Dungeon Bakery – Chapter 17

Author: isuzuuy

Where have I seen this person before?

“Hmm? Miss, who might be barging into someone else’s house like this?”

“Huff, huff. G-Grandpa. You’re… you’re Grandpa…”

“Are you hurt somewhere? Goodness, your leg is bleeding.”

Baek Seol staggered forward. The elderly man sitting alone on the wooden veranda, playing janggi, looked at her with a bewildered expression.

No matter how she looked at him, there was nothing about his appearance that resembled the famous non-combat-type Hunter Oh Juk-heon.

He looked as ordinary as an ordinary old man could be.

“Is someone chasing you? Do I need to close the gate? You wouldn’t be running around looking like this otherwise, would you?”

He hurried down from the veranda and went to close the front gate, looking every bit like a simple, good-natured old man.

Baek Seol checked the quest window. Even though she had encountered this old man, there was still no indication that the quest had been completed.

But according to the map, this was definitely the right place.

“Grandpa, is there anyone else here besides you?”

There was only 1 minute and 47 seconds remaining.

When Baek Seol asked anxiously, shifting from foot to foot, he shook his head.

“No, it’s just me…… Are you looking for someone?”

“Are you really, really sure?”

“Hmm? Of course. Goodness, look at me. Stay still for a moment. I’ll get a towel to wipe that blood……”

Seeing the old man walk away from her, Baek Seol hurriedly grabbed the hem of his clothes.

“Wait.”

“Hmm?”

“Your name is Oh Juk-heon, right?”

If Oh Juk-heon was deliberately hiding himself, if he was currently concealing his true identity……

‘Then maybe the quest won’t be complete until he admits who he really is.’

It was entirely possible.

Even if she found Oh Juk-heon, if he himself claimed that he wasn’t Oh Juk-heon, then it wouldn’t count for anything.

At Baek Seol’s sudden question, the old man’s eyes widened.

“Oh Juk-heon……?”

His eyes were innocent and guileless, belonging to an old man who seemed worlds apart from a Hunter.

But Baek Seol refused to give up.

“Right? You’re Oh Juk-heon, Grandpa.”

Only one minute remained.

Baek Seol didn’t have time to argue with this old man like this.

“No, I’m not Oh Juk-heon……”

“Here. Please look at this. I came because I have a request.”

Ignoring the old man shaking his head, Baek Seol quickly pulled the Processing Workbench Blueprint out of her inventory.

The blueprint suddenly appearing out of nowhere made the old man blink blankly.

Then, after taking a quick glance at it, he abruptly stopped moving.

His eyes gradually grew wider.

“……”

The innocent, startled expression on the old man’s face disappeared in an instant.

In its place was the face of an utterly serious craftsman as he stared down at the blueprint.

Even his comical backward shuffle straightened into a proper posture.

Only then did Baek Seol realize that he was actually quite tall and that he carried himself with remarkably good posture.

And there was something incredibly deep about the way he looked down at the blueprint.

“This blueprint……”

The old man murmured quietly as he slowly stroked his beard.

Then, narrowing his eyes, he looked at Baek Seol.

“Where did you get this blueprint? This is the second perfect blueprint I’ve ever seen in my entire life.”

At the same time, the system window chimed.

<System: The ‘Looking for a Person!’ quest has been completed!>

The message announced that the quest was complete.

A moment later, the quest window appeared.

Forced Quest: Looking for a Person!

We’re urgently looking for someone. Hurry to the location marked on the map.

– This Forced Quest was created by an Involved Party and is a quest the system did not intend to generate. The difficulty and penalty have been drastically increased.

Condition: Find ‘Oh Juk-heon’ within 1 hour
**(Remaining Time: 10 seconds. Status: Complete)**
Reward: None
Upon Failure: Supporter ‘Staff of the World’ will be retrieved

With only ten seconds left, she had completed the quest.

She had found Oh Juk-heon.

The realization that she wouldn’t lose Lucy made all the strength drain from Baek Seol’s legs.

