I Only Baked Bread, but I Was Mistaken for the Best - Chapter 7

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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 7. Fortune in Money (3)
“Owner! I’d like to pay!”
“Coming right up!”
“Are the red bean buns all sold out?”
There were customers inside the shop.
Three of them, all at the same time!
And just five people had left moments ago!
My heart raced at a situation I’d never experienced since opening the Bakery.
The only regret was that I hadn’t anticipated this rush and had only baked a small batch of bread.
“Yes! One moment!”
As I stepped into the Kitchen to grab the freshly baked bread, Noir, who had followed me, asked quietly.
“Yesterday was peaceful. Do you always work this hard, Master?”
“Of course not. This is the first time since I opened.”
“I haven’t been this busy since training with the Witch from three generations back—baking 5,000 loaves a day….”
Noir was breathing heavily, his round belly rising and falling with each labored breath.
This was undoubtedly an exaggeration.
All Noir had done was receive affection from the customers.
“Wow! A cat!”
“So this is that famous cat!”
“So this is that cat!”
“Can I pet you just once?”
“Meooooooow!”
“One day I’ll make him eat bread filled with poison and curses…. Such humiliation for a Familier who has served the Witch for generations….”
“Blame yourself for being cute.”
“I’m not cute, I’m magnificent! Haaaack!”
“Sure, sure. I’m heading back out. You rest here if you want.”
As I returned with the freshly baked bread, customers thanked me and carefully selected the warm loaves.
This was something that shouldn’t normally happen.
No matter how much foot traffic this area received, my Bakery was located in a Secluded Alley.
“The only people I usually saw were those sneaking around to smoke….”
So how had this situation come about?
Curious, I stopped one customer and asked. Her answer was unexpected.
“What? You haven’t seen it yet? Roro posted a video saying the bread here is delicious….”
“Roro? Who is that….”
“Didn’t they film here when they left?”
Saying so, the customer pulled out her phone and showed me a video.
The person, the background, and the tower of bread in front—all of it looked familiar.
“Ah… this person….”
“Wait! Did you film without permission? This is going to be a huge controversy….”
“Oh. No, no. We signed a contract. I just wasn’t careful about checking their stage name. Haha.”
I scratched my head awkwardly as I spoke, and the customer nodded as if understanding.
A text had come saying a video was uploaded from some unknown account…
“Anyway, I came here after seeing that.”
“After seeing that?”
“Well… it’s just…”
The customer hesitated for a moment, then picked up a salt bread and a baguette before speaking.
“To be honest, I wasn’t originally a fan of Roro, but I just happened to see it through the algorithm.”
“The algorithm?”
Roro—or rather, Ye-seul’s video—had been blessed by YouTube’s algorithm gods and risen to become a trending video.
And the reactions of those who watched it were all identical.
“Cute. Pretty. Eats well. Things like that, I suppose.”
“Yeah, that sounds about right.”
There was no better way to describe it.
After all, Ye-seul never hid her happiness even when eating a single piece of bread.
“I live near here, so I came to check it out.”
“Ah, I see.”
“And I heard the girl group member Hani said she wanted to visit here too?”
“Who?”
The customer showed me a photo, saying she was a famous idol, but I didn’t recognize her.
In any case, this very famous person had posted Ye-seul’s channel on social media, her subscriber count skyrocketed vertically, and naturally this place became known as well.
“Just a moment?”
Sure enough, my phone was flooded with messages from Ye-seul.
[Owner! Here’s the edited video! Please let me know if there’s anything strange!]
[Owner?]
[I’m going to upload it! Just tell me after you check and I’ll edit it right away!]
[Owner! Hani left a comment!]
[Owner. Everyone’s asking where the Bakery is. Can I tell them?]
[No. It seems they’ve already figured it out. Everyone…]
[Owner! The video’s trending now!]
There were also messages full of gratitude, but I had merely given her the opportunity to seize her fortune.
According to Noir, even if fortune in wealth comes calling, it’s up to the person to seize that opportunity.
“I heard her subscriber count reached 10,000 in just one day. When I subscribed, it was already at 20,000.”
“The fortune effect really works…”
“Huh? What works?”
“Oh, nothing. I was just talking to myself.”
The system hadn’t lied after all.
Ye-seul had obtained the effects of the baguette made with golden flour.
Because she was a YouTuber, fortune had followed her in this way.
“Anyway, I bet the other customers are the same way too, right? Oh, I’ll take one of those breads as well.”
I placed a freshly baked loaf of bread on the customer’s tray.
Since she had explained things to me, I gave her a particularly beautiful and delicious baguette as a token of my gratitude.
* * *
Ding.
“Thank you for coming!”
After seeing off the last customer who arrived just before closing time, I locked up the shop.
It was the day with the most customers since I’d opened the Bakery.
Of course, considering rent, ingredients, and utilities, I still had a long way to go.
But compared to the past when I couldn’t get a single customer in a day, I could say I was finally able to breathe a little.
“Phew… I thought I was going to die.”
“Wasn’t the work manageable? Owner.”
“I meant I thought I was going to die from the lack of customers all this time.”
“I understand.”
The moment I closed the shop door, Noir sauntered out and wagged his tail leisurely.
He’d fled to the Kitchen to escape the customers, but it seemed he’d recovered his composure.
“Is this what destiny is?”
“Destiny is something absolutely unpredictable, yet it’s like a rule of the world that has already been determined.”
Noir turned his body and spoke to me while sitting upright, staring intently.
“However, this alone doesn’t yet match the value of the Golden Wheat.”
“This much isn’t enough?”
