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

Nobody said anything in the hall.

Which was surprising, as Sael had expected considerably more resistance than this.

He'd spent the better part of the cloud ride rehearsing counterarguments in his head. He'd imagined a red-faced lord slamming his fist on something. He'd prepared for tears, he had a whole plan for tears. None of it had been needed, and now he was standing at the front of the hall with a surplus of unused persuasion and no idea what to do with it.

It had been about thirty minutes since the meeting started.

When Sael said, "Hello, everyone. Shall we begin talking about what to do next?", someone in the middle rows said "Yes," quick and almost relieved, and things moved from there.

The first problem was the steward.

Fassel Grenn had apparently been steward of Darransh for twelve years. He'd administered the kingdom's daily governance, managed the military budget, maintained trade relationships with the northern settlements, and, according to three separate people who mentioned it unprompted, personally knew the name of every child born in the city for the past two decades. Sadly he was now dead, and he hadn't proposed a successor.

"He was fourty-four," someone offered from the back, as if that explained it. It mostly did. You didn't pick your replacement at fourty-four unless you had a reason to think about it.

A commander named Vael raised the formal concern. She was direct in the way military people often are. "The position of steward requires formal succession. Traditionally, the sitting steward proposes a successor to the council, who confirms or rejects the appointment. The crown holds veto over the council's selection." A pause. "Steward Grenn did not make a proposal before his death."

"Who's been handling things?" Sael asked.

The answer was a committee of four. Two advisors, a senior merchant, and a priest. They'd organized themselves within hours of Grenn's death because the work still needed doing and nobody had told them to stop. All four were in the hall.

Sael asked a few more questions. He listened to the answers, and then he stepped back.

He didn't announce that they should sort it out among themselves, because that would have sounded like he was washing his hands of it. He just stopped steering and let the room find its own center. It figured things out quickly enough. Heads of great houses turned to look at one another. The senior merchant on the committee leaned over to the man beside him and said something too low to hear. Commander Vael exchanged a glance with one of the advisors.

Sael's role, it turned out, was simpler than choosing: it was sitting there.

He was the king, and the king was watching, and that meant nobody was going to start a fight over the appointment. The heads of the great houses, who by all accounts had spent the past several minutes circling one another with barely concealed ambition, were suddenly civil. Merchants who had grievances with this lord or that general kept their grievances to themselves.

The discussion took a while. Names were proposed and considered. A few were gently set aside. An elderly lord put forward his own nephew with such transparent enthusiasm that the woman next to him gave him a look that could have curdled milk, and he withdrew the suggestion. The committee of four, who had the advantage of actually knowing how the work was done, steered things quietly toward practical choices.

Eventually, a name kept coming up. Torren Vassik. He was in the hall, sitting on one of the middle benches, and every time someone mentioned him he seemed to sink a little further into his seat.

Vassik was a middle-aged man with a neatly trimmed beard and the posture of someone who had spent his career being competent in rooms full of louder people. How a posture conveyed all of that was unclear, but his did. Very expressive posture.

He'd served as one of Grenn's chief administrators for the past nine years. He knew the trade agreements, the military protocols, where the money came from and where it went. Three of the four committee members had worked with him directly, and when his name surfaced for the third time, the priest on the committee said, simply, "He's the one who's been doing half the work already."

The room looked at Vassik, and Vassik looked at his own hands.

"Torren," said the senior merchant, not unkindly. "You can speak up."

Vassik stood. He was about average height, which meant the hall swallowed him a little. He cleared his throat. "I would be honored," he said, and his voice was steady enough, but his ears had gone red and he clearly had no idea what to do with his hands. He settled for clasping them behind his back. Then in front. Then behind again.

Sael liked him immediately.

"I served Steward Grenn faithfully, and I would hope to continue his work in a manner that—" He stopped, seeming to realize he was about to deliver an acceptance speech for a position nobody had formally offered him yet. "If that's what's being discussed. I don't want to presume."

"You're not presuming," Commander Vael said. "Sit down."

He sat down. The relief on his face was visible from across the room.

The consensus settled around him after that. There were a few more minutes of discussion, some of it procedural, some of it people making sure they'd been heard so they could later say they'd had input. But the thing was decided. Vassik would be steward.

Robin, from his bench, ate grapes through the whole thing. Every few minutes Sael would glance over and find the fox reaching for another one and Oz stood near the entrance. He hadn't spoken once.

From there, the other concerns came quickly.

Military: the northern corridor was exposed, patrols had been doubled, soldiers were exhausted.

Trade: the main route north had been disrupted for two weeks and the merchant guilds wanted answers.

Refugees: because of the orcs, several border settlements had sent their people south and those people needed food, shelter, and some indication of whether they could go home.

The word Corruption surfaced three times. Each time, someone changed the subject within a few seconds. Sael noticed but let it happen. He'd come back to it.

