I Only Baked Bread, but I Was Mistaken for the Best - Chapter 93

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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 93. What We Gain and Lose (3)
“Uwaaaah!”
“Gora, gora!”
Ten creatures—no, ten Gingerbread Men—surged toward me in a coordinated rush.
Their movements were as precise and synchronized as well-trained soldiers.
One creature wielded a cutter, slicing the dough with perfect accuracy, while two others flanked it, stretching and twisting the dough like they were wringing out laundry.
Then another creature would hop onto the stretched dough, bouncing rhythmically, and yet another would—
—do something else entirely.
“They all look identical. I can’t tell who’s who.”
“Gora, gora?”
“No. Gora is the best.”
“Meow! What about this one!”
“Yeah. Noir is the best too.”
“There’s no soul in this! Owner! Aaaaah!”
Even as this unexpected competition for supremacy unfolded, the ten Gingerbread Men remained devoted to their task.
After stretching the dough, they began tying knots.
They attempted a few knots at first, but when they seemed uncertain, they hopped over demanding my smartphone, so I showed them the diagram drawn in the paper.
Huddled together, the creatures studied the image, deliberating earnestly.
Their solemn expressions resembled a command center preparing for a final decisive battle.
“Gora?”
“Gora, lara, ra.”
“Gora, gora?”
“Gora, rat!”
I had no idea what they were saying.
Then one creature clapped (though calling it clapping was questionable since they lacked fingers) and cried out, prompting the others to scramble frantically toward the dough.
And soon the Gingerbread Men began tying intricate knots.
“Wow…”
With their small hands working on the dough, the knots became far more refined than anything I could have made.
The tiny knots twisted without flaw, and the entire process showed not a single sign of carelessness.
“Gora!”
The finished bread’s appearance was truly shocking.
Not in a negative way.
“This is almost a work of art.”
Intricate patterns that couldn’t be called mere dough sculpting.
And from those patterns extended various different knots resembling circuits.
Some knots were so delicate they seemed difficult to achieve—they appeared intentionally scratched, likely to utilize the cracks that would form during baking.
At first glance, a geometric pattern far more impressive than the knot photograph attached to the paper had been created.
“Wait, it’s actually different?”
“Gora, gora. Gora, lara, ra.”
“Huh? You found something odd and fixed it?”
Gora nodded at my words and pointed to the photograph.
Each knot that Gora’s fingertip touched seemed strange in some way.
Since I genuinely couldn’t understand it even looking directly at it, I tilted my head in confusion, and the creature tilted its head in return before pointing to the corresponding part of the dough the Gingerbread Men had made.
“Gora!”
“Ah. Yes, that would definitely cause problems.”
Comparing it to the knots in the finished bread, I could see why it would be problematic.
The knots in the original drawing were either too thin or too thick.
If I made bread in that shape, it would either not bake properly or burn when put in the oven.
Moreover, some of them had knot patterns that couldn’t even be connected in a single line.
To think Gora could fix all of those on the spot.
“You’re truly the best, Gora.”
“Gora lala!”
“Let’s make it exactly like this.”
The Hwadugu Roll completed with the help of the Gingerbread Men and Gora.
Now all that remained was baking it.
Of course, that was something the Oven could help with.
[The Oven activates upon confirming the target’s sincerity.]
I had poured two sincere intentions into this bread.
One was to enable Soo-min to endure the cold of the Gate for the sake of handling this task.
The other was to hope that she could understand the ultimate principle of magic—the wish of all Mages—even though she hadn’t asked me directly.
[Hwadugu Roll]
▷ A roll created using Hwadugu.
The complex flavor possessed by Hwadugu reached its maximum potential when meeting the blazing flames.
The taste is exquisite, but its form alone is enough to make all Mages tremble.
▷ Effects
① Warmth Embrace: Upon consumption, nullifies cold-related debuffs
② Mana Ignition: Burns lost mana from Hwadugu’s heat to amplify the effect of cast magic by 5 times
“Five times?”
The paper had predicted it would be around two times.
No, this might be a result of my inability to read English properly.
And it was only possible because Gora and the Gingerbread Men supplemented the insufficient parts.
In any case, one way or another…
“Success.”
Now it only remained to see which bread Soo-min would choose.
* * *
‘It’s really all bread.’
Soo-min thought as she examined the chair she was sitting in.
It functioned as a chair and looked like one, but the material composing it was bread—a strange situation indeed.
‘Even that is bread.’
Looking up at the chandelier hanging from the ceiling, it too was bread.
How had she managed to craft such an exquisite chandelier from baguettes and pretzels?
Even the ceiling supporting it was constructed by piecing together bread.
‘She must possess formidable magical skills. Surely baking isn’t her only talent?’
Soo-min was convinced he was a Mage Hunter.
There were occasional reports of mutant creatures impersonating humans and manipulating their targets’ minds, but given that this situation hadn’t changed even after consuming a curse-breaking potion, that theory seemed unlikely.
‘I can’t fathom what level of strength one must reach to engage in such eccentric behavior….’
Not only did he reside in an S-rank Gate where an ordinary human would lose their life with each breath as their lungs froze solid, but he’d constructed a house made of candy and bread.
Such eccentricity was beyond comprehension.
And that house—how vast and luxurious it was.
‘It reminds me of the old days.’
Soo-min came from a wealthy family.