Thud!

She collapsed onto the floor and wiped away the cold sweat beading across her forehead.

Looking down at her, Oh Juk-heon scratched his cheek awkwardly.

“I think it’d be best if you rested a bit before we talked. Go wipe off that blood first. I’ll bring you something to drink.”

Baek Seol lightly wiped herself down with the damp towel Oh Juk-heon had given her.

Her entire body was covered in dust and sweat, and she looked an absolute mess.

Her knees in particular were ugly, crusted over with dried blood that had trickled down them.

“Ugh, that stings……”

Baek Seol wiped the blood away with the towel, then gathered her disheveled hair and tied it back tightly.

If anyone had seen her like this, they probably would have thought she was completely out of her mind.

Come to think of it, everyone she had encountered along the way had recoiled from her in shock.

She had been too desperate to pay attention to it at the time……

Now that she finally had some breathing room, Baek Seol’s cheeks turned red.

She was suddenly unbearably embarrassed.

“I should put some medicine on my knee when I get back. And……”

Her knee was one thing.

The right ankle she had sprained last time was throbbing, which meant she had undoubtedly strained it again.

Maybe she really should go to the hospital this time.

Baek Seol got to her feet and slowly moved her right foot.

Then Oh Juk-heon’s voice came from inside the house.

“Are you done? Leave the towel over there and come inside.”

“Uh…… Yes.”

She carefully stepped inside.

The house was modest but neat and orderly.

Baek Seol creakily sat down on the cushion Oh Juk-heon indicated.

On the small low table between them sat a cup filled with water and some yanggaeng cut into bite-sized pieces.

“Have some water first. I made sure it wasn’t too cold.”

“Th-thank you.”

Just seeing the water made her realize how thirsty she was.

Baek Seol downed the entire cup in one go.

Ahh. I feel a little more alive.

As Baek Seol let out a breath, a deep fragrance reached the tip of her nose.

Somehow, Oh Juk-heon had already prepared tea.

As he handed her a teacup, he asked,

“You always seem to be in such a hurry whenever I see you.”

“Do you…… know me?”

“Didn’t you ask me last time where the real-estate office that didn’t even exist had gone? This neighborhood is small, and there aren’t many young people around, so I remembered it.”

Ah……!

Baek Seol’s eyes widened.

So that was where she had seen him before.

It was the old man she had briefly encountered back then.

She had asked him if he had seen the real-estate office.

He had actually remembered her.

“So, is that blueprint what you wanted to commission me for?”

Oh Juk-heon asked as he took a sip of tea.

Baek Seol wrapped both hands around her teacup and nodded.

The tea was pleasantly warm.

It seemed he had adjusted the temperature so she could drink it immediately.

“Yes. I need…… a Workbench made from that blueprint.”

“Hmm. A Workbench. So that’s what it’s for. Looking at it, it seems to have functions for drying and grinding something…… There’s even a fermentation function…… And it seems to contain some other functions I’m not familiar with.”

Could he really tell all that just from glancing at the blueprint?

To Baek Seol, it looked like nothing more than a complicated collection of drawings.

She answered with a slightly surprised expression.

“Yes. It’s a machine meant to process ingredients. I think it probably has several different functions.”

“Process ingredients?”

“Yes.”

Oh Juk-heon rubbed his chin with his thumb.

Judging by how often he assumed that posture whenever he was deep in thought, it seemed to be one of his habits.

“To think such a perfect blueprint was made simply for the purpose of building a machine to process ingredients. Astonishing.”

“Astonishing…… Astonishing……”

He murmured those words for a while, as though he still couldn’t quite believe it.

Then, all of a sudden, he whipped his head up.

His eyes narrowed as he asked,

“What are you going to make after processing the ingredients?”

“Uh, well…… I’m going to make bread.”

“Bread?”

“Yes……”

Oh Juk-heon slowly closed and opened his eyes, then nodded as though he understood.

