Variable-length integer schemes are great when you are encoding one integer. But when you are encoding a list of integers, you should really consider a different scheme.

Variable-length integer schemes generally interleave the control bits & data bits. This means you don't know where the next integer starts until you at least partially decode the current integer.

When encoding a list of integers, you would rather put all the control information together, and all the data together. This generally allows for significantly more efficient decoding using SIMD.