipated robot. On top of that, her hands were barely swaying too, as they were straightened beside her hips. Like, it was so subtle, yet so masterful, that it took quite a while for Nagan to realize how inefficient and weird Jingo was when it comes to using her body to perform one of the most basic sapient actions.

It was possible that Jingo did this deliberately as some sort of a gag, but her emotionless face appeared as if she genuinely didn't know how to run properly. Which took into account the imparted motoric muscle memory that the Queen gave to her for these possibilities.

All that aside, the realization began to spread amongst the usalians. Unlike the usual however, they didn't even attempt to make a comment nor gag about it.

Because the realization of her untouchable footwork was too baffling for their mind to further comprehend.

Amidst the baffled crowd, something happened on Jingo's deadpan face. It was so subtle, nearly ethereal—a small curve began to form on the edge of her mouth. It was as if she was putting on a smirk. "... Heh."

"'?????""

"Gyaaa!! The beast is running faster!!"

"Well, just run faster than them!!"

If one is new to sprinting, here are a few basic form cues to help get them started. 

First, be sure to push hard off the ground, with many people finding it useful to imagine themselves pushing the ground back like a cartoon character as opposed to pushing themselves forward. This strongly activates the posterior chain muscles which are the main drivers of running speed. 

"... Like this?"

"Definitely better than the last…" Nagan commented, with furrowed eyebrows above his sweet and sour smile.

"Is this even the time for a running lesson!??" Hoppington exclaimed aweary.

"I mean, we're currently running!" Willow quipped with a big smile, almost prideful, even, "Might as well drink while swimming!"

"You'll drown if you do that."

"That'll drown you, Captain Linguistic."

"No kidding, Sherlock, you'll drown."

"Amazing display of wisdom, Miss Willow."

"Patriarch, I smell a large body of water around this proximity!" Pippin shouted, still having no problem within the sprinting session while also carrying Clover who's still processing memories of 8.7 million species in her brain.

"Alright, I'll make sure to remember this place."

Next, be sure to run tall and to bring the knees up high off the ground, ideally somewhere at or just beneath parallel with the ground. This allows room for the maximum firing of the posterior chain and max extension of the hips. 

And lastly, stay relaxed. 

It seems counter intuitive when performing an all out activity such as sprinting, but efforting at 100% often creates too much tension in the body and stifles speed. There were many records where athletes actually speed up when told to run at 90% effort because it loosens them up just enough to let the body flow with the necessary movements. 

"... Oh, wow." In just a few seconds, Jingo managed to overwhelm everyone with her newfound groundbreaking speed using her new form of running, with a slight hint of excitement on her usual deadpan expression.

Everyone except Karasaki and Hopscotch meanwhile—they looked like a bunch of boiled catfish trying to find water in sahara desert.

"There's a cliff in front of us!"

"A cliff as in we're at the bottom or on the top of it!?"

"Come, comrade, we shall commence to jump!" Karasaki shouted with vigor.

"Are you crazy?" Hopscotch retorted, being one of the three usalians who didn't huff and puff like a near dead tuna. "We don't even know how high we'll fall!"

"No guts."

Hopscotch's veins immediately clenched like a pressurized valve. "Alright, bring it on—you bastard!"

"Patriarch! These two vanguards of ours are clinically insane!' Willow cried.

"... We'll jump," Nagan answered.

"What."

'What?"

'WHAT!."

"Oh well."

"PATRIARCH!"

As every second passed led them became even more closer to the aforementioned cliff, the amount of blue sky beheld within their point of view became even more prominent while the rest aspect of the violet forestry began to recede, putting their mind and hearts into an overtime while Jingo could be seen nonchalant as usual, Karasaki busy emulsifying Hopscotch's indignance.

"I-I feel like my legs will freeze before making the jump," Hoppington stuttered.

Meanwhile, Immortal Dragon Overlord could be seen putting on a silent face full of despair, as if she were about to get possessed any second now.

Without any proper warning, Nagan grabbed both of them.

"Screaming will help release the stress, I want both of you to shout loud enough for my ears to bleed."

And so, the front row of the usalian unhesitantly jumped off from the cliff.

