I Only Baked Bread, but I Was Mistaken for the Best - Chapter 135

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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 135. The Sound of Truth Weeping (1)
“I mean, that’s the thing…”
Noir hesitated, his mouth working silently.
When I thought about it, there were more than a few strange things.
How he’d told me nothing about the fragments of the fallen Witch, yet dumped the task of dealing with them onto me.
Even though he’d explained what a Witch could do, he’d never actually told me what a Witch was.
“Until now, I’ve just been doing what I could.”
Ever since I inherited the Witch’s power, I’d been baking bread.
I was satisfied with the fact that I could make people happy, and that this was realized through bread.
Indeed, many had found good fortune through the bread I baked.
And I’d managed to grow the Bakery from a place where flies swarmed into something like this, not to mention gaining good connections with Witch Food and other allies.
But this couldn’t be called my will.
“You said the Witch’s Cottage moves to achieve what the Witch who owns it desires.”
“That’s undeniable, Owner.”
“What I wanted was to spread happiness. That much is certain. But saving high-rank Hunters and creating waves in the Hunter industry—that’s something different entirely.”
I had no way of knowing how the Witch’s Cottage had interpreted my vague sincerity and will.
But even so, the fact that it was being interpreted this way meant there was an incredibly firm sense of direction at work.
As if the Cottage itself had directly embedded its own desires into achieving what I wanted.
“But right now, purifying the fragments of the fallen Witch seems more important. So let me ask you this first.”
I turned Noir’s face toward me, forcing him to stop avoiding my gaze.
“What exactly is a Witch?”
“Ugh…”
It was only after a long silence following my question that Noir finally opened his mouth, his whiskers trembling with evident anxiety.
“A Witch is… as I told you before, Owner, a being that changes the fate of this world. Their roots and history stretch back to the very beginning of time.”
“And you’re a Familier who has served such Witches since the beginning of time?”
“Yes. And to be truthful… I was born at the same moment as the Witch’s Cottage. One could say we are essentially one existence.”
I had anticipated this much.
After all, Noir had originated from the key I received when I first gained this power.
In fact, I couldn’t even enter the Witch’s Cottage without Noir.
“But you were born?”
“Did you think I had always existed, Owner? I too am a result born from something.”
“So you didn’t appear naturally.”
“It couldn’t have been otherwise. Both I and the Witch’s Cottage were directly created by the Primordial Witch.”
“What?”
This, however, I had not anticipated.
That the Witch’s Cottage and Noir, the Witch’s key, were creations of the Witch herself.
Of course, thinking about it briefly, it wasn’t strange at all.
What’s more natural—a human being born with special power, or a special object appearing spontaneously?
Which of the two makes more sense?
“After that, both I and the Witch’s Cottage were given our respective duties.”
“What kind of role is that?”
“This one was tasked with serving the Witches who came after. A position known as Familier, if you will.”
And the Witch’s Cottage was entrusted with the role of deriving optimal outcomes for the Witch’s protection and future.
It was no different from modern AI technology.
“Through this, the countless Witches of that era were able to achieve their desires and aspirations with relative ease.”
Some sought adventure, others sought love, still others sought recognition, and some sought peace.
Sometimes it was revenge born of fury, and at other times it was despair steeped in melancholy.
Yet despite all this, the roles of the Witch’s Cottage and Noir remained unchanged.
Noir served, and the Witch’s Cottage showed the way.
“Then came a certain day. I remember it with perfect clarity. It was during the flourishing of Mycenae civilization, when the bright weather turned gloomy and gray.”
On that day—the day when torrential rain poured down like madness—a child was born.
A child who was the granddaughter of the Sun and the daughter of Aeetes, the King of Colchis.
It was the day a child, known from birth to carry the blood of the divine, drew her first breath into the world.
“Naturally, until that moment, neither this one nor the Witch’s Cottage understood much about the rules of human society.”
“You still don’t understand them now, do you?”
“Meow. Just listen, Owner.”
To serve the Witch born into the world, they rushed to the royal palace with all speed.
And there they beheld her.
A child with golden hair and beautiful azure eyes, already displaying an ethereal bearing that could enchant all things merely by existing.
“She was truly worthy of becoming a master.”
“So who was she?”
“Who else? The very existence that brought the worst despair upon the Witch’s Cottage and this one….”
As the child grew into a maiden and eventually into a woman, she could no longer be called a being worthy of serving as master.
She was one blinded by love, and simultaneously the incarnation of vengeance burning like a raging flame that would incinerate all.
“It began when she murdered her own younger sister for the sake of time with her beloved.”
By scattering her sister’s severed limbs across the sea to halt her father’s pursuit, her love was far from smooth sailing.
To prove her love stained with blood, she slew Pelias, the King of Iolcos.
He was boiled alive in a cauldron by the hands of his own deceived daughters.
“Did you think that was all?”
