Li stood behind the adventurers. They were hidden behind the line of trees behind the creek that formed a natural smokescreen of sorts. The creek gurgled down below, needing a good five meter drop down to reach.

Li took note of the positioning of the adventurers, and found no complaints. Launcelot and Vahid were positioned several meters away from each other at the very front, each leading a group of bronze warriors that were meant to intercept any orcs that managed to scale up to their position from the creek.

Right behind them, the mages and rangers were in position, ready to rain down projectiles and damage.

Everybody was silent, a certain tenseness lying heavy in the air. Launcelot had his shield drawn up already while his free hand was balled up into a fist, showcasing his spiked gauntlets. Vahid's greatsword was drawn and held in front of him like a barricade, ready more to shove orcs down back to the creek rather than to cut and cleave.

The bronze adventurers were fidgety, some pale, some sweating, some breathing heavily. All nervous. Five years of training in various adventurer's guilds across the duchy allowed them to remain standing in position and likely fight with all their might, but even then, it was difficult to truly quell the primal fear of death.

Li had told them that he had scouted the orcs' positions out and that they were to appear within a few minutes. He had bidden them silent and ready for engagement.

Noticeably absent were the priests of light. No Gael the Immeasurable, despite Ivo's belief that the man would appear to fight. No matter. The word of the adventurers, some of them paladins having priestly training themselves, would spread well enough.

Li checked up on Ivo by feeling his presence, and ascertained that the high priest was healthy and brimming with power that Li channeled to him right now, granting him and the other priests more than enough strength to easily wipe out the orcs.

The druids were stationed below, by the creek, and they were disguised as large bushes, simply waiting for the moment the orcs stepped foot into the creek, and they were here now.

The two hunchback scouts appeared first. They made tentative steps into the creek, their light footsteps splashing ever so slightly through the flowing of the creek's water. Li could feel the adventurers grow even tenser, many of them holding their breaths.

The scouts passed the creek, weaving past the many large bushes around it. When they reached the soil wall, they looked up, and their snouts flared, sensing the scent of adventurers.

Li clapped his hands in that moment, starting the signal for Ivo to and his druids to attack.

The bush disguise around the druids dispelled immediately into clouds of leaves, and they, all their eyes glowing with an influx of divine energy from Li, began their attack.

"[Vine Grasp]" chanted two of the druids as they held their hands towards the orcs.

The hunchback orcs turned around, roaring to meet the threat, but before they could do anything, an eruption of vines from the druids' hands shot forwards and entangled the orcs' limbs, wrapping around their bodies and keeping them from doing anything.

[Vine Grasp] was a weak ability on its own, being merely D-ranked, but spells had two parts to them. A base damage and a scaling modifier that enhanced effects based on the spellcaster's stats.

Under Li's divine blessing, [Vine Grasp], a basic spell that had low base damage and low scaling, could scale off of a portion of Li's stats instead of that of the priests, and considering Li's monstrous stats, even a D-ranked spell would be unspeakably powerful in this new world's standards.

While the scouting orcs struggled under the grasp of the vines, Ivo opened his palm and cast [Moonbeam]. His palm lit up in bright white like a spotlight, casting a beam of sparkling silver light over the orcs's heads.

When the light touched the orcs, their flesh dissolved away in an instant, their heads vaporizing and leaving cauterized and headless neck stumps.

A collective murmur of wonder echoed throughout the adventurers as they saw two Spikeridge Orcs, threats they believed would cause many casualties, instantly dispatched with seemingly little to no effort.

"Now, my druids!" said Li as he made his way past the adventurers past the tree line, making himself visible at the edge of the dirt and rock formation that separated the adventurers from the creek below. "Show the people of Riviera how the Old Faith defends all who accept it."

Ivo and his fourteen other druids stood side by side, each spaced a few meters out from each other, each ready to cast another round of spells.

Li focused his eyesight through the trees and to the rest of the orc group. He saw they had frozen. They had a few courses of action. They could pass the creek to reach Riviera, in which case they had to wade through a heavily fortified position, or they could try and split up and circle around, in which case Li had Justicars in position to intercept them. If they attempted to retreat, then they would also find Justicars behind them, boxing them in.

Yet Li did not expect them to do anything more than a frontal charge. He had researched the Spikeridge orcs of this world, and they were similar to their game counterparts in that once they began a fight, they did not easily run.

As expected, a row of ten orcs charged forwards, their massive frames letting out heavy footsteps on the forest floor. They ran with intent purpose, charging with reckless abandon.

Charging, as Li noted with some confusion, more like sprinters than warriors, not giving any thought to attacking or defending and simply putting their all into moving as fast as possible.

"Druids!" roared Ivo. "Lay waste to these intruders! Let their bones sustain the soil beneath us!"

With that, Ivo kneeled down and slammed his fist into the dirt. A bolt of green energy flashed from his hand into the soil, and his [Crushing Overgrowth] spell came into effect.

From where his fist was planted, a massive outgrowth of vines and roots burst forward, towering high like a living tidal wave of plant matter that subsequently crashed atop a group of orcs, smothering them entirely and crushing them upon the soil.

