I Only Baked Bread, but I Was Mistaken for the Best - Chapter 110

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 110. A Thousand Jealousies Begin with a Single Eye (1)
“So such a thing happened?”
“I conveyed what I experienced exactly as it was.”
It was late March, and with daylight saving time in effect, Korea was seven hours ahead of Paris.
As evening fell and streetlights illuminated the roads below, Sky answered.
“To think one could make phone calls inside a gate… that’s something I never imagined possible.”
“Is such a thing even possible?”
“It shouldn’t be. Dayeon, you may not know this yet, but gates are far from such accommodating spaces.”
Maestro answered Dayeon’s question—despite being an S-rank Hunter, her actual field experience was still brief.
If ordinary mobile phones actually functioned inside gates, there would be no reason for doctoral researchers worldwide to scramble in search of ways to enable communication within them.
“By the way, is it true that they specifically identified me?”
“That’s correct. Hunter Kim Ri-a. Moreover, the other two remaining here were also clearly named and identified.”
Sky answered Ria’s question.
I couldn’t fathom why Yeon-gi had singled out these four to convey information.
All I knew was that the mysterious Black Smoke had taken an interest in the human world.
And this time, peculiarly, that interest was directed toward a single bakery.
“Why would it be interested in the teacher’s bakery?”
“The teacher, you say…?”
“Ah. The owner there is the one who taught me baking during after-school classes in elementary school.”
“Ah. I see what you meant.”
Upon hearing Dayeon’s words—known to be Yeon-gi’s student—the anxiety that had welled up subsided somewhat.
Meanwhile, Maestro, still wearing his mask and stroking his chin, seized the opportunity to speak.
“When was Yeon-gi first sighted?”
“It was during Joo Gyu-ri Hunter’s re-awakening.”
“And after that?”
“Why are you suddenly asking about that?”
“I’m trying to understand the situation. Everything Yeon-gi has done so far has had a reason behind it.”
Everyone gathered in the room searched their memories, retracing Yeon-gi’s actions.
After Gyu-ri’s re-awakening, Yeon-gi had guided the development of an elixir to revive Maestro and Miracle’s Wife.
It was also Yeon-gi who had saved Sky from nearly dying in the Gangneung Gate.
“Though not recorded in official reports, there must be countless hunters who received help.”
“Then, excluding assistance for hunters, were there instances where she acted of her own volition?”
“There were. At the Gongju Research Complex, that was the first time she crossed the gate.”
Unlike before, when she had been helping hunters entering gates, Yeon-gi displayed entirely different behavior at the Gongju Research Complex.
She emerged directly outside and eliminated the boss monster with overwhelming force, and moreover, closed the gate itself with remarkable ease.
“After that came the incident involving Dayeon…”
“And it was after that when she actively proposed compensation to Hunter Park Su-min.”
“And then this current situation…?”
As the sequence of events became clear, Yeon-gi’s intention was unmistakably evident.
From beginning to end, she had been tracking the black substance.
With power that far surpassed the intelligence networks of the Association and the massive guilds housing S-rank Hunters, I had predicted the emergence of Black Smoke before anyone else.
“Is the objective to recover the Black Smoke?”
“That’s unlikely. Based on the series of incidents we’ve confirmed, the Black Smoke was never completely recovered.”
“Then… is it simply trying to make us aware of it?”
Maestro’s exceptional intellect eventually reached a single conclusion.
Yeon-gi was attempting to inform humanity of the Black Smoke’s existence.
First identifying its location and preparing countermeasures, yet ultimately placing the Black Smoke into human hands.
“I’m not sure why it would do such a thing, but…”
“At the very least, it’s certain that Black Smoke is connected to this incident.”
If this assumption was correct, time was running short.
While only a few had come forward with complaints, there could be far more people experiencing a painful, sharp taste in their mouths after eating the potato bread from that bakery.
“It appears certain that we’ll need to gather and investigate everything.”
“I’ll have the Association issue a summons.”
When the direct authority of three S-rank Hunters combined with the Association’s power, an ’emergency summons’ was issued against the complainants mere hours after the article broke.
All people displaying abnormal symptoms after eating the potato bread were included on the list.
