Chapter 187: Chapter 170 – A Lesson in Humility

"For all its flaws, its frequent internal conflicts, and the often drastically different cultures from one province to another, the Hassid Caliphate has been one of the most stable nations in history. The Caliph's hands off approach to the other nation-provinces - it has to be noted that the Caliph was closer to an undisputed first amongst equals, and that none of the other provinces were predominantly dwarven like the Al-Hassid itself - meant that races tended to congregate with their own in other places, governed by their own leaders who in turn pays respect to the Caliph. To many it appeared like building a house out of cards, but it was a system that retained balance and allowed the Caliphate to exist for so long now." - Assem Al-Hassid, Caliphate Royal Historian

By the evening after the egg hatched, Cal brought the party out of Kesheri, and headed north towards Caracan, since she knew Kino would need to visit there to collect on her bounty for the whole mess she pulled off back at Oajib.

 

This was a far longer trek, as Caracan was far to the north of the Caliphate, a good month's journey by foot, which was what Cal opted for, since she had after all brought her nieces and student partly for training, and sitting in a carriage would be useless for that purpose.

 

They had to cross through three other provinces to reach Caracan, first through Larseta north of Kesheri, one of the Caliphate's breadbasket region, where they mostly grow wheat and barley, and renowned for the alcohol they brew there, courtesy of many dwarven master brewers who took up residence after finding out about the quality of the local wheat.

 

Further north of Larseta was Golmos, one of the few forested regions in the Caliphate as a whole, where the main exports were luxury woods. Cal was quite surprised to see their forestry program, ran by some elvish and goblin immigrants, which kept the lumber sustainable by only harvesting a set amount each year, and planting new trees for every one felled, keeping the supply limited and the price high, while ensuring that the forests would remain profitable for a long time to come.

 

Since the majority of her party were of elvish descent themselves, a few of the immigrant elves who worked for the forestry program were quite open towards Cal and the girls, and treated them to a meal, where they complained about poachers - that is, illegal loggers - that had no long term vision and kept making their jobs harder.

 

As a bit of practice for the girls and to help out the local elves, Cal allowed the girls to take up bounties from the local guild related to those illegal logging operations. She mostly observed from behind along with Kino and Dan as the girls tried to find any information they could find. A breakthrough came when a recent case of illegal logging activity was found, where Elaina and Sidonie managed to find a track that they followed to the logger's hideout.

 

Cal just watched as her nieces and Ying Xiao rampaged through the logger hideout while holding an apple for Lumi to munch on. Leila had asked her to look after the little drake, which had doubled in size over the past two weeks, which she did with pleasure. The little critter had quickly bonded with everyone, though it remained closest to Leila.

 

As for the loggers themselves, Cal saw that they had no fighters worth mentioning, other than a few rougher mercenary types hired as muscle, and the girls just barreled through their encampment with minimal difficulties. They even had enough leeway to catch the loggers alive instead of going for the kill, though most of those loggers were sporting broken bones, burns, or signs of electrocution.

 

When they questioned those loggers, some of them quickly talked about two other gangs they know of, even warning the girls that one of them supposedly had a rogue archmage behind them. For that, Leila promised to ask for some leniency for them, since they had so kindly cooperated.

 

The second gang they struck - they had made a quick trip to the guild to claim their bounty for the first batch of prisoners first - proved to be smaller and poorer defended, and it didn't even take ten minutes to wrap them all up and bring them in for the bounty.

 

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It was when they hit the third gang that they encountered some trouble. The fight went well at first, even if the gang had more muscles hired than the previous ones, but what happened next nearly ended up fatal for the girls.

 

To their fortune, Sidonie had noticed the buildup of mana from afar - she was the most sensitive to it amongst Cal's nieces - and when the bolt of fire magic came sailing towards Leila out of the blue, she had reacted fast enough to tackle the girl down, allowing both to escape the strike with only minor burns on their sides.

 

Ying Xiao was less lucky and was struck by another bolt, which engulfed half of her body furiously, though the girl was clearly still trying to move towards the fire mage despite being literally set on fire. Several hired mercenaries stood in her path however, and in her condition she couldn't wipe them out quickly.

 

Elaina dodged another bolt of fire headed her way, and Cal could see the fire mage condensing another aimed towards Leila and Sidonie, who were still getting up. She wordlessly handed Lumi over to Kino, and a moment later, practically vanished from where she stood as she pushed her magic to its full extent, crossing the distance in mere moments.

 

The next thing the girls knew, the fire mage's body literally fell apart into two pieces, bisected from head to crotch, with Cal's halberd cutting into the ground beneath and forming a small crater from the impact. The magic he hadn't had a chance to throw out fizzled with his demise, as did the flames on Ying Xiao's body.

 

What few thugs remained surrendered on the spot after they witnessed their main backer killed just like that, and Cal had Dan heal Ying Xiao while the other girls tied up the survivors, and collected the heads from the dead.

 

The burns Ying Xiao suffered were pretty bad. Half her face was nearly reduced to charred skeleton, and the right half of her torso also had severe burns. If she wasn't a blood mage of good prowess such injuries would have killed her for certain, but the girl didn't even utter a single exclamation of pain throughout. It still took Dan a good twenty minutes to patch her up properly, including regenerating the eye that was boiled away by the flames.

 

As for the other girls, their few injuries were light enough that Dan simply treated them during the walk back. Cal also chastised the girls a bit for underestimating their enemies, and pointed out to the girls that they would not necessarily have someone who could take such injuries without dying all the time.

 

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