The other druids cast the same spell, each creating an overgrowth that swamped the orcs charging at their end and flattened them into mulch.

"Somethin' ain't right," muttered Vahid. "Ain't never seen orcs fight like that. No war cries, no clubs, nothin'."

Li put a hand to his chin, his eyes narrowing. He had to agree with that statement. The orcs had charged in as if expecting to die, and there was zero hesitation on their end.

And it was not due to some extraordinary bravery, no, rather, the way they moved, the way they simply sprinted forwards without breaking pace for even a moment even when they saw the crushing walls of vines rising in front of them, felt unnatural.

A distinctively human shriek sounded below, and Li immediately saw that his hunch had been right. One of the druids fell backwards, clutching at his hand. It was blackened and pulsating, the flesh cracking forming hideous abscesses.

From the corpses of the two hunchback orcs, insects began to burst out. Small, flying insects that looked like black wasps, their compound eyes shrouded in a dark and wispy aura.

Li reacted quickly. Before the humans nearby could even register his movements, he had leaped down below, right beside the corpses. The wasps buzzed angrily towards him, and for a moment, he felt surprise.

This was unlike any Elden World spell he knew, and yet, it was strangely familiar. Emanating from the wasps was a distinctive chill, an unnatural, corrupting coldness that Li knew was eldritch in nature.

Regardless, he did not let his surprise prevent him from containing the wasps, and he cast [Fireplume Breath], breathing out a torrent of flame that engulfed the two corpses, reducing them and the insects that festered within them into ash.

"Fall back!" shouted Li to his druids. "Away from the corpses!"

Ivo and the druids followed his commands, leaving Li at the frontlines. He looked to the crushed corpses of the orcs and realized that they were corrupting the overgrowth that had been summoned to kill them, twisting the green vines into blackened, writhing masses of plant-like tendrils that oozed with malevolent power.

Li stepped forwards, and the tendrils reached out hungrily towards him. He cast [Fireplume Breath] again, incinerating every trace of the abominable presence.

As streams of fire flowed from his lips, he noticed from the edge of his vision that the rest of the orcs were scattering. Not to retreat, but to abuse the sudden chaos to try and circle around the creek.

Within seconds, Li was done sweeping the landscape before him in purifying flame. The fire died down when he stopped fueling mana into it, leaving barren patches of steaming soil. He shook his head, waving his hand to use his divine power to bid the grass to grow back.

He then checked on the druid that had been stung by one of the insects. The man was doubled over in pain, the corruption having spread up to his shoulder at this point, warping his flesh into something monstrous, something inhuman.

Ivo was by the man, his hands alight with green as he tried to heal the man.

"The healing is not working," said Ivo, his voice worried. "This corruption is far too foul. It reminds me much of the demonrot the fiends spread among the forests decades back when they wished to rot down the forests and the guardians to aid in their invasion.

And yet, this is also different. Far stranger, far more sinister, far fouler."

Li knelt by the druid and put a hand to the man's infected arm. Small tentacles of rotted and bubbling flesh emerged from the arm, wrapping around Li's fingers. However, Li himself remained completely unaffected.

"Calm yourself," said Li. "And brace yourself. This may hurt."

Li's hand shifted form into a gray, bark-covered tendril as he cast [Root of the Devouring One], an eldritch spell that converted a part of him into a root meant to absorb all creation. It acted similar to spells like [Drain Touch] that absorbed life force, but it was more versatile, capable of even absorbing the power from spells, or as would be the case here, eldritch curses.

When Li coiled the tendril to the druid's arm, there was an immediate change. The blackening, rotting process started to reverse, shifting back down the arm and restoring the limb to its original state, almost as if time was reversing.

Li withdrew his hand, reverting it back from tendril to human digits. The druid's arm was completely healed, but the druid himself was pale from enduring pain. After all, eldritch spells thematically were never pleasant to deal with.

None of them were gentle, nourishing, and painless.

"The rest of the orcs!" shouted Launcelot. "They have scattered around us. We shall pursue them along with the forces Li has stationed to entrap them!"

"No," said Li firmly. He mentally bid all his Justicars and Iona to step down, for he did not want them to touch the corruption. Nor did he want the adventurers to face it either. "This is my miscalculation. This is my fight. The rest of you, druid and adventurer alike, retreat."

The orcs had never been here for Riviera. They were here to corrupt the Winterwoods, to turn it into a monstrous, infected entity. They were here to corrupt Li, believing him a mere forest spirit susceptible to such infantile tricks.

This was not the work of mere orcs, but of a higher power using the orcs as mobile and explosive bags of flesh riddled with a corrupting pestilence. That explained why they never had to raid or hunt for food, how they managed to come here unscathed, and why they ran into battle without any desire to fight - they were only here to place themselves in the correct areas to spread their disease.

Li stood up and began taking steps into the thick of the forest, towards where he sensed the orcs were. He would pick them apart one by one, cleaning these precious woods of their filth. As he took his steps, his druids quickly parted to make way for him, and the adventurers cowered backwards, sensing an aura infinitely more dangerous than any they had felt before.