* * *
‘How did things end up like this?’
Hunter Association underground investigation room.
An old man sat nervously on a cold metal chair, tapping his feet anxiously.
As he glanced around, several people caught his eye.
There was a pathetic fellow trembling while adjusting his glasses, and a woman biting her nails with caked-on makeup.
‘Those are people I don’t know. The problem is with these ones…’
A man and woman whose lips and tongues were so swollen from suffering that tears and snot streamed down their faces.
The old man knew these two.
Or rather, he knew the accomplices sitting alongside them.
That’s because these were people he himself had paid to hire.
‘Damn it. This implicates me.’
This was the most dangerous situation in Kim Deok-bae’s seventy-three years of life.
His entire existence had been spent effortlessly taking what belonged to others.
Because of this, he had acquired several nicknames.
Complaint King, Professional Plaintiff, Small Business Parasite—such were the derisive titles.
They were contemptuous monikers earned from draining countless small business owners through every conceivable method while lining his own pockets.
But such things didn’t matter to Deok-bae.
As long as he could make money right now, what did such nicknames matter?
‘I thought this would go smoothly!’
It was really nothing complicated.
Though the bakery had appeared on television and gone viral on social media, it was still just a small business, wasn’t it?
If one applied overwhelming capital and manpower, how could such a place possibly resist?
That’s right.
This ‘Treffle de Bognoir’ affair was his meticulous scheme.
His secret to becoming rich was simple: drive out a successful bakery, open a similar shop, and pocket the profits.
But in the end, Deok-bae’s plan had completely unraveled.
“What? The Hunter Association got involved over this? I ate bread and my tongue went numb—I’m the victim here!”
Kim Deok-bae shouted loudly, but inside, his nerves were burning away.
He’d only meant to destroy a small neighborhood bakery and extort some money, but after eating the bread and experiencing pain, when he tried to press charges, suddenly national-level hunters began getting involved.
The situation had spiraled out of control.
Why had things escalated like this?
‘Why is the Hunter Association even stepping in?!’
Yet he felt no guilt whatsoever.
‘Could one of them have been a hunter acquaintance? Damn it! If that were the case, they should’ve made it obvious or bragged about it! I would’ve been flaunting it all over the place!’
It was a contemptible thought only Deok-bae could have—someone who’d never had time to know the truth about anything in his entire life.
But whether Deok-bae thought such things or not, a strange atmosphere hung in the hallway outside the interrogation room.
[Whoosh, whoosh. Lee Sang-chul. Please enter the interrogation room.]
After the cold announcement, the bespectacled man sitting there trembled as he headed toward the interrogation room.
His lips were swollen too.
This had already happened to several people.
The others who’d been summoned together were called into the interrogation room one by one, but not a single one had come back out.
How much time had passed like this?
[Ahem, Kim Deok-bae. Please enter the interrogation room.]
At the monotone voice, Kim Deok-bae stood up, straightening his clothes.
He didn’t forget his own survival instinct—speaking loudly to hide his nervousness.
“I’ll go in there and make it clear. That bakery owner definitely put drugs in the bread!”
Click. The heavy interrogation room door opened.
But this wasn’t the interrogation room of the police station he’d visited countless times before.
A bizarre space wallpapered entirely in pure white.
In the center sat a metal table and chair, placed there alone.
And beside it, a massive machine of unknown purpose.
“Kim Deok-bae. Please sit.”
In the center sat a man in a white suit, his face covered with a white mask, his legs crossed.
‘M… Maestro?’
Deok-bae couldn’t help but be startled. With Elixir’s recent launch causing Miracle Guild stocks to skyrocket, he knew about Maestro.
He didn’t understand why the Hunter Association was involved in this case, but to think an S-rank Hunter was connected to it…
“Sit down, Grandfather.”
Beside Maestro, who sat elegantly, a girl in school uniform sat eating candy.
Deok-bae could recall this from the news as well.
Wasn’t this Yeom Da-yeon, who’d recently awakened as the youngest S-rank Hunter and shaken the nation?
‘But why is she looking at me like that?’
In the interview footage, she’d only shown a bright smile.
Now she wore a sharp expression, as if looking at the target of revenge against someone who’d harmed a person she respected.
