I Only Baked Bread, but I Was Mistaken for the Best - Chapter 4

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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 4. Baguettes on a Rainy Day (3)
“How is this even…”
Gyu-ri looked down at her own hands, then raised her head to stare at the devastation she had wrought, repeating this cycle over and over.
Before her lay a charred mark shaped as though a perfect circular hole had been burned through something.
The Ogre, renowned for its durability, and even this mutant variant—it had been completely incinerated without leaving a single bone behind.
“Hah…”
“Didn’t I tell you I could do it? The power of a Witch is formidable indeed.”
Noir puffed up with pride, shrugging his shoulders smugly.
But the surprises didn’t end there.
“Wh-what? This… what is this?!”
Gyu-ri’s body began to glow white, and she started to fade away.
With more than half her body already consumed by the light, Gyu-ri turned toward me desperately and cried out.
“M-may I ask who you are?!”
Who am I?
Who else would I be?
“I’m the owner of the Bakery.”
“The owner of the Bakery…”
As Gyu-ri was ejected beyond the Gate, tears streaming down her face, she smiled brightly and spoke.
“That can’t be right…”
With those words, Gyu-ri vanished from sight.
The Witch’s Cottage, having completed its task, disappeared from the Gate along with Noir and me.
* * *
“Ah…”
Gyu-ri stared blankly at the spot where the Pastry Shop had slowly faded and completely vanished.
The fantastical house that had been filled with warm air was gone.
All that remained was the soft patter of rain falling and a single status window that appeared before her.
[You have defeated the boss monster of the ‘Rainforest of Rain’, the ‘Mutant Ogre of the Rainforest’.]
[Congratulations on clearing the Gate.]
“This isn’t a dream…”
An E-rank Hunter like herself had defeated a B-rank boss monster.
And with a single strike at that.
“I even obtained a skill…”
‘Shroud of Ash.’
A skill that blocked nearly all damage from flame and physical attacks.
Despite possessing the powerful skill of spontaneous combustion, this was the skill that could perfectly suppress the ‘self-directed attacks’ that had kept her trapped at E-rank.
And the result was the Tropical Rainforest now gaping open with smoke billowing upward.
“Ha… haha…”
As the tension drained away, her legs gave out and she collapsed to the ground.
What on earth had just happened?
‘That bread. It was because of that bread.’
How else could I explain what happened if that weren’t the case?
How long had it been since the rain started falling in a steady patter?
“Gyu-ri! Joo Gyu-ri! Where are you!”
A familiar voice began to echo from far away.
That voice, filled with desperate urgency, was calling out Gyu-ri’s name.
“Captain! Gyu-ri! Gyu-ri is over there!”
“Gyu-ri! Oh my!”
Soon, people came rushing down the wide-open corridor.
They all looked exhausted and pale, their clothes disheveled, but their faces showed relief.
A man rushed to where Gyu-ri stood and embraced her tightly.
“Captain! I… I was just…”
“Don’t speak. Oh my. You must have been terrified. Where were you? How could you!”
As broad hands wrapped around her back, tears burst forth uncontrollably.
While Gwak Pil-seong, the party captain and C-rank Hunter, held Gyu-ri close, the other party members exchanged bewildered glances.
“What on earth happened here…?”
“It seems like there was an incredibly powerful explosion?”
“I heard the Gate was just cleared. Could another passing Hunter have helped us?”
“Thank goodness. Gyu-ri almost got caught in it. Oh my, thank you. God.”
The party members were busy sharing their impressions.
Through her tears, Gyu-ri tried to speak to them.
“I… Pil-seong… I… Sniff!”
“That’s enough. You must have been shocked. Let’s go home first. The Gate will close soon.”
“That was… I did that…”
“Huh? Gyu-ri must be in shock! Everyone! We need to get out quickly!”
Pil-seong hurriedly helped Gyu-ri up and tried to head toward the Gate’s exit.
