Dungeon Bakery Chapter 10

“Ppi……?”

Lucy, who had been happily flapping his wings, faltered.

Baek Seol crossed her arms and stood there with a crooked expression. Then she opened her mouth again.

“Reject the quest. I said I’m rejecting it. System.”

<…….>

Why had it naturally assumed that she would accept the quest?

Baek Seol had absolutely no intention of doing so.

The fact that she could get 30,000 points all at once was a little tempting, but she wasn’t willing to risk her life for that money.

Because to her, ‘Dungeon = Monster = Dead!’

No matter how enormous her mountain of debt was, it wasn’t more important than her life.

“That’s not allowed, ppi!”

“Why not? I have the right to reject a quest.”

“Th-That’s true, ppi…….”

See? Even Lucy didn’t seem to have anything to say.

Baek Seol was certain her reasoning was flawless.

Just then, the slime that had been watching their conversation began to flatten itself against the floor.

Was it just her imagination, or did it look as though the slime were overwhelmed by immense disappointment and sadness?

“Ugh. I’m sorry, customer, but I don’t think that order is going to work. How about placing a different order?”

“Kyung…….”

The slime’s antenna drooped helplessly.

Even the heart at the tip seemed to shrink.

Watching the cute slime become so disappointing right before her eyes, Baek Seol began to feel a little guilty.

‘Ugh……. But I can’t help it.’

Just then, the tactless system window announced its presence.

<System: Are you sure you want to reject the quest? Y/N>

Baek Seol quickly turned her gaze away from the slime and touched ‘Y.’

Then, just as she intended, the quest was rejected……

“Huh?”

It wasn’t.

Instead, a different system window appeared.

<System: Due to your attempt to reject the quest, a hidden condition of the ‘First Bulk Order!’ quest has been revealed.>

A hidden condition?

Baek Seol blinked, and something was soon added to the quest window.

Quest: The First Bulk Order!

The regular customer, Slime No. 97, is about to place a bulk order. Successfully complete your first bulk order!

Condition: Personally deliver 20 loaves of white bread to the location indicated by Slime No. 97 (Status: Incomplete)

Reward: Dungeon Bakery Owner Lv. up!
** Acquire 30,000P**
** Slime’s Gratitude**

Upon Failure: Slime appearance rate drops to 0%

“……”

Baek Seol’s eyes widened when she saw the words ‘Upon Failure’ added at the bottom of the quest window.

Why was the system so extreme?

It meant that if she rejected the quest, the slime would never come to the bakery as a customer again.

Just as Baek Seol was frowning, her eyes met the slime’s.

The slime was looking up at her with the most pitiful expression imaginable.

Its round eyes glimmered faintly, almost as though tears had gathered in them.

It looked as if it were silently asking whether she really intended to part ways with it.

Baek Seol rubbed her dry face and glared at the quest window.

The rewards looked pretty good.

And the penalty for failure was also pretty bad.

It would mean losing the only source of income she had right now.

But still.

‘Even so, a dungeon…….’

Just then, the window from earlier appeared again.

<System: One last time, are you really going to reject the quest? Y/N>

That didn’t mean she could go into the dungeon, though.

Baek Seol raised her finger once more to reject it.

At that moment, Lucy let out a small sigh and stepped between her and the slime.

“The Dungeon of Beginnings is the place that □□□□□ first arranged in this world, ppi.”

The topic was so out of nowhere that Baek Seol paused.

Lucy continued.

“But during that process, it was interfered with by ‘him,’ so it was never properly established, ppi. As a result, the Dungeon of Beginnings became isolated, ppi. Contrary to what ‘she’ intended, ppi.”

Lucy was talking about something she couldn’t understand at all, but there was one thing she could clearly grasp.

The Dungeon of Beginnings was isolated.

“The creatures inside the Dungeon of Beginnings…… including the beings humans call monsters, ended up trapped inside the dungeon as well, ppi.”

“Ah…….”

Baek Seol glanced at the slime.

So this slime was trapped inside the Dungeon of Beginnings too.

But what did that have to do with this quest?

“Even if a dungeon is nothing more than a small, severed world, as a long period of time passed in isolation, the individual creatures inside the dungeon came to suffer from various hardships, ppi.”

“Hardships?”

“Yes, ppi. The slime race is suffering from great hardship as well. Completing this quest will be a great help to them, ppi.”

A small whimper came from the pink slime, as though it were asking her to help.

Baek Seol bit down lightly on her lip.

‘But even so…….’

A dungeon.

A place filled with monsters.

It was a place her family had repeatedly warned her to stay far away from, almost as though they had brainwashed her into it, which made her far more wary of dungeons than other people.

‘Risking my life for a monster is still ridiculous.’

Sure, they were suffering hardships.

But weren’t they monsters, in the end?

Just as Baek Seol quietly turned her head away, unable to look at the slime, another system message appeared.

It was a message she had seen once before.

<System: The system remembers your actions. ……(Remembering)……>

While Baek Seol froze, yet another system window appeared.

<System: The system modifies the quest rewards to reflect your disposition.>

It seemed the system was determined to make her accept the quest somehow.

It had actually gone as far as changing the rewards.

But even so, there was no way her decision would change.

Baek Seol casually skimmed through the modified rewards, then stopped.

She slowly rubbed her eyes.

“Gasp.”

“Baek Seol, ppi? What’s wrong, ppi?”

“……”

Was it really giving her this as a reward?

Baek Seol stared blankly at the contents before slowly composing her expression.

This was a reward she absolutely could not refuse.

