The Greatest Archmage To Have Ever Lived [OP MC, LitRPG]

The orcs had the decency, at least, to come out of the city.

Sael stood at the edge of his cloud as it drifted toward Enariel's ruined gates, studying the force assembled before him. About seven hundred warriors in formation, their discipline better than he'd expected. They weren't hiding in the streets, waiting to ambush him from windows and alleyways. They'd marched out through the gates they'd broken and arranged themselves in clear view, weapons ready, making no pretense about what was coming.

He could respect that much.

The cloud descended slowly enough that he had time to take in the scene. A body lay in the dirt outside the gates, crumpled and still. It had no head and the matter spilled on the ground suggested it hadn't been a clean decapitation. Must have been a gruesome death.

His gaze moved past the corpse to the army itself. Most were regular warriors, levels ranging from the eighties to the low hundreds. Dangerous to less than ordinary soldiers, that was for sure, but nearly not great enough to do all the things they did.

Which brought his attention to the real army. Standing at the front, separate from the mass of fighters, were five figures in heavier armor. The orc lord and his generals, almost certainly. The Corruption clung to them like a second skin, he could feel it even from this distance, that familiar purple energy that set his teeth on edge.

He tried to identify which was which. The largest orc stood slightly forward of the others, a massive figure whose armor looked like it had been pieced together from a dozen different sets. The orc lord, probably. Barek, if Sarek's information was accurate. The four flanking him would be the generals, then. Their equipment was varied—one favored massive pauldrons, another wore lighter armor that suggested speed over protection, a third had enough scars visible on his arms to tell a story of survived battles, and the fourth carried a sword that hummed with enchantments even at this distance.

The lord and his generals were the only ones Corrupted, which meant they were who mattered most. The regular warriors were dangerous in numbers, but the Corruption made its hosts exponentially more lethal. Those five would be the real fight.

But where was the elf?

Sarek and his men had talked about an elf leading them, working with the orc lord. Sael's eyes swept across the formation again, searching for it, not finding him. Where... wher—

Ah. There.

He squinted, focusing on a shimmer in the air near the generals. An invisibility spell, competently cast. Most people wouldn't have noticed it at all. But Sael could see the mana fluctuations around the figure, the way the air bent slightly wrong where the spell met reality. He used the skill [Third Eye], and suddenly the elf stood clear as day in his vision, tall, thin, with the angular features of his kind and an expression that managed to look both bored and contemptuous at the same time.

Good. Everyone accounted for.

Sael turned to step off the cloud and felt a small tug on his robes.

He stopped, turned back, and looked down.

The little girl from before stood at his feet, one hand clutching the fabric of his sleeve. Gorek's daughter. Her eyes were wide, frightened in a way that children shouldn't have to be frightened, and her voice came out small when she spoke.

"Don't go."

For a moment, Sael just looked at her. And behind her, he could see the other survivors from the barrier watching, human refugees, the prisoner orcs, all of them silent and tense. They knew what he was about to do. Some probably thought he was mad, one man against an army.

Sael found himself knowing what to do. That was unusual, he'd spent decades being terrible with people, saying the wrong thing or nothing at all, watching conversations die because he'd failed to grasp some basic element of how people talked to each other. But with this child, somehow, it came naturally.

Maybe that was a good sign, some of those social skills were coming back to him, slowly unfreezing after years locked away.

Ding!

[Charisma +1]

[CHAR: 184]

Ah, called it.

He crouched down. He'd read once, in some book about dealing with children, that you were supposed to get on their level and make yourself less imposing.