Gyu-ri stepped away from his embrace, creating distance, and then showed them the truth.
“[Spontaneous Ignition]. [Shroud of Ash].”
Explosive flames roared forth.
Yet they only rippled above the gracefully falling garment woven from gray ash.
As she swung her fist once toward the sky, a deafening boom erupted, and a massive pillar of fire shot upward.
Everyone stood frozen with their mouths agape, unable to comprehend the impossible reality.
“I… I got a skill!”
Gyu-ri smiled brightly, her face streaked with tears.
The Yongsan Party—a small group of five Hunters living in Yongsan who had come together.
After this moment, Gwak Pil-seong would pass his position to Joo Gyu-ri, who had become an S-rank Hunter, and the legend of the famous guild “Dragon Hill” would begin.
And there was someone whom the guild master, Joo Gyu-ri, would always be grateful to.
‘Thank you, Yeon-gi. I will definitely repay this debt…’
It was from this moment that urban legends about the black smoke that handed over freshly baked bread began to circulate.
* * *
Looking out the window, the trees that had grown lush inside the Gate were dissolving away like mist.
“The Witch’s Cottage is returning to the Dimensional Rift. Don’t worry.”
“Then how do I get back home?”
“What? Are you really that stupid? The key is right in front of your eyes—why are you asking such a thing?”
Now I understood.
Noir normally spoke plainly, but when excited, she slipped into a dialect-like speech pattern with that cat-like inflection.
I nodded at this newly discovered fact and opened the status window again.
“A special baguette recipe… what makes it special?”
“Think of it as a bread recipe imbued with the specialness that previous witches created through countless refinements and improvements.”
“Specialness?”
How could I possibly understand if she just kept saying it was special without explaining?
At my reaction, Noir shrugged and meowed.
“Why don’t you just check for yourself? Master?”
“Fine.”
[Special Baguette Recipe]
▷ Ingredients: Golden Wheat Strong Flour, Water, Salt, Dry Yeast (quantities to follow)
▷ Effect: Increases financial fortune for 24 hours upon consumption
“It has an effect?”
“Yes, Master. Bread made with a witch’s sincerity grants effects based on circumstances, target, and fate, but if you simply follow the recipe, it will always produce the predetermined effect.”
Noir added that no additional effects could be granted no matter how much sincerity you poured into it.
Even so, the effect was insane.
A bread that increases financial fortune for an entire day just by eating it?
Wouldn’t people around the world be desperate to obtain this bread before buying lottery tickets?
“It varies from person to person, Master.”
“What are you suddenly talking about?”
“Just because financial fortune increases doesn’t mean all luck follows. Even if opportunities come, you might not be able to seize them. Besides, since you’re a witch, you can’t benefit from the bread’s effect.”
“Still, it’s amazing. Let me see then. The ingredients are…”
I hit a snag right from the start.
Water, salt, dry yeast—these were all things I already knew well.
Even reading the recipe below, aside from a few specific tips, it was just the standard method for making baguettes, so it wasn’t difficult to understand.
“What exactly is golden wheat?”
“Golden wheat is golden wheat.”
“Right, just like how your name is Noir because you’re Noir.”
“Meowwww!”
An ingredient I’d never heard of or seen before was suddenly thrown in—what could I do about that?
This meant I couldn’t bake anything even with the recipe.
“Wait. I feel like I’ve heard of it somewhere…”
It didn’t take long before I recalled that substance called “golden wheat” that had been flickering in the depths of my memory.
“Damn! That golden wheat?”
I remembered.
The incident where countless international students had consumed lethal doses of national pride came to mind.
The A-rank Gate that appeared in Chungju, “The Phantom Scarecrow’s Revenge.”
A Gate boasting the highest difficulty even among A-rank dungeons, where you must contend with countless undead scattered across the grassland while simultaneously defending against scarecrow monsters that tear people to shreds.
So multiple guilds had challenged it and failed miserably.
