Chapter 227: 226 Flashback.

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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.

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She was too exhausted to think about anything at that point. Slowly her eyes closed and she fell unconscious in the alleyway.

When Raven woke up, she desperately wished everything to be a dream, but the reality was cruel.

Little Raven started to cry and only stopped when she had run out of tears. Her belly ached since she hadn't eaten anything yesterday.

*Grr...*

She couldn't take it any longer when her stomach started to growl loudly. Little Raven stood up and viewed her surroundings. She had fallen asleep in an alleyway, so when she got out, the sunlight caused intense pain in her eyes.

Raven looked around and noticed many people with ragged clothing. She recognized some of them since they were from her village.

Immediately, hope lit up in her eyes as she ran around to look for her parents.

In the end, she found an old lady that used to be her neighbor who called her out,

"...Raven?"

Little Raven's body jolted and she found herself in front of the old lady in a matter of seconds.

"G-grandma! Did you see dad and mom? Where are they?" Raven asked with difficulty. Even running around like this took her a great deal of effort because of hunger.

The old lady who had called her look dismayed at the ground and for a moment, she didn't know what to tell her.

"Little Raven... your parents... beasts surrounded them and..." the old lady breathed roughly. She didn't want to give such news to the little girl, but she had no other choice.

Raven's eyes immediately widened with shock and disbelief. She didn't look up to face the old lady and neither did she had the strength to utter any words.

The old lady also walked away after informing Raven. Although she felt guilty, it wasn't her responsibility to feed this little girl.

Raven, in the end, was only 9 years old and it was already fortunate that she was able to think for herself.

In only a single day, her whole world had been flipped all over. One day she was discussing stories about knights saving the princesses in trouble and the other day, she became an orphan, was starving, and there was no one to look after her.

Half of that day passed and Raven didn't know what she would do, but her grumbling stomach got her on the feet and she roamed all around the city searching for food. 

However, her clothes were ragged and dirt covered her face. The disgust in others' eyes was so visible to Raven that she didn't even try to approach anyone.

Since there was no other way, she had to search for food in the alleys where people threw their half-eaten and half-rotten food. Raven was a quick learner and she even learned to steal bread.

'There are no knights in the shining armor,' Raven had concluded when no one came to her aid after she almost starved to death. She had learned that if she didn't do anything for herself, nothing good will ever happen to her.

However, a young girl living on the streets and sleeping in the alleyways could never escape the slave traders' eyes.

These sick people knew that the Beast wave that had attacked the village would make them huge profits. The survivors of such attacks mostly take refuge in the slums or in the alleys where people throw their garbage in.

Though Raven, fortunately, managed to slip from these slave traders' eyes, one day, a drunk man who worked for these slave traders found her.

No matter how sharp, Raven hadn't faced anything like that and it caught her off-guard when that drunk man started forcing her to follow him to the slave trader. She had learned to scavenge for food in just a day, but this was the first time she experienced the real filth of this world.

She struggled with the man, but her small stature didn't help her. The thing that depressed her the most in this situation was how a couple of people did pass by on the street, but no one had the heart to help her.

Slowly, Raven was losing hope, but she didn't stop struggling.

And when she was also losing the strength to continue to resist, it happened...

Little Raven had long ago stopped expecting this, however, this time, her knight did come!

He didn't look so shiny like the knights in the story, but he was still her knight who had saved her. Even if he didn't have the shiny armor, his image in the pitch-black hat was even cooler than the stories she had imagined.

When Ozul had saved her that day, his presence acted like a hot drop of water that suddenly fell in the calm and cold lake that was about to turn into ice, creating ripples that magically warmed this whole body of water.

That moment Raven knew that she couldn't lose this person who had saved her. Her 9 years old heart didn't want to lose that feeling of safety that she felt around him.

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- Flashback End.-

"That is not love, Raven... You are only afraid..."

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