I Only Baked Bread, but I Was Mistaken for the Best - Chapter 97

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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 97. A Cowardly Attack (1)
In my previous memory, everything was burning in flames.
And now, a world already consumed by fire and crumbled to dust spread before me.
Perhaps this was still connected to that previous memory.
With each step I took, the ash that had settled thickly on the ground rose up in a puff.
The acrid stench obscured the sky.
“Blood marks?”
It wasn’t long before I discovered the bloodstains drawn on the ground.
Droplets of blood stretched out in one direction, as if someone had walked that way.
I followed the trail of blackened marks where ash had clung to the blood.
“It’s not completely continuous.”
I saw the woman I had encountered before.
She dragged her legs forward, her body covered in severe wounds.
The armor she wore was shattered in places and scorched, a pitiful sight.
Battered and broken, she was heading toward the Witch’s Cottage rising far off on the horizon.
“It’s massive.”
Even after becoming a witch myself, I had been steadily cultivating the witch’s power through BP and growing my cottage, but it couldn’t compare to that.
The towering form that rose like a tower was so enormous that it was difficult to even call it a cottage anymore.
Yet it still shared one thing in common—it was made of candy and bread.
“Then she must be one of the previous witches.”
Eventually, she reached the gate of the Witch’s Cottage and placed her hand on it, attempting to open the door.
But it wouldn’t open.
The opposite of my situation, where I always opened the door with ease.
After pushing and pulling the door several times with creaking sounds, she let out a laugh tinged with self-mockery.
“Ha… haha… hahaha….”
Her strength giving way, the woman slid down and leaned against the firmly closed door.
The words that spilled from her lips were something I could never have anticipated.
“There’s no key anymore… so the door won’t open….”
No key?
The key that opens the Witch’s Cottage is Noir.
Then was she saying Noir was gone?
Dead?
That couldn’t be.
Currently, Noir is alive and well, living with me.
Not just alive, but drooling like a chubby cat whenever she sees bread, and she’s been hacking into my phone’s pattern lock to destroy my YouTube algorithm with videos of nationalist propaganda and such.
“Is this… really a memory?”
If this were truly a memory, wouldn’t it have to be something that actually happened?
Was there a time when Noir died?
“So it’s come to this in the end….”
The woman barely spoke through breaths that came with boiling blood.
Someone spoke to her as she stood there.
“Why did you make such a wish?”
“If you were going to ask that… shouldn’t you have refused to grant it?”
The woman answered while gazing at the Witch’s Cottage.
As if the Witch’s Cottage itself had spoken to her.
“Everything remains unfulfilled. You know as well as I do that there is a way to undo this.”
“Bullshit… what way is there to undo it now.”
“That too is true. Therefore, I wish to satisfy one final curiosity. Why did you make such a choice?”
“To protect them.”
With each word the woman spoke, blood burst from her lips.
But she did not stop.
As if she were certain this moment was her last.
Yet to maintain her composure until the very end.
“To protect my precious people. Wasn’t that a sufficient answer?”
“It is insufficient. Throughout history, all witches made their final wish for themselves.”
“This is for me too, you fool. If you can’t understand that….”
Her eyes grew increasingly dim.
Yet even so, her gaze was fixed precisely on something.
Not this terrible present covered in ash, but a future where something had changed dramatically.
Toward some peaceful future she could reshape with her will, a future even she did not know.
“You will never understand what picture I am drawing for your entire life.”
“But because of that wish, all your precious ones will suffer. Some will face death. They will endure a longer, more fragile pain than now and slowly fade away.”
“I don’t care. Humans are far stronger than you think.”
“If that is so….”
It was a declaration.
The moment the words ended, the Witch’s Cottage that had stretched high into the sky rose to its feet.
It cast away all the stairs that had jutted out so obtrusively.
Bread and pastries fell onto the ashes.
And the cottage, now in its simplest form, spoke.
“…I shall fulfill it.”
And in that instant, the woman’s severed head fell to the ground.
* * *
“Aaaaaaahhhhh!”
Have you ever seen a person’s head severed from their body?
If not, I hope you say nothing about it.
Even if it were someone else’s memory, being the one watching it offered no safety.
No, of course one would be physically safe.
But mentally, there was nothing to be done about it.
“Gasp! Gasp!”
Unlike what typically happens in slasher films, blood did not spray out like a fountain.
It felt like a stone from the top of a haphazardly stacked cairn was simply falling.
It had slipped and then—thud—tumbled down.
And those pale, vacant eyes turned toward me.
“Are you alright! Master!”
“Mew! Mew mew! Mew mew mew!”
“Gora gora!”
Startled by my scream, the creatures came rushing over and huddled together at my bedside.
Even so, I was gasping for breath, trying desperately to shake off the shock.
“What kind of memory did you witness, Master!”
“Noir…”
“What is it!”
“I saw someone die…”
“Meow?”
Noir tilted his head at those words, his eyes questioning what I was saying.
“No, I mean someone had their throat cut and died?”
“And what of it, Master?”
“What do you mean?”
“Humans die anyway. The manner might be somewhat grotesque, but death is inevitable, is it not, Master? Besides, this is not even grotesque! A hundred years ago, such things happened all the time!”
He was right.
Noir was a Familier, and he had lived for an extraordinarily long time.
For one who had served a Witch even in the savage ages beyond the medieval period, a death like this would be of little consequence.
Rather, I could regain my composure from Noir’s attitude.
Besides, I had questions to ask anyway.
“Noir. Have you ever died?”
