Dungeon Bakery Chapter 29

After Seo Doha left, Baek Seol logged into Another to gather information about sugar beets.

‘Sugar beet. Search.’

Hmm. Judging from the posts written by Hunters, fortunately, sugar beets didn’t seem to be particularly rare. In fact, she occasionally came across posts complaining that there were so many of them that they were practically underfoot and annoying.

[Title: Why are there so many trash healers these days? They’re worse than sugar beets. Author: GodlyControl]

Content: None

Comments:

—SugarBeet: Ouch.

—HealerBest: Maybe you should do better?

[Title: I’m probably worse than that sugar beet rolling around on the ground. My life is ruined. Author: OneShotLife]

Content: Does anyone have, like, a thousand bottles of Elixir? If I had those, I’d be insanely strong too.

Comments:

—ChocoChoco: You’re D-rank, aren’t you?

—StrongestD: What’s wrong with being D-rank? Are you S-rank or something?

She understood that sugar beets weren’t particularly valuable.

Resting her cheek against the table, Baek Seol lightly rubbed her chin.

And then.

Creeeak.

She heard the sound of the upstairs door opening slightly.

Since the bakery had been furnished with only the cheapest interior items, it made a fair amount of noise.

Baek Seol raised her head toward it.

She saw Lucy poking his face through the crack in the door.

“Did the customer leave, ppi?”

“Yeah. Lucy, were you taking good care of the kids?”

Apparently, he had somehow noticed that Seo Doha had left.

Or perhaps he had been eagerly waiting for Seo Doha to leave the entire time.

“Ppi……”

Lucy came downstairs from the second floor with a completely drained expression.

He seemed so exhausted that he barely had the strength to fly. Hopping down the stairs two steps at a time, Lucy trudged over and stopped beside Baek Seol.

“……Never leave those guys with me again, ppi.”

Whatever had happened in that short time, Lucy looked completely haggard.

“Are you okay, Lucy?”

“Ppiik……. Hoo…… I am the Staff of the World, ppi…… I bear a great mission……”

With a face that radiated an intense sense of existential disillusionment, Lucy muttered complaint after complaint.

With Seo Doha gone, Baek Seol was finally relaxed enough to humor him a little.

After muttering for quite some time, Lucy suddenly asked with a somewhat refreshed expression,

“Come to think of it, a new quest appeared, ppi, right? It seems we have to obtain something called sugar beets, ppi. I think it’s a newly discovered plant, ppi.”

“Yeah. That’s right. Although the number they’re asking for is a little unrealistic.”

“I think that many are necessary if we want to safely increase their population inside the dungeon, ppi. Those two are going to eat an absolutely ridiculous amount again, ppi.”

Lucy was right.

The system probably had its own reasons for setting the number.

It had likely calculated that this was how many were needed for the Black Rabbits and Black Elephants to live together without fighting……

“Then are we going to venture out to other dungeons instead of staying in the Dungeon of Beginnings, ppi?”

Lucy asked in a slightly excited voice.

Apparently, the thought of Baek Seol visiting another dungeon had gotten him excited.

Considering that he knew perfectly well how much she hated dungeons, perhaps he actually enjoyed watching her suffer.

While making a perfectly reasonable deduction in her head, Baek Seol firmly shook her head.

“No. I’m not going to any other dungeon.”

“Ppi……? Didn’t you say there are no sugar beets in the Dungeon of Beginnings, ppi? If you want to get them, you have to go to another dungeon, ppi.”

Lucy tilted his head in confusion.

Baek Seol wiggled her index finger from side to side.

“Why do you think I have to personally run around to get an item?”

“Ppiik?”

“As a rule…… these kinds of junk items aren’t worth the time you put into obtaining them. It’s much more efficient to spend that time doing something else. Like leveling up or farming items.”

“……I don’t understand what you’re talking about, ppi.”

Lucy looked sullen.

Baek Seol chuckled and lightly brushed her index finger across Lucy’s forehead.

His gaze grew even more menacing, but he was already too exhausted from dealing with the Black Rabbits and Black Elephants to bite her finger right away.

“I’m saying there are actually quite a lot of people who can run around and do the work for me. They can take care of their own business while making some money on the side. Everybody wins. Isn’t that better for both of us?”

“……Ppi?”

Leaving Lucy, who still had a question mark floating above his head, Baek Seol logged into Another.

Then, sitting up straight, she began typing a post.

[Title: Buying Sugar Beets.]

 

***

 

A few days later, another bulletin board was in an uproar.