She wore an expression that somehow reminded her of the resolute gaze of a hero entrusted with a mission to bring about world peace, then opened her mouth.

“I’ll accept it. The quest.”

“Kyung!”

The slime bounced its body happily.

Lucy flapped his wings and shouted.

“Good thinking, ppi! Everyone will recognize the uniform you’re wearing, ppi. So you won’t be in too much danger even in the dungeon, ppi. Don’t worry, ppi!”

Right.

Judging by the way Lucy was saying it, perhaps the dungeon really wasn’t all that dangerous.

Glancing at the modified quest rewards, Baek Seol calmed herself down.

With a reward like that……!

It was enough to change her mind.

‘Yeah. What’s the worst that could happen? It’s not like I’m actually going to die, right?’

 

***

 

But then.

“AAARGH! Damn you, Lucy! What do you mean it’s not dangerous?!”

She hadn’t realized she would actually end up in danger of dying.

KROOOOAR!

The roar of a monster shaped like a black cow came from directly behind her.

Baek Seol felt the hair on the back of her neck stand on end.

She didn’t dare turn around, so she kept her head facing forward and didn’t stop running.

She pushed even harder with her toes, already tense from the strain, pounding the ground as fast as she could.

Black bushes she had never seen before whipped past her, scratching her cheeks.

The gloomy-colored ground seemed to be saturated with moisture, sinking deeply beneath her feet with every step.

“Huff, haaah, ugh, I’m going to die.”

Mom. Please save me!

A silent scream seemed to burst from every inch of her body, but there was no one there to hear it and come save her.

Baek Seol was devastated.

I’m insane! I never should have entered the dungeon!

No matter how amazing the reward was!

Cursing under her breath, Baek Seol ran with every last ounce of strength she had.

‘It definitely looked fine at first……!’

Until the moment she first stepped into the dungeon, there had actually been hope.

There really had.

Baek Seol’s memories returned to the moment she first entered the dungeon.

When she opened the brown door and stepped through, what greeted her was a vast grassland.

A pleasant breeze gently brushed against both her cheeks, while a clear, refreshing scent tickled the tip of her nose.

It was a scent she had never smelled before, but Baek Seol immediately realized where it was coming from.

‘Wow. It’s really huge…….’

It was a gigantic tree.

It was so enormous that she even wondered whether it was right to call it a tree at all.

It was taller and bulkier than most apartment buildings.

It was so huge that clouds could be seen drifting lazily around the branches that stretched outward.

Baek Seol followed the enormous branches with her gaze before eventually looking behind her.

Amazingly, the door she had just come through was attached to one of the tree’s branches.

A branch that began high above stretched downward as though it had been driven straight into the ground, and a brown door was embedded all by itself in the massive branch where it touched the earth.

‘How strange.’

This must be the Yggdrasil Lucy had mentioned.

Baek Seol could tell from the leaves hanging from the branches.

They were the same leaves covered in strange patterns that Lucy had brought her before.

‘And these are the fruits of the Young Yggdrasil.’

The things scattered carelessly across the ground were familiar fruits.

If the fruits had fallen all over the place, that meant there had to be Young Yggdrasils nearby.

But no matter how much she looked around, she couldn’t see any.

‘Just like Lucy said.’

Lucy had proudly explained that because Young Yggdrasils were fragile, they grew underground to protect themselves.

In other words, there were countless Young Yggdrasils growing beneath this very grassland she was standing on.

She carefully walked over to the fruits and began placing them one by one into the bag she had brought with her.

Now that she looked closely, they weren’t simply lying on the ground.

They seemed to be attached to it.

More precisely, they were probably hanging from the stems of the Young Yggdrasils beneath the earth.

Having the strange experience of picking fruit straight from the ground, Baek Seol hummed softly to herself.

“Nice. This is easier than I thought.”

Her goal for today was to fill this bag completely with Young Yggdrasil fruit.

She remembered Lucy confidently declaring that there was absolutely nothing dangerous about this place.

What the heck? He was actually right.

The grassland was unbelievably peaceful.

The fact that she could see a single black cow peacefully grazing at the far end only made the place seem even more tranquil.

‘Maybe it’s because we’re near Yggdrasil. I don’t see anything else. Except that black cow.’

Baek Seol slipped the mop she had been holding in one hand since entering through the door into her inventory.

There was nothing else she could bring as a means of protection against any unexpected threats.

It was a +10 fully enhanced mop that had cost her 500 points, after all!

She had decided, through what she considered perfectly reasonable logic, that it should be usable as a weapon.

“Hehe. I’ve already filled half the bag.”

The other ingredients needed to make white bread couldn’t yet be obtained even if she gathered their raw materials herself, because she had no way to process them.

She had no choice but to buy those ingredients from the underground shop, and Baek Seol was more than happy about that.

If she had to gather every single ingredient herself, it would have been incredibly difficult.

“Upsy-daisy. Just a little more……. Huh? What’s this?”

Baek Seol’s eyes widened.

The thing she had reached down and picked up, thinking it was a fruit, turned out not to be a fruit at all.

It looked like a ginseng root, and its appearance was so completely different from the fruits that she wondered how she hadn’t noticed.

The green grass sticking straight up from its head looked tough and coarse.

And on the part that looked like a ginseng-like root—the part she assumed was its root—there were eyes and a mouth……

“Huh?”

Why does it have eyes and a mouth?

While Baek Seol stood there dumbfounded, the plant’s tightly shut eyes suddenly snapped open.

Its mouth opened wide.

And then it began to cry.

“KIEEEEEEEEEKK—!!”

“Eek?!”