During this time, everyone's attention was focused on the church, the abdication of Van 'er the Fifth, and the series of events that happened after that. Compared to the major event that shocked the entire Dawn Continent, no one would pay attention to the life and death of an insignificant person.
However, strictly speaking, Hollins wasn't an insignificant person. He was the sheriff of White Raven City. The defense of White Raven City was the fiercest battle in the Northern Region. Ancer's strategy of exchanging space for time worked in the end. He coldly sacrificed 60,000 people in the city in exchange for time for the army to assemble. Compared to most of the people who didn't leave anything behind, Hollins' name at least appeared on the merit list.
However, for the Sacred Alliance, the entire human world, and even the Dawn Continent, the sheriff of a city was indeed too insignificant. After the victory in the Northern Territory, Onsai immediately sent people to White Raven City to investigate the reconstruction plan. However, when the people he sent arrived, they all fell silent. The former town was now in ruins. The buildings had been destroyed, and corpses were piled up everywhere. Blood dyed the ground brown, and flies were buzzing around.
There was no sign of life within a radius of more than 20 kilometers. There was no possibility of rebuilding this place.
Because too many people had died, it was difficult to distinguish them. Even a complete list of the dead couldn't be found. Fearing that so many corpses would bring diseases, the Northern Region sent out troops to dig a huge pit and bury all the dead.
During this process, no one realized that Hollins' body wasn't among them.
In fact, even if someone did notice, they probably wouldn't be surprised. After the city was breached, the hungry monsters rushed in and slaughtered while feasting. Therefore, there were many mutilated corpses in the city, and some of them couldn't even be found.
The chubby sheriff looked delicious, and it wouldn't be surprising if he was eaten by monsters.
Even Hollins thought he was dead for sure.
After the city was breached, he retreated to the Frog Tavern as promised. There, he saw Warren and some other survivors. They organized a few teams to deal with the monsters that rushed into the city. Unfortunately, Hollins' leg was injured, so he couldn't fight like the others. He could only guard the Frog Tavern with his weapon.
At that time, the city was in complete chaos. Screams and wails could be heard everywhere. People were running for their lives, but they didn't know where to go. Everyone's face was filled with despair.
Hollins' palms were sweaty as he held his sword. When he made the decision to fight to the death at the top of the city wall, he appeared very heroic, but when the excitement died down, he suddenly felt uneasy again. Survival was the instinct of all living creatures, and no one was willing to die just like that, especially in vain. But many times, fate left people helpless.
At that moment, White Raven City had completely turned into purgatory. Because of fear, Hollins subconsciously wanted to paint a mark on his chest. However, when he raised his hand halfway, he remembered that they had been abandoned by the church. It seemed that there was no point in praying to the gods now. At that moment, Hollins vaguely heard a cry for help from the opposite street. Judging from the voice, the person crying for help should be a little girl about ten years old. Her mother had been attacked by monsters.
The chubby sheriff hesitated for a moment. Now that he was the only one left in the Frog Tavern, Warren and the others were not around, and he was probably no match for those monsters. Then, he heard the girl's cry for help again. The voice was very mournful. Hollins gritted his teeth and finally stood up with his uninjured leg.
His face was red as if he was ashamed of his previous cowardice. With a roar, he rushed out of the door, not caring whether he could defeat the monster or not. He charged in the direction of the voice. However, Hollins' luck didn't seem to be very good tonight. He had only taken two steps when he was knocked away by a startled military horse.
The last scene in Hollins's memory was of White Raven City burning.
The sheriff thought that this was also the last scene in his life, but when he opened his eyes again, he saw a bowl of roasted meat. Hollins's tears immediately flowed down. Since the beginning of the battle, he had only drunk two mouthfuls of water. Although he had some food with him, his mouth had always been dry due to extreme tension, and he couldn't eat it at all.
Previously, when he was under the threat of death, he did feel hungry, but now he couldn't care less. Hollins didn't even care if he was dead or alive. All he wanted was to eat that bowl of meat.
Just as the sheriff was wolfing down the meat, his door was pushed open. When Hollins looked up and saw who it was, his movements suddenly froze, and he forgot to close the half piece of meat in his mouth.
"Sorry, we're late." That person spoke, apologizing.
Hollins's expression, however, turned cold. "Didn't you leave a few days ago?"
The sheriff didn't expect that the person who saved him was Daina, the branch president of White Raven City's Magic Association. Daina had disappeared with the people of the church the night before the monster siege. How did she save him?
Daina explained, "At that time, I received an emergency order from the board of directors, asking me to secretly evacuate all the mages in White Raven City out of the Northern Region within three days. As soon as we left White Raven City, we were temporarily placed under house arrest in the Merton Dukedom's palace. However, there was a mage I knew there, and with his help, I escaped with some of the mages in the guild. However, it was already too late when we rushed back. Apart from you, we only managed to save seven people, and the teleportation portal was destroyed along the way. We lost half of our men in order to fight our way out."
Although Daina described it casually, as someone who had fought those monsters, the sheriff knew the huge price that the White Raven City branch had paid to save the eight of them, including himself. It wasn't easy to fight their way out of the countless monsters.
After listening to the female mage's explanation, Hollins' resentment towards the mages in White Raven City had mostly dissipated. Daina and the others were only carrying out orders from the higher-ups, and didn't know what was going to happen. They didn't deliberately abandon the people in the city and escape on their own.
There weren't many mages in the Northern Region to begin with, and most of them were born and raised in the area. Some of them returned to their hometown after studying abroad, and they had deep feelings for this land. Therefore, to prevent any accidents from happening, the Magic Association temporarily placed them under house arrest after they evacuated.
Daina didn't regret going back. What she regretted was that she couldn't save more people. At the same time, to avoid being tracked down by the board of directors, Daina arranged for the remaining eight survivors of the battle of White Raven City to live in a remote manor, and planned to give them new identities later.
However, at this moment, neither Daina nor Hollins probably realized the far-reaching impact of this incident. In the eyes of future historians, this small incident that happened in White Raven City that night was even more important than the change of the pope of the church at the same time.
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