While Yoru and the black lion man kept fighting each other and destroying what was left of the small town, I used my "search" spell to look for survivors.
At first, we thought that everyone in town had been killed or kidnapped by the soldiers, but after the beast said something about "hiding the people," I started to think that wasn't the case.
My spell was telling me that there was a large group of people right in our location, but there was nobody around, so I deduced that they must have been hiding underground.
Underground spaces were pretty common in the northern continent since they helped people stay warm during their excruciatingly cold winters. Still, I couldn't find any secret entrance or passage that led me there.