“But there was someone who succeeded.”
The guild master of Cheongryong, Yu Ha-neul.
She was an S-rank Hunter—one of fewer than a hundred in the entire world—who entered the Gate alone and defeated the boss monster.
“And the reward she obtained was golden wheat seeds.”
However, the golden wheat seeds she obtained turned out to be an item whose purpose was difficult to discern.
The problem wasn’t just that the seeds were unusually hard, but that no one could figure out how to make them sprout.
Because of this, the Cheongryong Guild was keeping them in a display case to commemorate their guild master Yu Ha-neul’s achievement.
“Put that in a baguette? And made into flour?”
“Is it hard to obtain?”
“Of course! There’s only been one discovery of it so far!”
“That much? There should be some rolling around in the warehouse over there.”
“Huh?”
“Meow?”
We both stared at each other blankly.
What?
What’s rolling around in the warehouse?
Does that even make sense?
“The warehouse….”
“Meow? Master? Your eyes look strange? Are you okay?”
“Where’s the warehouse?”
“Follow me.”
The warehouse was connected directly to the kitchen.
I grabbed the candy-made handle and pulled it open, revealing the sight before me.
“Gasp….”
Would you believe me if I said there was a space containing every rare item in the world?
“That… that’s a Death Knight’s helmet….”
“The Witch from two generations ago experimented with it as a substitute for chocolate chips.”
“Ifrit’s flame?”
“That was obtained by the Witch from four generations ago when she wanted to add a burnt flavor to bread.”
“What? This is seriously a joke, right? A dragon’s shinbone?”
A massive leg bone sat plainly on a shelf.
Beneath it was a label that read, unbelievably, “Dragon’s shinbone. Touch and die. No, seriously, the moment you touch it, you die.”
“It’s the dragon’s shinbone that the previous Witch obtained. I never heard why she got it, though. The golden wheat is over there.”
I followed Noir, who scratched behind his ear as if it were nothing, deep into the warehouse.
Along the way, there were spider eyeballs, centipede venom sacs, and countless other materials scattered about—I had no idea why or how any of them could possibly be used in baking.
“Here it is.”
“It really is….”
There, gleaming brilliantly like gold, sat a sack brimming with flour.
“And there’s an absurd amount of it too…”
In fact, such sacks were lined up one after another.
“This should do the trick.”
“Did all the previous Witches collect this?”
“Of course. Procuring materials is a fundamental skill for any Witch. The master must grow stronger quickly as well. Otherwise, you won’t be able to obtain the materials needed for bread.”
So in the end, my fate was to go in circles and handle material procurement too.
Well, I’ll think about that later.
For now, I need to focus only on the baguette.
I grabbed one sack and left the Warehouse.
“Oh, by the way, what’s this? Noir?”
“Meow? You mean BP? You certainly ask quickly.”
“So what is it?”
“Check it yourself.”
Ding!
[50BP(Bake Point)]
[Points of affection left behind by customers who felt happiness.]
[Gather BP and awaken your true power!]
“Awaken my true power, huh.”
“The foundation of being a Witch is compensation. Of course compensation is necessary. The same applies to developing the Witch’s Cottage.”
“You can develop the Witch’s Cottage?”
“Right now, this is an extremely tiny Witch’s Cottage. Compared to the previous Witches, it’s little more than a shack.”
I placed the golden flour sack on one side of the Kitchen and looked around.
No matter how I look at it, this isn’t a small space.
It’s better than my old home.
Though it’s made of pastry, it boasts durability comparable to construction materials, so there’s nothing inconvenient about it.
“If you concentrate your mind, you’ll be able to see that level.”
“If I concentrate my mind…”
Ding!
[Witch’s Cottage: Lv. 1 → Lv. 2 (1,000BP)]
[Oven: Lv. 1 → Lv. 2 (100BP)]
The levels of the Pastry Shop and Oven appeared before me.

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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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