"You want to stay here?" Reign raised an eyebrow as he stared at the man in front of him. From what Greenie had told him, this guy and his group were one of those that didn't really cause that much trouble and didn't try to hurt anyone. Greenie had captured them recently and he only planned on keeping them locked for about one more week before letting them go.
Some of the other prisoners had been much worse, there were even those that threatened others that they would find them outside the safe zone and kill them, while some even tried to grab people and force them out of the safe zone in order to harm them. That kind of scum was going to be locked up for much longer, and perhaps Reign would use them in the future if he could get his hands on some contracts that were similar to what the king had used on Licht.
It never hurt to have more powerful groups in the territory, and with the contract, Reign could make sure that their loyalty was real as the repercussions of going against the contract were great. Even the slightest offense would have grave consequences, not to mention anything large, those kinds of things would usually result in death.
"Master, I know it's not my place to say this, but I don't think it's a bad idea, this guy was quite nice to everybody and the only reason I locked them up was that he was a bit cocky when I appeared, so I thought I would teach him a lesson." Greenie suddenly said as the leader of the group twitched a bit.
'All of that was because I was cocky, damn, my back still hurts from him slamming me around like I was some sort of a ragdoll.' The leader thought as he looked at Greenie a bit apprehensively. He made a mental note to never get on Greenie's bad side again.
"I don't know whether or not he was telling the truth when it comes to a mysterious group that led all of them here but-"
"No, it's true." Reign said with a sigh as he leaned back in his chair.
"It's true?" Greenie asked him with confusion.
"Don't you think it's a bit weird how all of this happened, first, all of this started when we left, sure, you could say that the reason groups started coming was because of the giant golden tree that could be seen for miles around Doncaster, but every group that was more powerful came here when there was nobody but you to take them down, even the times when Neil, Cameron or the others arrived, it was mostly because they decided to get back early or had an issue so they returned." Reign said before standing up and going to a nearby window.
"Doesn't it seem like someone was trying to test your power, checking just how powerful you were?"
"I-I'm ashamed, master." Greenie suddenly said before bowing down. "I actually overlooked something so simple but crucial to all of this."
"It doesn't matter, what we do know thanks to this, however," Reign suddenly turned around as a ferocious smile was plastered on his face, "Is that a member of that group is definitely staying here, secretly giving the enemy information and trying to test us."
"Just like he said, they're a slippery bunch, a bunch of snakes, the incident we had on the Grasslands was probably connected to them as well." Reign said as he remembered the time the group was surrounded by monsters who went mad thanks to the deaths of their young ones. Reign and the others knew that someone had done this deliberately and tried to kill them with the help of the monsters, but even after searching for clues, they never managed to find anything, whoever plotted against them that evening made sure to cover his trail well.
"Hmm, well letting you guys stay here wouldn't be a problem, but there's something I need to do before that, just stay here for a couple of days before I finish that up and I'll let you go and fetch the rest of your people, and, of course, you will be staying in the territory, not the prison, I think you had enough punishment after all." Reign said as he glanced at Greenie who simply whistled and looked around the room.
"Ah, thank you, thank you." The leader said as he nodded his head up and down at Reign.
"By the way, why do you want to stay here, ummm, what's your name?" Reign asked as he stared at the man.
"Ah, it's Loreno sir." Loreno said before continuing his words, "Well, the place is quite safe, unlike the small safe zone where we all live, just going out is a problem as the safe zone is in an area where the monsters are anywhere from level 1 to 30, only some of us were lucky enough not to get killed by more powerful monsters at the beginning, not to mention the fact that a lot of people are scared to even try and fight any of the weak monsters thanks to the possibility of stronger ones appearing at any time, usually it's us or another group that goes out with them in case something goes wrong, but we can't do that a lot since our levels would stagnate if we didn't go to more dangerous areas in order to fight."
Reign patiently listened as Loreno narrated the circumstances of his safe zone. He and his group were the strongest in the safe zone and they were the de-facto leader of the zone. Sometimes they would get visitors, often powerful teams that went out to hunt and stumbled across the safe zone. Trouble very rarely came as none of the other groups had any interest to fight over the zone, not to mention the disadvantageous position the safe zone was located in.
"Alright, well, anyway, you can leave, I have already arranged for someone to give you a fresh change of clothes and to take you to your accommodation." Loreno smiled at Reign and bowed down a bit before leaving with the others. The safe zone was filled with buildings and over half of them were empty, to get some accommodation ready for the group didn't take Reign long as he only needed to say a word and someone would get it done.
"Now, shall we find out the rats that have been hiding here, or perhaps we should wait for the others to get back?" Reign asked Greenie with a smile as the latter simply shook his head and sat down on a nearby couch.
"Whatever you think is the best boss, but I do believe that those guys don't have first evolution combatants, or at max, they only have one or two of them."
"I think so too, if they had more first evolution combatants then they would definitely just try to take the safe zone while I was gone, but they actually tested you so many times, they were definitely trying to check just how strong you are, and if they had any chance of winning against you." Reign said before reclining back into his chair.
"Since they hadn't done a thing till now, we can safely assume that they are not really a threat when it came to fighting face to face, it's their annoying tactics and schemes we have to look out for, unfortunately for them, they dared come to my territory, they shouldn't even dream of leaving easily." Reign showed his teeth as he ferociously smiled, with a swipe of his hand he brought out the territory menu and browsed through it.
Thanks to him increasing his strength and conquering Doncaster, he had a lot more options when it came to checking the territory. He could even view the profile of each of the residents of the safe zone as well, of course, the profiles would show their face, age, height… There was no mention of levels or anything like that, still, it was a useful tool to have as Reign had a branch of Yggdrasil that was connected to him.
The World Tree wasn't called like that for nothing. Not only did the tree give him incredible boosts to his stats inside Doncaster, but it also gave him unparalleled authority over the territory, one that nobody else had. Not only could he view everything and even teleport inside the safe zone, but he was also able to use part of the tree's power and focus on a single person, uncovering everything about them.
Even if the person was wearing a disguise, Reign could see how they truly looked like and who they were. The whole status screen would also be shown to Reign, whether this was thanks to the tree specifically or because he also had the [ Inspect ] skill, he didn't know. But he was able to see the whole status, the name, race, level, stats, skills… everything would be laid bare to him.
The only drawback was that he could only do that for one person at a time, and he would only be able to do it 3 times a day.
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