Swallowing hard, Deok-bae was just beginning to contemplate how to frame himself as the victim when—
“Maestro? What is this…?”
“Shh. Not yet, Dayeon.”
“But it’s clear, isn’t it?”
“I’ll inform those outside first, so stay alert.”
The two S-rank Hunters suddenly began whispering to each other.
I tried to listen more carefully, but since they spoke so quietly, I couldn’t hear them properly.
“Grandfather, is your pain really from that bread?”
Dayeon asked next.
As her irises shimmered with an eerie violet hue, Kim Deok-bae felt a suffocating pressure grip him.
But how could I tell the truth?
“Yes, it hurts! My tongue feels like it’s burning up! That damn bastard definitely poisoned the bread to mess with me!”
“Yet there’s no record of Kim Deok-bae purchasing bread from that bakery.”
At Maestro’s question, I couldn’t respond.
How could I explain?
That I had gone to check on the thugs I hired, and a low-ranking member of my organization had given me bread they said came from that bakery, so there would be no record of my purchase.
So all I could do was stubbornly insist.
“What does that matter! I’m in pain! The pain is what matters! Don’t you see my gums are all torn up? Huh? Can’t you see!”
In the end, I flipped my swollen lips and showed my peeling gums as I shouted.
What else could cause this besides poison?
But Maestro’s gaze as he looked at me seemed like he was observing something fascinating.
“We don’t detect any black substance in the bread itself.”
“It’s been that way all along, hasn’t it?”
“Yes. If the agent causing the reaction were a black substance, the machine would have detected it.”
“What are you two talking about that only you understand! Huh? Can Hunters really oppress innocent citizens like this!”
“It’s not oppression, it’s an investigation. Kim Deok-bae. Everyone else has already confessed.”
“W-what?”
What is this now?
Those bastards confessed?
That couldn’t be.
How much money had I given them!
“We simply shared a fact we discovered during our investigation. That the pain disappears as if washed away when one confesses the lies they’ve told.”
Maestro interlaced his fingers and nodded.
My instinct, honed through years of living off others’ backs, screamed.
That was the truth.
If I simply spoke the lies I’d told, this pain would disappear as if washed away.
‘Right. I’ll be honest here, and claim the opposite in court. Tsk tsk!’
Just as I, still harboring such despicable thoughts, was about to open my mouth—
– That won’t do. It won’t. You caused all this trouble for something so trivial?
“Huh! Who are you!”
At the voice suddenly echoing in my ear, I jolted up in surprise.
But there was no one around.
Except for Maestro and Dayeon.
Yet a voice that belonged to no one continued to echo.
– Well, it seems everything’s been exposed anyway. Since we’re here, why don’t I just eat those things ahead and make my escape?
“Who are you?! Tell me! Answer me!”
– Me? If I tell you, will you understand? Have you ever heard the name ‘Morgan le Fay’?
It wasn’t a voice traveling through the ears.
This was a voice drilling directly into the brain.
Something was living inside Deok-bae’s head.
Since when?
Just how long had it been?
In the moment Deok-bae’s legs trembled with indescribable terror.
– Seems you don’t know. Then you’re useless. Just die now.
“Ahhhhh! Ahhhhhhh!”
The moment the voice in his mind finished speaking, black liquid streamed from Deok-bae’s eyes.
The machine beside him began shrieking with frenzied warning alarms.
As his vision blurred away, Deok-bae’s final thought was.
‘It hurts….’
His eyes… his eyes hurt so unbearably.
* * *
“I only stimulated it slightly because I sensed the black substance… but I didn’t expect it to be this severe….”
“What… what exactly is that?”
Two S-rank Hunters rose from their positions, wreathed in mana, taking defensive stances.
Before them stood what had been a contemptible old man mere moments ago.
Blink.
A single colossal eyeball, easily a meter in diameter.
The eye, formed from a swollen and distorted human body, wept streams of viscous black liquid.
“I don’t know either. However….”
Maestro answered, feeling the pulsing surge of mana flowing through his hands.
“It certainly doesn’t seem to harbor any goodwill toward us.”
“Kiiiiieeeeeek!”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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