Chapter 680 The Protective Dome



With Reign now having conquered the city together with his men, he was able to easily integrate it into his territory with a portal. His allies had also joined in the battle after Beast had explained how large the city was and how powerful of an enemy they had faced, but the battle they were expecting to happen never occurred in the end.

Thanks to Reign and the others using Jack and the other three personal guards of the Butcher, they were able to kill the enemy Tier IV combatants bit by bit and decrease their strength by a considerable amount before the final battle took place.

With most of the Tier IV combatants being eliminated, the enemies that were left were simply far too weak to truly pose a challenge, which led to their quick and easy defeat, culminating in an anti-climactic final battle.

With the city under their control and with a portal installed, the people from Doncaster were able to easily walk in and start helping them out. Even though the number of people present in the city of Wilkashere was much larger compared to Doncaster, only a small percentage of them were hostile while the others helped them out.

"Seems like that is all for now," Lola said from the side as she smiled at Reign and the others who had already heard about her from Wolf.

"Yeah, with the Butcher and his gang gone, the city should return to normal fairly soon." Reign said with a nod of his head before everyone suddenly stared at the ceiling.

The dome that had been protecting the city from any monster attacks in the past was suddenly flickering, and in a matter of moments, it disappeared.

Right as everybody was about to panic, a giant golden tree appeared on top of the building where Reign and the others had fought against the Butcher. The long, golden roots quickly started piercing through the building before burrowing in the ground while the city started shaking.

"What the hell is going on?!" Wolf asked Reign who shook his head as he also had no idea, but he could sense that the tree was happy for some reason.

As the shaking intensified, Reign and the others started sending out people to stand at the edge of the city in order to combat any monster that might try to get inside. Minutes passed, and although there were no monsters coming at them, the shaking of the city had still not ended, making many people nervous, as well as a bit scared.

Everybody knew just how dangerous the outside world was, and the dome was the one thing that had protected them from the monsters all this time, losing it was a huge blow to the citizens and some had started blaming Reign and the others for the disappearance. After all, the dome did disappear soon after Reign had managed to take over the city, so the dome's disappearance had to be connected to him in some way.

As more and more people arrived where Reign and the others were, the shaking continued growing more frequent, as well as stronger. People were afraid, they didn't know what the hell was going on and why they had suddenly lost the protective dome, and why the city was shaking.

Their answer arrived soon as the ground started cracking in the center of the city Reign was able to sense that his tree was growing happier and happier. It was truly excited for some reason, and soon, Reign connected the dots.

After all, the dome disappeared soon after he took over, but there was another thing that occurred, and that was the appearance of the golden tree. The dome disappeared a mere instant before the tree showed up, and Reign quickly realized that it had to be connected to it.

As Reign was thinking that, the cracks widened before parts of the streets collapsed and fell down as a hole started expanding in the center of the city. Everybody had evacuated from the center, so there were no casualties, but the damage that was being done was not light at all as buildings started collapsing as well.

"Come with me, we need to get close to the center!" Reign suddenly shouted as the others all followed him. Even the allied forces, as well as some of the top fighters of the neutral factions of the city, went after them as they were interested in what was happening.

As Reign arrived near the center, he stared at the giant hole that was still expanding and swallowing up buildings. He could see some pale golden leaves and branches in the hole as he realized just why the city had a protective dome for so long.

They actually had another branch of Yggdrasil. Compared to his, the one found in the center of Wilkashere was larger and seemed to be older as well, but the vitality of the tree was definitely a few steps below the one that Reign had bonded with.

The golden tree was pulling the other tree that had been hidden below the city for god knows how long, and it seems that that was the reason why the dome had disappeared.

"Another branch of Yggdrasil," Wolf said with a shocked expression as he stared at the tree whose branches suddenly started elongating and twisting around the roots that Reign's golden tree had used to wrap around and pull it out.

"Let's go, we need to help out, the faster this process finishes, the faster we will be able to give a satisfactory answer to the citizens." Reign said as he charged toward the two trees with Wolf and the others charging right behind him.

The two trees had started fighting. From what Reign could understand, it seems like once such trees were to establish contact, only one would be left as the other would do its best to devour its power and make it its own.

The branches and roots flailed around the area as Reign and the others started attacking the tree but were incapable of doing much to it as each attack they launched at it would get devoured by a yellow barrier that would appear and tank the attack for the tree.

"That's the same thing as the dome, it seems the tree was what had created the dome that protected the city." Reign said with a serious expression.

"Upon noticing the appearance of another tree, it had pulled back the dome, allowing it to only shield itself so that it could be victorious." 

"We need to help out and make sure the tree is weakened and destroyed by our tree, that would not only make the territory safer as the tree would definitely benefit a lot from devouring another tree that was probably stronger than it, but it could potentially bring some other benefits as well." Reign said as he charged forward before joining the battle.

The roots and branches were incredibly tough, so tough that even Reign that trouble when it came to cutting through them. He wasn't in his peak state, of course, but even then, Reign wasn't certain that he could destroy the branches and roots easily.

With each passing second, the trees came closer as Reign's golden tree was not only pulling the tree toward it but was slowly going down the building thanks to the roots that it was able to control.

The incredible sight of two gigantic trees acting like living beings and battling each other was unlike anything they had ever seen before, and many people started gathering nearby in order to observe the battle.

Reign and the others were constantly harassing and attacking the foreign tree, and luckily for them, after keeping the dome active for so long, the other tree was far from its full power. The trees were now merely 2 meters away from each other, and now … now was the time for the two to truly go against one another and start doing their best in order to not only destroy the other tree but observe and learn how the other was using his powers so that they would be able to mimic it later on.

As more and more people arrived, Reign even received an alarm as it seemed that monsters had been spotted coming near the city from the east. Reign nodded at his teammates as a couple of them left the area and went to where the monsters had been spotted in order to help out and maintain the state of the city.

The nearer the two trees came to devouring each other, the less Reign and the others could do to help out. After all, attacking and weakening the enemy tree was almost impossible thanks to the power it possessed. 

The shield around it protected it against attacks and was able to seemingly make them worthless, so Reign was forced to leave it all to his own tree. He was worried, but he was also confident in its ability to take over the new tree and become more powerful.