"Historians often offer skepticism when reviewing wars that involve orcish and goblin tribes in the past. There should be no way for nomadic, tribal people to match a proper army, they often say. These selfsame historians often fail to consider that while most armies relied on a levy of peasants for the majority of their manpower, almost every single adult amongst the tribes double as members of their standing army by default." - Seamus Cartwright, on the folly of narrow-mindedness amongst scholars

In the end, Cal stayed in paradise for three more months before she departed. It had taken longer than she expected, but she learned the technique to repair damaged pathways from Shi-Huang, at least until the older man nodded with satisfaction with her progress. As he mentioned, unlike him, she could not make use of the technique to help others, because of how her mana basically refused to do much of anything outside the confines of her own body, but she found that she could apply the technique on herself without the aid of external tools like the needles he used, purely with an application of her own mana.

She also received a letter from Xain in response to the letter she sent along with the many souvenirs she purchased for the people back in the Empire. Other than small talk and some personal grumbles about how old Halmout always had a stick up his arse as usual, Xain also mentioned that in a year or two, after the Empire stabilized and rebuilt somewhat from the civil war, he would consider to offer the placement of a teleportation gate between Paradise and Al-Shan.

The offer made sense. From the political side, it would greatly improve the Empire's image to be one of the places connected to Paradise, something the merfolk that lived in the vicinity would especially approve of. From the practical side, Paradise had its seven gates that all lead to different corners of the world, and while the city itself was located in Western Alcidea, a gate at the Al-Shan Empire would easily shave off at least two weeks of travel for any wishing to travel from one to the other. It helps that notwithstanding deeper merfolk settlements, the Al-Shan Empire was basically the North-Westernmost civilized country in the present world.

That such a gate would make a visit home far easier naturally appealed to Cal as well, of course, and when she mentioned the matter to Aideen, the Unliving woman responded positively, and explained that Paradise never rejected that sort of offer. The hard part was usually the maintenance of the gate on the other end, due to the somewhat prohibitive costs of the materials needed, and the need for trained space-affinity mages. When considered with the fact that the most common affinity in Al-Shan was space affinity however, she foresaw minimal difficulties in their case.

Aideen even brought the matter to the council, which unanimously approved the idea as she told Cal to expect, and had Hans pen a formal letter to Xain that a plan to establish a teleportation gate between Paradise and Al-Shan would be welcomed with open arms whenever they felt ready for it.

That little fiasco naturally caused another response from Al-Shan, a letter penned by a bewildered Xain utterly curious just how the proposal he mentioned off-handedly in a personal letter received such a favorable, official response that quickly. Cal penned back a letter that described some of the friends she made in Paradise, naturally with the Silver Maiden mentioned. That letter prompted another series of letters full of disbelief not only from Xain but also many of the ministers that knew Cal personally, which amused Aideen to no end.

*************************************

It was on a breezy day in early autumn that Cal departed from Paradise. She still wore the same sort of outfit she bought for summer, though by now she had over a dozen sets in the same style in her storage, as she figured out that she would have more likely than not found the climate too warm for her tastes until winter approached.

Aideen, Hans, Shi-Huang, and several other Magus and Archmagus she had befriended over the past months bid her farewell as she departed Paradise on the road towards the north-east, where the Xewaur Plains, home to the greatest congregations of nomadic orcish and goblin tribes, often unofficially called the "Orclands" by others.

Cal watched the slightly yellowed leaves on the trees as she walked. The season was still young, and the heat of the summer breeze had just started to cool down to the windy autumn gale. As she took sight of the trees and plains ahead, and the mountain peaks barely visible in the distance towards the east, she felt joy bud in her heart. These were the lands her late father told of in his stories when she was young. The very same lands that she now walked on with her own two feet, to explore the wonders abound with her own eyes.

The Xewaur Plains would be roughly a week's journey away even for her, and that had not included the time she would likely have needed to locate one of the nomadic tribes once she arrived. It would be a shorter route to cut a direct route through the Ezram Kingdom that directly bordered Paradise instead of the route she decided on, which only skirted the outskirts of the kingdom, but from what Aideen had told her, the kingdom had experienced much civil disturbance over the past year, supposedly an old cult of human supremacists - remnants of a long-dead kingdom that used to stand in part of the lands now claimed by Ezram - that experienced a resurgence and caused much public unrest.

Cal wisely decided it would be better to add three days to the duration of her journey than bother with the possibility of fanatical lunatics, which would sour her mood more likely than not. She also didn't feel like it mostly because it would make the empire have to clean up the mess she would most certainly leave in her path, which she would like to avoid if she could.

The path she chose would mostly keep her in the territory of the Coalition of City-States, and it only briefly went across a corner of Ezram before she would reach her destination, so she hoped that should avoid most trouble.

Although should trouble choose to chase after her, she would not hesitate to teach it a lesson or three.