36 Days Left

In the southern Gerudo Desert, Ingrid and Cyril were perched atop a ruin, Ignrid wearing the Tunder Helm to control her lightning. Truth be told, they were all but trapped: a man-eating whale-like creature called a Molduga had taken up residence in the area, and the two of them had come by to kill it.

It wasn't actually that big of a threat to the Gerudo at the moment, but it could always move. Plus, its guts were valuable for making medicines, which the Wolves had wanted to study in an attempt to create a way to reproduce the medicine without actually needing to kill a Molduga each time the medicine was needed.

The problem was, killing a Molduga wasn't an easy task. Even with Ingrid's new powers, they weren't making as much headway as they would have liked.

Once again, Cyril fired an arrow into the sand beneath the ruin. When the Molduga breached the surface of the sand, Ingrid brought down a massive burst of lightning onto the Molduga. Unfortunately, the Molduga survived that burst, just like it had several before it.

"Oh well, it wasn't a complete waste," Ingrid said. "This is at least good practice."

"Not for me," Cyril said. As the sun set over the horizon, some bones on a pillar formed into a Stalfo, which raised a bow and fired at Cyril. Using the air to slow the arrow down, he caught it, fired it back at the Stalfo, and hit it in its ribs, knocking it off its pillar onto the sand.

"You missed the skull," Ingrid said.

"I hit exactly what I was aiming at," Cyril said. The Stalfo tried to make a run for it, but before it could reach a pillar or boulder, the Molduga's jaws appeared around it, and the beast leapt out of the sand, devouring the skeleton.

As it happened, the Molduga's belly was facing the two of them when it breached, and an arrow forged to pierce armor, the winds speeding it along its flight path, hit the creature's belly. As it sunk into the creature's flesh, Ingrid used it as a lightning rod, blasting it with every bit of lightning she had left.

The creature fell on its back, a sizable hole formed in its body.

"Well, looks like that's that," Ingrid said. "Do you really think the Wolves will be able to find a way to make artificial Molduga guts?"

Cyril shrugged. "Linkle says all five of them are really good with magic. All but Shez are great with white magic, and Hapi and Shez both know a lot about dark magic, while the other three are good with regular elemental black magic." He tilted his head, and caught an arrow that had flown where his head had been a second before. "It's worth a shot." Without looking, he fired the arrow back at the Stalfo who had tried to shoot him, the arrow striking true and breaking its skull.

31 Days Left

Raphael had been a very happy man when Balthus had joined the Rising Sun Company. For the first time, he had someone capable of brawling on his level to spar with. Okay, maybe not exactly on his level, because Balthus's technique was a little different than Raphael's. Raphael was primarily a boxer, while Balthus was more of a wrestler. It was a distinction any hand-to-hand fighter would consider important. Still, having someone who's fighting style was similar yet different from Raphael's to spar with had probably benefited him more than someone who fought exactly like him.

Still, today, he wasn't sparring with Balthus, who was busy working on his magic. Instead, he was sparring with Balthus's other sparring partner. And as it happened, countering her fighting style wasn't as easy, mainly because while kickboxers weren't unheard of in Fódlan, boots suitable for adapting the sport for battle were rare.

That didn't seem to be a problem in Hyrule. Linkle's boots, which were red with golden toes and knee pads, with golden wings on them, had a similar effect to Raphael's silver gauntlets. Plus, they allowed her to dash forward at a high speed, though she couldn't turn once she did so.

"You're really good at this," Raphael said.

"Thanks," Linkle said. "I learned how to kick like this from a pirate chef." She then stopped and thought for a moment. "Up until now, I thought he was from the alternate timeline where Hyrule sank into the ocean, which got involved with our timeline in the War Across the Ages, because we were on an island and he had round ears, which were more common in that timeline than in ours. But now that I'm thinking of it...did that timeline have people with three eyes? Because his wife had three eyes, and I thought that was odd."

"Linkle, where I'm from, we don't have Zora, Gorons, Rito, or Gerudo," Raphael said. "I have no idea what peoples who aren't human are supposed to live where, or which ones exist in what timeline, or anything like that. Maybe she came from somewhere else in the world."

"Yeah, you probably wouldn't know, would you?" Linkle said. With that, she aimed another kick at him, and the sparring resumed.

27 Days Left

In all honesty, it actually made perfect sense to Dorothea that the sword-dancing style certain fighters practiced in Fódlan existed in Hyrule as well, and if anyone would have been the ones to use it, it made sense that it was the Gerudo. Still, she was somewhat surprised that it was as effective as it was for them without the use of combat magic.

That's not to say that once she had learned it, she didn't incorporate her magic. Why ever would she not? In fact, she was even teaching some fellow sword-dancers how to perform basic combat magic. Nothing too advanced, just simple Fire, Thunder, Nosferatu, and Heal spells, but even those created a dramatic increase in her fellow Dancers' combat effectiveness.

Of course, the Dancers already knew the two most important spells in the style. Mantra was important because it was essential for avoiding enemy attacks, even ones that weren't obvious, without breaking a Dancer's stride. And Rhythm, the very spell for which the style was created, a stamina-boosting spell that could boost allies' stamina recovery en masse.

As it happened, she was demonstrating that ability now, as Lysithea and seven of the eight who would have been the Black Eagles (Hubert was working on something else) brought down an enormous Black Hinox after wearing down its endurance.