Buena Village was a remote settlement on the southern outskirts of Roa City, in the Fitoia Territory.
At that moment, a pall of lifeless gloom hung over it.
A drought had struck-not a catastrophic one, but hardly a minor one either.
The weather had been unusually hot and dry through late summer and early autumn that year.
For over half a month, not a single drop of rain had fallen from the sky.
The scorching sun seemed determined to wring the last trace of moisture from the earth.
For Buena Village, whose people made their living growing aslan wheat and Batiels Flowers,
this was undoubtedly a disaster that could shake the foundations of their livelihoods.
In the fields outside the village, the hard earth
had cracked from the severe lack of water, leaving ugly, crisscrossing fissures like the wrinkles on an old person's face.
The wheat seedlings, which should have been thriving, now drooped listlessly, their yellowed leaves hanging limp.
They looked as though every ounce of life had been drained from them, a sickly sight that filled the villagers with dread.
Even the stream beside the village, normally crystal clear and regarded by the villagers as their source of life,
had fallen considerably, exposing broad stretches of dry, cracked riverbed littered with a few dead fish, their pale bellies turned upward.
The air carried a parched smell of dust and withered grass.
The simple, honest smiles that usually graced the villagers' faces had vanished.
In their place were deep worry and lingering anxiety.
No ringing work songs could be heard in the fields anymore, only helpless sighs.
Even Paul Greyrat, the village's resident knight, who was usually so cheerful he could treat the falling sky as a blanket,
had spent the past few days with his brows constantly furrowed.