226 Flashback. (1/2)

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-Flashback-

She was just a naive kid, and her parents used to tell her many bedtime stories.

Even as a kid, she wanted to roam places. Whenever she heard adventure stories, it would excite her so much that instead of sleeping, she would ask her mother to complete the story no matter how late it was.

Being in a small village, those stories were her only source of entertainment.

Since she listened to all those stories, the little Raven had decided that she would also go adventuring when she grew up and became strong.

However, even when she wanted to become strong herself, the stories of the princesses getting saved by their knights in the shining armor were still her favorite. Despite her dreams being different from other girls around her age, she was still a little girl, and such stories left a deep impression on her.

Maybe not every girl would dream of some knight saving them from a life-threatening situation, but Raven certainly had dreamt of it many times before.

Even that night, before going to sleep, the little Raven had asked her mother, ”Mom, where do these knights live?”

”Hahaha~... Raven, they don't live anywhere specifically. When you are in need, a knight would just magically appear there,” the mother sweetly laughed at her daughter's innocence.

Reassuring her daughter that she would find her own knight when it is the right time, the mother tucked her in the bed and went out of the room, unaware of the tragedy that would follow soon after.

...

The next day, the Beast Wave happened and many of the villagers died in a few minutes.

Little Raven had just woken up when she saw her parents enter her room, and her mother anxiously got her out of the bed.

In a matter of seconds, she found herself being dragged towards the small cliff. She tried to question what was happening, but her parents were too busy focusing on other things.

On the way, there were ferocious wolves that tried to attack them but her father managed to kill them. Raven swept her eyes to the surroundings and noticed that there were many Beasts in the distance attacking other people.

”H-hey hey. Look here. Nothing is wrong, Raven. Aren't you a brave girl? Just stay here, Mom and I will come back, okay?” These were the last words she had heard from her father who went back to the village with her mom to save others.

With tears in her eyes, Raven waited and waited for a long time. She was obedient and almost never disobeyed her parents. Slowly, even night fell but there was no sign of her parents returning.

Although she was little, Raven was able to understand the situation, and that only caused her to cry more. She couldn't take it anymore and decided to run back to the village.

There were mutilated corpses littered all around the village. Their blood flowed from their corpses and joined to form many dark red puddles of blood.

Raven was brave, but not so much that the horrendous sight of her friends and neighbors' corpses wouldn't jolt her back. For a couple of seconds, she couldn't even believe that all of this was true.

Tears couldn't stop running from her eyes and she was about to shout for her parents.

However, just then she heard a couple of footsteps and the voices that followed,

”Gather all the survivors! Boss said that whatever we make by selling them as slaves will be ours.”

”The few who survived and remained are only children though. The adults ran away...”

”Does it matter?! huh?! And don't you know? Children these days are in high demand, hehe...”

...

When Raven first heard the footsteps, she wanted to run towards them but hearing their conversation caused her to stumble on the ground.

*Thuddk*

”Who is there!?”

There were dry tree leaves scattered all over the ground so when she dropped, it created a lot of noise.

'Mom... Dad...' Raven hoped to find her parents who would protect her, but she also stood up to run away. She might be a little girl but even she knew that those were the bad guys and she had to run away from them.

As she ran away, she thought of finding her parents, but the fear that the bad guy was behind her and would catch up took over her body and she couldn't stop.

In the moment of her peril, there was no knight in the shining armor to save her or find her parents.

She kept running and didn't dare to stop and look behind. Only when she was surrounded by concrete buildings did she stop around the corner where people passing by looked at her with scorn in their eyes.