“Very well. I’ll accept the commission.”

Baek Seol’s face brightened.

He had accepted the request so easily.

For her, that was a huge relief.

Considering that he had gone into hiding here after the last Dungeon Break and concealed his identity, she had expected it to be difficult to commission anything from him.

Baek Seol spoke with a relieved expression.

“Ah, yes. Thank you……”

“But, miss. Do you know what materials are needed to make that machine?”

“……Pardon?”

Materials?

No one had told her anything about that.

Baek Seol blinked.

“The materials needed for this blueprint are written here. You probably can’t make sense of them, though. I can obtain all but one of them myself, but there’s just one……”

“One……?”

Oh Juk-heon looked straight at her with a serious expression.

There was a hint of pity in his eyes.

His gaze seemed to say……

Even if I accept your commission, you probably won’t be able to obtain this material.

‘Just what kind of material is it?’

Oh Juk-heon must have already known what materials were required just from looking at the blueprint.

Maybe that was why he had been willing to accept the commission so easily.

Oh Juk-heon swallowed hard and continued slowly.

“I’ve only seen it once in my entire life. It was not long after the Second Dungeon Break. Back then, the boss of an S-rank Water-type dungeon was a Great Slime……”

The Second Dungeon Break had occurred in Cataclysm Year 12.

Baek Seol had been ten years old at the time……

‘What was I doing back then?’

She tried to recall the past.

Maybe it had simply been too long ago, because she couldn’t remember very clearly.

“I remember because it was still a time when the shock of the Dungeon Break had yet to fade. The Legend Guild, which was leading the Hunter world of South Korea at the time, formed a team and challenged the boss.”

The Legend Guild.

It was a familiar name.

Aunt Eunju and Uncle Changho’s guild.

“After several days of fighting, they finally succeeded in defeating that Great Slime. What the slime shed as it wept back then was none other than ‘Slime’s Tear.’”

Huh.

Slime’s Tears.

She had heard that name somewhere before.

There were so many familiar names popping up one after another.

“It was the first material of its kind ever discovered in the world. As long as you had it, you could make anything a craftsman desired a reality. You could call it the ultimate dream material.”

“The dream material……”

“Yes. And around that time, I received a request to make a machine using ‘Slime’s Tear.’ It came from someone who had gotten their hands on that jewel when it went up for auction.”

The look in Oh Juk-heon’s eyes was bitter as he recalled that time.

It was as though he regretted what had happened back then.

“I was thrilled at the time. To think I’d get to handle the finest material with my own hands. I accepted the commission without a second thought.”

Oh Juk-heon continued his story as though reminiscing with his granddaughter.

Baek Seol quietly watched him.

She didn’t know the details of what had happened, but it seemed that he certainly had his own history tied to ‘Slime’s Tear.’

If she wanted to hear more, he would probably tell her the whole story without much prompting.

But that wasn’t why Baek Seol had come here.

She cut straight to the point.

“Then the material needed to make this machine is ‘Slime’s Tear’?”

Perhaps realizing that he had talked too much, Oh Juk-heon awkwardly stroked his beard before answering bitterly.

“Yes. It has never been discovered again since then, so it probably no longer exists in this world. That means I can’t make this blueprint for you. But since you seem to be in a difficult situation, I could make a similar machine instead……”

“I have it.”

“……Hmm?”

While meeting Oh Juk-heon’s pitiful gaze, Baek Seol rummaged through the depths of her inventory.

She had put it away in a corner because she had assumed she would never have any use for it.

After searching for a while, she finally found ‘Slime’s Tear.’

The moment it emerged from her inventory, a dazzling light illuminated the room.

Now that she looked at it, it actually emitted light on its own.

Baek Seol held the ‘Slime’s Tear’ in her palm and held it out to Oh Juk-heon.

“Here. ‘Slime’s Tear.’”

“……Gasp.”

Oh Juk-heon shot to his feet.

The sudden movement knocked over the low table, sending the teacup tumbling across the floor.