Upon hearing that her beloved was to marry another woman, she poisoned both the woman and his father.
She did not hesitate to kill her own two sons for the sake of revenge.
“I’ve heard of this somewhere.”
“It’s only natural. This is an exceedingly famous tale. A Witch by the name of Medea.”
Medea.
An existence that adorns a page of mythology, symbolizing twisted love and vengeance.
I’ve heard that despite committing such atrocities, according to certain versions, she lived a peaceful and quiet life in her later years.
The ancient Greeks apparently viewed Medea as a tremendous threat beyond human resistance, akin to a natural disaster.
“But you’re saying that actually happened?”
“Indeed. And Medea’s end was different from what is known.”
“How so?”
“… You killed her?”
“What?”
I asked back, unable to imagine such a turn of events, but Noir—now with resolve fully crystallized—met my gaze with steady eyes and spoke.
“The Witch’s Cottage and I had no choice but to kill Medea.”
* * *
“I never imagined things would come to this….”
After a long conversation with Noir, I sat in a chair and clutched my head.
Once Noir finished speaking, she suggested we both needed time to think and stepped away for a moment.
“How am I supposed to accept this….”
“Kyuu.”
“Gora, gora.”
The two creatures beside me nuzzled against me with concern.
I gently stroked their heads before sinking back into thought.
To put it plainly, Medea met her end at the hands of Noir and the Witch’s Cottage.
“So duty could be interpreted in such a way….”
Noir’s duty was to serve the Witch.
But Medea, consumed by vengeance, could no longer be called a Witch.
She sought not merely to twist fate, but to subjugate fate itself beneath her own power.
Therefore, Noir had no reason to serve Medea.
The same held true for the Witch’s Cottage.
“Sigh….”
Medea, already consumed by madness, no longer upheld any restraint.
After brutally murdering her own two sons and returning, she was already planning further murders to complete her love and finish her vengeance.
When she returned to the Witch’s Cottage under Noir’s guidance, she began manufacturing poison, and in that moment.
“The Witch’s Cottage… moved….”
The Witch’s Cottage and Noir shifted through space.
Leaving only Medea herself behind within it.
I could easily imagine what became of Medea, abandoned alone in that space where mana churned and roiled.
Remembering how that once-solid hardtack crumbled helplessly in a moment of collapse.
The Witch’s Cottage and Noir believed everything had returned to its proper place.
Yes, they merely believed it had.
“No one could have known she survived even that.”
But Medea was a Witch of unparalleled power—second only to the Primordial Witch in all of history.
She twisted her own power and survived within that rift.
It was, in essence, a fall.
“And so fallen Witches began to appear.”
Noir then told me that the fall of Witches had begun.
Medea had corrupted Witches to carry on her will, she said.
All those fallen Witches fell into Medea’s grasp.
“And now such a being is targeting me….”
I tapped my fingers rhythmically against the desk, continuing my train of thought.
The logic held together perfectly.
And it was an answer that could explain everything I’d been curious about.
But something felt off.
Something was missing.
It didn’t feel like everything was being explained clearly.
If that were the case, it had to be one of two things.
“Either Noir is lying….”
Or there exists something that neither the Witch’s Cottage nor Noir knows about.
“Do you know, then?”
I directed my question into the empty air.
The Witch’s Cottage offered no response.
It simply stood there as it always had, rigid and unyielding in its place.
“The hallucinations I’ve witnessed so far—I haven’t resolved those either.”
The hallucinations the Witch’s Cottage had granted me as compensation weren’t fully explained by Noir’s account either.
Who on earth was that person?
In that world where everything burned, the world where even Noir had perished—what kind of place could it have been?
What had happened there?
Then what does the Witch’s Cottage, which showed me that vision, want from me?
“Sigh….”
I understood none of it.
My chest felt heavy and suffocated.
I’d set out to unravel the mystery, but all I’d done was accumulate more unknowns.
“There’s no helping it.”
There was no way to find answers right now.
Then the right course was to do what I could.
All that had changed was that I had more things to be cautious about.
Noir, the Witch’s Cottage.
And even Medea, the Primordial Witch herself.
“You’ll help me, won’t you?”
“Chirp!”
“Gora gora!”
Chohong and Gora nodded as if it were obvious, fluttering their wings and arms in response to my words.
Yes.
Let me continue nurturing these bonds.
First, I’ll resolve the Quest to discover what direction the Witch’s Cottage desires.
It was the moment I thought this.
Ding!
“….”
A status window materialized before me in an instant.
Seeing that, I couldn’t help but mutter under my breath.
“What is this.”
It was a proposal the Witch’s Cottage was extending to me….
“You were listening to everything, weren’t you?”
[The sound of truth weeping.]
▷ Meet the Previous Witch in person.
▷ Encounter ‘???’
▷ Success Reward: Conversation with the Witch’s Cottage
▷ Failure Reward: Memory Erasure
It was a form of coercion.

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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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