City of Commerce, Abadi

While all manner of affairs in the territory were waiting for their lord to handle them, Landen was wandering through orc lands west of Iowa Pass, the westernmost border of his territory, within the Hindukush Basin.

As a buffer zone between the Beastmen Plateau and the Gallop Plains, the entire Hindukush Basin was almost surrounded by mountains on all sides, while the plains within the basin were also rolling with hills and interlaced with waterways. This sort of terrain could be said to combine the advantages of mountains and plains; not only was its magic abundant, its resources were rich as well.

The basin's total area was less than one-third that of the Gallop Plains, but whether in mineral deposits or woodland, it far exceeded the Gallop Plains. To the south lay vast stretches of forest, part of the same edge of the continent's Central Great Forest as the great forest west of Baron Gallop's Territory, only separated from it by the Iowa Mountains.

Landen had entered the interior of the basin by relying on Blaze to fly over the forest from the south, then exploring northward from there. Though he knew full well that a pile of lawsuits and disputes back home were waiting for him, the lord, to resolve, the issue on the western border was the one that concerned the territory's survival.

Of course, exploring within orc lands also brought Landen a very novel experience.

For instance, the division of power here was vastly different from what Landen had imagined. The orcs within the basin had two large tribal alliances: Scorch Wolf and Forest Cat. All the medium and small tribes in the basin maintained an arm's-length, neither-close-nor-distant relationship with these two tribes, and aside from the two great tribes, the Hindukush Basin also had quite a