Through the rest of it, he mostly listened. He asked questions when something needed clarifying. Once, when a minor official launched into a detailed accounting of grain stores that threatened to turn the entire proceeding into an inventory report, Sael gently cut in with, "I trust the grain is accounted for." It wasn't entirely true, but it saved everyone's afternoon.

Then Sael moved to the orcs.

Everyone in this hall knew the history. The thirty years of decisions that had turned a displaced people into an army. Sael didn't rehash any of it. He didn't need to. The people sitting on these benches understood exactly how they'd gotten here.

What he did was propose a way forward.

The Varathi Valley. Southeastern Darransh. Fertile ground between two ridgelines, well-watered from the tributary that cut through its center. Almost entirely uninhabited. Some shepherds used the lower pastures in summer. There was reportedly a hermit somewhere in the north who had chosen solitude on purpose and would probably not care if he acquired neighbors. Otherwise, it sat empty because the terrain on either side made it hard to reach from the main trade roads, and hard to reach meant ignored.

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Give it to the orcs. Formally. Draw a boundary, draft a charter, make it binding. Theirs. To settle, to farm, to build on and call home.

He said all of this at a measured pace, without raising his voice and when he finished, he looked out at the hall.

Thirty seconds passed, and nobody said a word.

The nobleman on the left who'd been fidgeting earlier had stopped. He was staring at a fixed point on the opposite wall. A military officer in the second row had his jaw set tight, still working through whether his thoughts were the kind you say out loud to your king. Commander Vael hadn't moved, but something behind her eyes was turning. Vassik, the newly agreed-upon steward, was gripping his own knees.

Sael waited, still expecting some resistance eventually.

"I like that idea."

Every head in the hall turned toward Meraine. She was still standing to the left of the aisle, hands folded, and she was still smiling.

"My son was killed by orcs," she said. "Fassel. Your steward. Some of you knew him when he was small, and I won't insult any of us by pretending that didn't make me angry, because it did. It made me furious, and it makes me grieve in ways I am still discovering."

She tilted her head slightly.

"But... I am old enough and honest enough to tell you it did not come from nowhere." She turned her face in the general direction of Sael. "I was in my forties when the orcs came to our gates in winter. More than two thousand of them, with elderly, women and children among them, with nowhere left to go. And I was a priestess on the steward's council, I sat in that room and I knew — as everyone in that room knew — that the eastern quarter was half-empty and the granaries were full, and that we could have taken them in without losing a single thing that mattered."

The hall was very still.

"Yet I said nothing. I let the council refuse them, which is the same as refusing them myself, whatever we might tell ourselves to sleep better." She shrugged. "About six hundred orcs died in the cold that winter because we were frightened and blind. Which is a particularly poor excuse coming from someone who was already blind at the time, haha."

The joke landed flat and hard, perhaps the way she meant it to?

"...I have carried that winter with me for almost thirty years. Every single day of it. And I suppose I always knew the weight of it would find its way back, though I did not expect it to come for my son." Her voice didn't break or thin. It just paused, briefly, and then continued as though it hadn't. "So when your king proposes that we do, at last, the thing we ought to have done from the beginning... yes. I think that is a fine idea. I think it is long overdue."

She folded her hands again and that was that.

"Thank you, Meraine," Sael said, to which the high priestess nodded once.

The hall sat with it for a moment. before Sael moved on.

"I want to talk about Corruption."

The room stiffened dramatically.

"Three times today, someone in this hall brought it up, and three times, the subject was changed before it could breathe. I understand why. It is not a comfortable thing to discuss. But we are past the point where comfort is useful."

He turned his attention toward a broad-shouldered man sitting near the front. "Guildmaster."

The man straightened. He was the head of the local adventurers' guild, and he had the look of someone who had been hoping, very much, not to be singled out.

"Your Majesty."

"Your guild operates across the northern reaches. Your people are in the field more than anyone, more than the military patrols, more than the trade caravans. If Corruption is taking root somewhere, your adventurers are likely the first to see it."

The guildmaster nodded slowly. "That's... not untrue."

"Then I need a system. Any adventurer operating under your guild's charter who encounters symptoms of Corruption — and I will provide a detailed list of those symptoms before the week is out — reports it immediately, through a chain that ends with me."

Sael was still very aware of the number of people in the room focused on him. But when it was for matters he judged important enough, a crowd of even a million would not intimidate him, he found.

There was a pause from the guildmaster. Then, carefully: "With respect, Your Majesty, how would that work in practice? If you are not here—"

"I'll be here," Sael said. "For the next month, at least. Possibly longer. And in that time, we are going to build the infrastructure for this together. Reporting chains. Relay points. Perhaps a direct portal to this place for me to come immediately when necessary. We need trained personnel at each link who understand what they are looking at and what to do with the information once they have it so when I eventually leave, the system stays."

He looked across the hall. "And on that note, I will also be working with every mage in this kingdom who is capable of learning the Purification spell."