Her father was a conglomerate CEO whose name was recognizable to most, and her mother was the daughter of another major corporate magnate.
She could be called a golden spoon of the highest purity.
That said, her home environment wasn’t poor either.
Though her parents had married through a political arrangement, they genuinely loved each other and found attraction in one another.
‘Yet I was the only one who felt out of place among them.’
Perhaps it was because I was born into a status different from ordinary people from the very beginning.
Everyone who gathered around me harbored no pure intentions whatsoever.
Or rather, if ‘purity’ meant the absence of anything else mixed in, then perhaps they were pure in their own way.
They approached me with nothing but pure greed for money.
‘They weren’t even human….’
My earliest memory was from around age five.
A seventeen-year-old boy strutting about as my future fiancé—that was my worst memory.
Though my parents, who loved their daughter, had opposed it, and the proposal had been made arbitrarily by the other side, this incident left a deep crack in my heart.
I came to dread interacting with people.
I hated it.
In truth, I became afraid.
No matter what I said, they were obsessed with extracting what they desired from me, interpreting every word solely through their own perspective.
Therefore, words held no meaning.
Young Soo-min lost her voice.
‘Though I suppose I abandoned it willingly.’
Either way, the result was the same.
The room was far too spacious for a child to need, making it sufficient to become my world.
The girl continued her life within that space.
Meals arrived, I could sleep, and when tutors came, I could learn the world’s knowledge.
Therefore, I had no need to venture outside.
‘Not until my abilities awakened.’
One day, a status window appeared before my eyes.
I obtained the skill ‘Invisibility’—an ability to distort the medium transmitting information and erase my existence from the world.
From that moment on, I sank even deeper into my own world.
In that world of hers, there were no rules to speak of.
After all, she had lost the ability to respect others by this point, so it was only natural.
‘Ugh… it’s such a dark chapter of my past….’
In other words, it was the impulsive rampage of an adolescent girl.
Stealing unnecessary things was just the baseline—she often hid away things that other people cherished.
Of course, nothing serious ever happened.
Soo-min’s parents had vast wealth and enough power to conceal such matters.
But it wasn’t a fundamental solution.
‘And then I got caught red-handed.’
It happened on one of those days when I was acting out as usual.
Walking down the street under the veil of invisibility, I noticed someone.
My gaze fell on a man standing with a shabby outfit and one leg propped up—it was pure chance.
Habitually reaching for his wallet was a mistake.
Had I known his identity, I wouldn’t have done it.
The man was Hwang Chi-ho, the apex of the Reaper Guild and one of the handful of S-rank Hunters in South Korea.
Against him, the strongest Mage Hunter in South Korea, I was no match at all.
Even if I twisted my magic to induce cognitive interference, I couldn’t overcome Chi-ho, who simply overwhelmed everything with raw light, rendering my power meaningless.
After subduing me, he said something.
‘Want to go to the police station? Or would you rather work under me?’
He said it with a refreshingly genuine smile.
Later, I heard reasons like how he appreciated my audacity in trying to steal from an S-rank Hunter, or that my skills looked promising, but I accepted his offer for a different reason.
‘Because he was honest.’
It was my first time meeting someone without deception.
Sometimes violent, sometimes clumsy.
Sometimes emotional enough to ruin things, sometimes hurting others, but at least Chi-ho never lied or acted dishonestly.
So I practiced how to speak.
Because I wanted to communicate with him.
So I began researching magic.
Because I wanted to be helpful to him.
‘Though I never expected that would become my dream.’
But no matter how hard I tried, magic never showed me its end.
Beyond devouring countless papers, I reached the point of writing them myself, yet the dream remained distant.
Recently, I’ve been focusing on strengthening magic through knots, but even that has yielded no results.
“Sigh. It’s difficult.”
“What is, if I may ask?”
“Kyaaaaaah!”
I never expected someone to overhear my thoughts spoken aloud while I was lost in contemplation.
Startled, I let out a scream and turned around to see the form of Black Mist, the Owner of this house.
Though no eyes, nose, or mouth were visible, the flustered figure spoke.
“Have you been waiting long?”
“Denied. Waiting time: 30 minutes.”
“It took longer than expected. I apologize. I was delayed making this.”
What Yeon-gi pulled out was none other than bread.
Two loaves with distinctly different appearances.
Pointing to the darker of the two breads, Yeon-gi spoke.
“This one is a Fondant au Chocolat. If you feed it to the Witch… or rather, the wolf covered in that black substance, it should render her powerless.”
I was too astonished to even form words.
Could feeding just one loaf of bread really neutralize such a creature?
What kind of ability would need to be cultivated, and to what extent, to make such a thing possible?
But the moment my gaze shifted to the next bread, all such thoughts vanished without a trace.
“This one is a Hwadugu Roll. I made this one for you to consume directly.”
I couldn’t hear anything.
From the moment I saw the bread’s form, the voice of the mist explaining something before my eyes became as though I couldn’t hear it at all in this strange space.
“The effects nullify external cold debuffs and amplify the potency of spells you cast by five times…”
The geometric patterns were so intricate it seemed almost disrespectful to call it bread.
It was familiar.
Because that was a magical knot.
There was no way I wouldn’t recognize it—I’d been researching it until recently.
Or rather, I couldn’t possibly not know it.
“You may choose one of the two.”
Because it was the failed knot I myself had created.

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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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