“I believe it will continue to be helpful going forward. Owner.”
If Ye-seul, who now has 25,000 subscribers—I just checked and it’s 2.5 million—continues to be helpful to me, that would be a good thing, wouldn’t it?
“And the Witch’s Cottage is the Witch’s secret art that accelerates the time her destiny arrives. You can think of it as a blessing that only the Witch can receive across generations.”
“So will this month’s sales happen again next time?”
“I said it was insufficient, but truthfully, it could happen again, or it might not. If you seize this opportunity, you could develop further, or if you don’t, this could be the only time.”
In other words, the Witch’s Cottage wasn’t a cure-all.
It meant I had to put in the effort myself.
I never had any intention of coasting along anyway.
“I need to work hard.”
“Then check your BP.”
“Oh. Right, that’s true.”
Having sold so much bread, I should have accumulated quite a bit of BP.
The BP I checked was….
[215 BP(Bake Point)]
[Heart points left behind by customers who felt happiness.]
[Gather BP and awaken your true power!]
I earned 50 BP from giving a baguette to Gyu-ri, and seeing that I received 5 BP from Ye-seul the day before, it seemed I could earn 5 BP per person.
“Does it have nothing to do with the quantity of bread sold?”
“Quantity is irrelevant. BP is currency whose acquisition amount varies depending on how much happiness was felt.”
“So the important thing is making bread that people truly love.”
“I wish you’d show this intelligence you occasionally display all the time.”
Noir spewed out rudeness as naturally as breathing, walking toward the door with an air of dignified indifference.
I followed behind him.
As if to prove he was no ordinary cat, he slipped through the door seamlessly.
When I opened the door and stepped through after him, the familiar Pastry Shop came into view.
“Well then, now that we’ve gathered enough BP…”
[Witch’s Cottage: Lv. 1 → Lv. 2 (1,000BP)]
[Oven: Lv. 1 → Lv. 2 (100BP)]
….
A list of possible upgrades appeared one after another.
What I needed was already decided.
“It has to be the oven, no question.”
Baking was an exceptionally delicate form of cooking, so there were no unimportant steps.
This applied not only to ingredients but to tools as well.
The foundation of baking tools was the oven.
“Is it because you can’t bake bread without an oven?”
“That’s partly correct.”
Everything people recognize as bread uses an oven.
So I couldn’t say Noir was completely wrong.
“But there are breads that can be baked without an oven, you know.”
There are breads baked over direct flame like campfire bread, and there are also breads that are buried in sand and cooked by its heat.
“Then why the oven first? There are plenty of other tools.”
“Because it’s the oven.”
I could handle other things to some extent with my refined hand skills.
The sensitivity I’d developed in my hands from my study abroad years until now was not something to overlook.
But the oven was different.
Modern ovens would have precise timers and even heat distribution, but the oven in the Witch’s Cottage didn’t.
This thing should really be called a fireplace.
“So you’re saying you’re hoping that if we upgrade further here, it becomes an automated oven?”
“Isn’t it possible?”
“Meow. Give it a try then.”
He chuckled mockingly, urging me to try.
Did he think I couldn’t do it?
I immediately tapped the oven option, and bright light began bursting from the oven sitting in the corner of the kitchen.
“Ugh!”
When the blinding light finally subsided, a status window appeared.
Ding!
[The Oven has become Lv. 2!]
[A gift has arrived to commemorate your first upgrade!]
After the flood of status windows passed, a small gift box dropped right in front of me.
“This isn’t some home shopping channel promotional event.”
“Just open it. The Witch’s Cottage always….”
“Works in a way that benefits me, right? Got it.”
As I tore open the packaging—a thin, translucent red gelatin box—what emerged from within was none other than….
“A bread mold?”
A matte black iron bread mold tumbled onto my palm.
It was no larger than the size of my hand.
The side bore wheat ear patterns alongside incomprehensible inscriptions, making it clear this was no ordinary bread mold.
But what truly captured my attention was something else entirely….
“There’s already dough inside it?”
“It is the Bread Mold of Life.”
“The Bread Mold of Life?”
“Indeed. It was created by my predecessor—or was it my predecessor’s predecessor? In any case, it was crafted by one of my forebears.”
Noir raised the corners of his mouth with pride, despite having nothing to do with its creation.
If it was an item belonging to a Witch….
[Bread Mold of Life]
▷ A bread mold imbued with a Witch’s deepest wishes.
▷ Once per day, it completely nullifies any fatal attack that would otherwise be lethal to the user!
“This is insane.”
My status window had revealed the item’s information.
This was extraordinarily rare.
The status window only ever appeared for things connected to mana.
Such as Hunters, monsters, Gates, skills, and the like.
Which meant, upon reflection….
“This is an Artifact, isn’t it?”
“An Artifact? What’s that?”
Artifacts.
Humanity called by this name the special items imbued with extraordinary power, obtained as rewards from within Gates or upon clearing them.
To think I would come to possess something that held power beyond imagination.
“This is incredible….”
“The incredible part will be the Oven. Check it.”
Right.
While the Artifact was remarkable, for a baker, nothing mattered more than the Oven itself.
After confirming the specifications of my upgraded Oven, I could only stand in astonishment.
[Oven (Lv. 2): The Witch’s Oven. Preheating, temperature, and ‘time’ are all at the baker’s discretion!]
“What? Time?”
“Meow. Didn’t I tell you? Give it a try.”
Noir continued, his shoulders puffed up with even greater pride.
“The automation humans create is nothing compared to a Witch’s Oven. Remember this, Master.”

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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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