Commander Vael spoke up. "The Purification spell is not widely known."

"No," Sael agreed. "It isn't. Which is precisely the problem. You all saw what happened here. You saw what Corruption did to your steward's killer. And you know that two Pillars fell."

That word — Pillars — landed with its full weight. Two of the hegemons who had held dominion over vast territories were gone, and the hall understood, even if some of them hadn't fully reckoned with it yet, what that meant for the wider world.

A lord from one of the middle benches leaned forward. "Speaking of the orc lord... what becomes of him? He destroyed two hegemons. Half the northern territories are going to descend into war over the power those Pillars left behind. Warlords, pretenders, every ambitious house within reach will be scrambling to claim what's empty." He spread his hands. "And the one who caused all of it, what justice is there?"

Sael met his gaze evenly. "The orcs have their own justice. They will apply it to their old lord."

"Old?" The lord's brow furrowed.

"I spoke with the orc lord's son before coming here," Sael said. "He confirmed that his people will be choosing a new lord soon. The former lord's fate will be decided by his own people, under their own laws. That is their right, and I intend to respect it."

The lord didn't look entirely satisfied, but he sat back. Others murmured and Sael let them.

From there, the remaining concerns were handled with efficiency. Border patrol schedules were discussed and delegated to Commander Vael. The merchant guilds received provisional assurances about the northern trade route. The refugee situation was placed under Vassik's authority, which he accepted with a nod and, mercifully, no speech. A handful of smaller matters were raised and resolved or deferred. Sael guided what needed guiding and let the rest move under its own weight.

Gradually, people began to stand, to bow, to take their leave in small groups. The benches emptied in clusters. The nobleman who had proposed his nephew left early and quietly. The guildmaster lingered near the door, exchanged a few words with Commander Vael, and then departed with the look of a man who had a great deal of work ahead of him and no idea where to begin.

Eventually, the hall was nearly empty.

Sael stood at the front, and Meraine remained where she had been for the duration, flanked by two younger priests who had not spoken once during the proceedings. Robin was still on his bench, though he had finally run out of grapes and seemed mildly put out about it. And Oz was where Oz had been the entire time.

The hall felt larger now that it was mostly empty, and Sael turned to Meraine.

"I wanted to ask you about the Path of Souls."

She tilted her head and the smile came back, the real one, the one that had an opinion. "Did you."

"You mentioned it before. And I've been thinking about it since. Quite a lot, actually." He paused. "I'd... like to learn more. If that's something you'd be willing to teach."

Meraine was quiet for a moment.

"The Path of Souls is not a spell, Your Majesty. It is not a technique you study for a season and add to your repertoire. It is a discipline. A way of perceiving the world that requires you to unlearn most of the ways you currently perceive it before you can even begin." She folded her hands. "Even for you — and I say this with full knowledge of who you are and what you've accomplished — it would take years. Several of them. Possibly many."

"I have time."

"You do," she agreed. "I don't."

The bluntness of it made Sael chuckle.

"I am old, Sael. Not dying, mind you — I'll outlast half the people who left this hall today, and I intend to be smug about it — but I am at an age where I no longer make plans that require years to bear fruit. It would be dishonest of me to promise you a teaching I may not be around to finish."

She turned her face slightly to the left, toward the two young priests who had stood beside her throughout the proceedings. "Which is why I brought someone."

She raised a hand, barely a gesture, and pointed at the priest standing closest to her. "Come forward."

He moved immediately. There was no hesitation in it as he crossed the distance between Meraine and the front of the hall, and when he reached Sael, he pulled back his hood and knelt.

He was young. Mid-twenties, perhaps, though something about the shadows under his eyes aged him in an uneven way, as though parts of him were older than the rest. His hair was brown, slightly unkempt, and his eyes — when he'd briefly looked up before lowering his head — were amber. A warm color made somehow less warm by the fact that he looked like he hadn't slept properly in weeks. Maybe months.

Sael opened his mouth to tell him to please stand up, but Meraine was already talking.

"This is Lance Ederen. He has studied under me for eleven years, and he is the finest pupil I have ever had, which I tell him rarely because it would go to his head." She paused. "He is set to become the next High Priest of Darransh when my time comes to its end. But that end is not today, and not tomorrow, and the boy could use some air."

She turned her face toward Sael.

"If you do not intend to stay in Darransh — and I suspect you do not, not forever — then take him with you. He can teach you the Path while you travel. It would be good for his learning and good for yours, and frankly, it would do him well to see the world before he inherits the responsibilities of a man twice his age." A beat. "He needs the sun. Look at him."

Robin, from his bench, glanced at Lance and then at Sael, and his expression suggested that he was, in fact, looking at him, and that Meraine had a point. Though how Meraine knew how he looked left Sael a bit perplexed.

Lance remained kneeling. When the silence had settled long enough that it was clearly his turn, he spoke.

"It would be an honor, Your Majesty."