“Meow? What kind of nonsense is that, Master?”
“If not died, then disappeared?”
“What exactly did you witness in that memory…”
Noir shook his head, saying I was speaking incomprehensibly.
“This one has no gaps in his memories. Therefore, it is proof that this one has never died or disappeared, is it not?”
“But in the memory I witnessed, you clearly said there was no key, so you couldn’t enter the Witch’s Cottage?”
“Meow? Master, think carefully. This one does not know everything. When you are away, this one cannot have memories of that either. After all, there is no information to remember in the first place.”
That was true.
If I went to the bathroom and did anything there, Noir wouldn’t know if he wasn’t beside me.
What I witnessed was ‘someone’s’ memory, not Noir’s memory.
Therefore, I couldn’t perfectly match it with what Noir knew.
“But there you clearly said there were ‘no more.'”
“Meow. That is truly strange.”
The woman in the memory said there were no more keys.
Which meant the key—that is, Noir—had been completely annihilated.
Realizing the implication, Noir fell silent for a moment, meowing pensively.
‘Surely not,’ ‘That can’t be,’ ‘Or is it?’ The creature that had been muttering such things shook its head and spoke.
“In any case, this body has never died. Which means it has never been annihilated either. Master.”
And it said this with absolute conviction.
Whether those words were a lie, or a falsehood that even the creature itself believed to be true, or perhaps the actual truth.
I couldn’t know any of it.
“Sigh… My head’s spinning…”
“Get some rest for now, Master. Don’t you need to open the shop tomorrow?”
“You’re right. Let’s talk about this again later.”
Since worrying about it right now wouldn’t yield any answers, I decided to sleep instead.
Before being a Witch, I’m a bakery owner.
Self-employed people have to open their shops the next day regardless of personal matters.
* * *
“Did it fail?”
“Yes. It failed.”
“Damn it. Pathetically weak.”
A place where refined classical music flowed.
Red curtains hung down, creating an antique atmosphere, while candles from a chandelier hanging from the ceiling brightly illuminated the surroundings.
In the center of a space that resembled a noble’s banquet hall, a single table was placed.
Those seated around it had varying appearances.
“You already knew they were weak. Let’s not discuss matters we had no expectations for in the first place.”
“It’s irritating, that’s why. Irritating. These creatures that once inherited the seat of Witches.”
“Have you looked into that one?”
“I already arranged to get a report through the man I planted. Ah, here it comes.”
A man pulled out a buzzing phone from the pocket of his loosened suit jacket.
As he answered the call, a voice came through the phone.
– I will report to you.
“Speak quickly, you bastard. You’re damn slow.”
– My apologies. Both Park Su-min Hunter and Yu Ha-neul Hunter who headed to the Frozen Pulse Gate have successfully returned without incident.
“Any unusual circumstances.”
– I directly observed the entity.
Information flowed out that could only be known by someone not affiliated with the response team assembled by the Association, and moreover, someone who wasn’t part of the rescue squad that Yu Ha-neul had brought along.
That the entity was composed of black smoke, and that it appeared to possess unusual power.
And finally…
– It was residing in a house made of confectionery, and after payment was made, the house disappeared without a trace.
“Understood. Let me know immediately if anything else comes up.”
– Understood…
The man hung up before the response could even finish.
Then he began grinding his teeth and resumed cutting the steak he’d been working on.
“I knew this would happen. This bastard’s starting again?”
“A new Witch?”
“I knew all along. I just didn’t expect you to be so blatantly crude about it. Slurp.”
The man brought a sliced steak toward his mouth.
But that couldn’t be described as a simple mouth.
A mouth smeared with black tar, torn into four jagged sections.
Five tongues writhed within it, coiling around the steak before disappearing into a throat filled only with darkness.
“This steak is unnecessarily delicious.”
“It’s the flesh of the world’s greatest chef. That much is only natural.”
“So what was he complaining about?”
“Among all the efforts he made to become the greatest, there was an instance where he slandered someone superior to him.”
“That’s pathetic. Slander? He should have killed them. Slurp.”
“In any case, now it’s certain.”
It wasn’t just the man who had answered the phone.
Everyone seated at the table bore grotesque forms.
One had a left hand twisted and mingled with black tar, while another had ribs exposed with a heart stained black on display.
“The Witch who inherited the bloodline would be the one who consumed the three discarded pieces used to gauge the level.”
“The rotten one, the pointy one, and that dog bastard, right?”
“They all have names.”
“What names do idiots need? Those bastards were just nobodies who didn’t even follow our orders properly anyway.”
“Enough. More importantly, is the work proceeding well?”
“Yeah. It’s going smoothly. Don’t worry. Hehe.”
At the question from the black heart, the boy holding the phone suddenly lifted his head and answered.
The boy in a tailcoat, watching CCTV on his phone, had a head made entirely of a massive black eyeball.
With rolling, tumbling sounds, the boy stared at the screen.
“You understand that for you to grow stronger, jealousy and hatred must spread throughout the world, right?”
“Yeah! That’s why I’m working so hard! I’m causing chaos in the most famous place! An old man full of karma came looking for me anyway!”
With those words, the eyeball held up the phone as if asking for praise.
On the screen, a woman sat trembling before a computer.
Standing behind her were none other than massive thugs.
When the CCTV footage was enlarged, the monitor of the woman typing with shaking hands came into view….
– tkffuwntpdy: But the bread here wasn’t that great, so why are you even hyping it up? lol
It was none other than a comment about Seung-hyun’s bakery, Trèfle de bonheur.

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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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