"What do you mean by that, PatriaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-!!"

The air whispered past with an unfamiliar intimacy as gravity's invisible fingers toyed with faraway ground. It was as if the world below had transformed into an abstract painting, yet clear and benign of illusion, as its details melting into a surreal blur of stillness—while becoming more prominent and bigger with each second they stayed in the air.

Accompanied by ear piercing screams coming out from two usalians held by Nagan's arms.

Some of the usalian who heard Nagan's on the back row also began to scream to their heart of content, resulting in an even more pain inflicted to any hearing senses within the group radius.

"WE'RE GOING TO DIEEEEEEEEEE!!"

In the middle of the fall, Clover was finally awoken from her temporal coma, "Ah! So that's what an elephant is- WHAT IS HAPPENING!??"

Seeing Clover awoken, Pippin sculpted a genuine face of joy. "We're currently falling from a hei-"

The branches cradled the unexpected visitor with a gentle resistance, each leaf a conspirator in a hushed foolery with gravity.

It was sure to soften the landing for the crew. However, some cracks and bruises were inevitable. Then again, every usalian including Nagan had already acknowledged their regeneration ability to even care much about the wounds. In some way, their ways of thinking are similar.

"... I feel like my spine started to crack."

"How come it starts to crack when you already fell…"

"MY LEGGG!! IT'S BENDING TO THE WRONG SIDE!!"

"Huh, that isn't as bad as how my mind makes it out to be."

"Hah! I touched the ground first, the victory lies on my side, Hopscotch! Defeat, admit you shall!"

"Since when is this a competition!?"

"Uhm, are you alright, my good Patriarch?"

"Not as much, but I appreciate you asking."

At first, Nagan didn't really know how potent or fast the regeneration could be, but seeing how his brain began to get bombarded with an instinctual information on the activity of the {Self-Repairing Bio-Nanites}. In some way, he felt like he is able to control the rate of healing to a certain extent, or even halting the repairing process altogether.

And before they knew it, multiple beasts that were chasing them began to rain from the sky.

"IT'S RAINING ELEPHANTS!"

"THEY ARE NOT ELEPHANTS!!"

As the expedition team panicky regrouped to a safe spot with broken legs, they were able to witness a cacophony of local faunas being crushed under 2,700 kg of flesh again and again consecutively. The bodies even began to form a pyramid the longer they beheld the scene.

"Damn, they really hate us so much to the point of willingly jumping off a cliff."

"More like they can't stop their momentum and were forced to take the sweet fall."

"How come they immediately die though?"

"Your surface area also scales with the square of your height and length, which means the bigger you are, the higher your terminal velocity, which makes your fall harder."

"Whoaaa."

"We're witnessing a mass suicide, and you're teaching her physics."

"AAAH! THEIR BLOOD SPLATTERED ON MY CLOTHES!!"

"Can you impart us some of your wisdom, Patriarch?" asked Immortal Dragon Overlord, still hanging on Nagan's arm like a baggage. "You seem to notice that this will happen."

"They are pack animals," Nagan wryly smiled. "Relative to the size of faunas in this world, an animal that big shouldn't be behaving like a lion sniffing for a meal. There are more factors that I observed when we fight it, but to put it simply, a curious animal won't come that close to inspect a foreign entity.

"Unless they are a part of a bigger social structure. Hard and efficient too, but not as coordinated."

"So the one that we fought is a scout or some sort?"

"Well, we can speculate more of that later." Nagan then glanced at the new area that the expedition was brought into, as the falling mammoths still ensued in the background. "The able should carry the disabled, let's get somewhere safe first."

"Are you saying that this place isn't safe, Patriarch?" asked Willow.

"You didn't see that loud mass graveyard in the making?"

"Well, there is a chance that there are some of them who reside in the same level of elevation and are coming after us as we speak," Nagan nonchalantly answered, still carrying Hoppington and Immortal Dragon Overlord like sandbags. "Worse outcome, none of those beasts that are chasing us are in this area."

"Why is that?" Willow tilted her head.

"It means that there is something here that's able to deal and scare those stampedes of mammoths away," Hopscotch answered with furrowed eyebrows. "An apex predator."