Four days later.
The daylight was perfect.
The sky, scrubbed clean by the torrential rain, was a dazzling blue. Fierce sunlight poured down, steaming the Reed Riverbank with a warm scent of earth and water vapor.
Summer was announcing its arrival with a bright, blazing palette.
At the Reed Riverbank, the current was still swift, carrying the post-rain murkiness as it battered the reeds leaning every which way along the shore.
Old Beaver Kenken sat motionless on the soggy mudflat, its back to the warm sun. Its once sleek, glossy brown fur clung wetly to its body, and its tiny figure radiated utter dejection.
Its precious dam... was gone.
In the earth-shaking downpour a few days ago, the raging floodwaters rushing down from upstream had swept it away with the ease of a naughty child tearing up a scrap of rotten paper.
The branches it had painstakingly gnawed down, the mud and stones it had carefully selected, and the safe, warm little nest hidden deep within the dam... all gone.
Only a few lonely thick branches remained on the river's surface, washed crooked and askew by the current and pitifully wedged between cracks in the rocks, proof that it had once existed.
Kenken's little eyes stared blankly at the wrecked river channel.
It whimpered, heartbroken.
That had been its home!
A fortress it had gnawed out bit by bit with its big incisors—a hope for fending off otters and raising its young!
Now, it had all gone down the drain.
Wuwu...
At that moment, Yano was walking down the dirt road along the riverbank, its wheel ruts pressed even deeper than before.
After wiping out the Corrupted Lizardfolk a few days ago, everyone in the adventuring party had received a hefty commission. He was no exception.
The money would be