[Title: Theory: 100,000 Dungeon Sugar Beets Are an Army / Author: StrongestD]

Content: Whoever is buying 100,000 sugar beets, isn’t he trying to build an army out of them? LOL. Turns out he has a skill that lets him control plants or something LOL.

Comments:

—GodlyControl: Is this fun? z

—SugarBeet: Who is it? Who made the sound of sugar beets?!

It had all started when a post suddenly appeared announcing that someone was buying Dungeon Sugar Beets.

Not just a few, either.

100,000 of them.

Sugar beets?

Sugar beeeeeets?

Those sugar beets that were so common in dungeons that they were practically underfoot?

Those useless junk items that couldn’t even be made into potions and were different from ordinary sugar beets, making them inedible to humans?

What kind of lunatic was buying 100,000 of them?

[Title: Isn’t it actually a typo? / Author: PureHeartedChild]

Content: It wasn’t sugar beets. It was a sugar door. They were saying they wanted to buy 100,000 doors made of sugar from craftsmen!

Comments:

—GodlyControl: That actually makes some sense.

—SugarBeet: Who is it? Who made the sound of sugar beets?!

—StrongestD: This guy’s committed to the bit. But it’s getting old. Give it a rest.

—SugarBeet: Yeong.

But the person buying 100,000 sugar beets never responded to any of those posts.

Instead, whenever the post began to get buried, they simply appeared and bumped it back up.

[Title: Buying Sugar Beets. Author: Anonymous]

Content: Buying 100,000 sugar beets. Current quantity: 0/100,000. Buying for 1 point per sugar beet.

One point per sugar beet.

There were sugar beets everywhere in dungeons. If someone casually picked up just 100 of them, that would be 100 points.

In Korean won, that was 100,000 won.

Honestly, it wasn’t particularly tempting to Hunters of a certain rank.

But for low-rank Hunters, or those living from day to day with an uncertain income, it was an offer that made their eyes light up.

[Title: Quitting my porter job and becoming a mountain ginseng digger today. / Author: MountainGinseng1]

Content: Porter jobs don’t come in every day, you have to risk your life, and the pay isn’t even that great. But wow. One point per sugar beet…….

I’m going to make the career change. Later.

Comments:

—MountainGinseng2: I’m coming with you, bro.

—MountainGinseng3: No time to leave comments. Move fast and sell as many as possible.

Sugar beets were particularly abundant near the entrances of dungeons, so there was little chance of encountering dangerous monsters.

Hunters rushed into dungeons, scrambling to dig up sugar beets.

Even Hunters who had entered dungeons to clear them began wandering around during their breaks, pulling up sugar beets as a side hustle.

An unexpected sugar-beet craze swept through the Hunter community, and before long, the sugar beets in most ordinary dungeons had vanished.

Hunters who had filled their inventories with sugar beets headed to the exchange.

The exchange had warehouses prepared for people who wanted to purchase items anonymously.

Once the seller placed the item in the designated warehouse, the money the buyer had prepared in advance was automatically deposited into the seller’s account.

“My porter skill is really great. I can carry way more than other people, so I can sell more too.”

“How much did you make?”

“5,000 points. I’m going for another run. Hopefully they don’t close the listing before I get back.”

“Wow……”

By now, Baek Seol didn’t even need to bump her own post.

People were voluntarily updating the number of sugar beets remaining on the exchange in real time.

Thanks to that, while the sugar beets were piling up, Baek Seol could focus on fulfilling the slimes’ group orders and catch another mandragora to make more sugar cookies for the Black Rabbits and Black Elephants.

The profits from the group orders were surprisingly decent.

Baek Seol checked her inventory.

‘I’ve accumulated quite a bit of money by now. 100,000 points should be fine.’

This method was far more cost-effective than risking her life by personally running around other dungeons.

“My dear, have you heard? Apparently, some lunatic has been buying 100,000 sugar beets lately.”

Oh Juk-heon said with a chuckle as he came to buy red bean buns.

Baek Seol smiled back at him.

Yes. That lunatic is standing right in front of you.

“Ahaha……. I guess sugar beets are incredibly unpopular items?”

“That’s right. Since everything found inside dungeons is generally considered a subject of research, people usually find some kind of use for them and sell them at a high price. But sugar beets……”

She didn’t need to hear the rest of what Oh Juk-heon was going to say.

Yes. That’s right.

Sugar beets were completely useless.

‘It really seems like Black Rabbits and Black Elephants don’t exist in other dungeons.’

Baek Seol scratched her head.

Suddenly, something Lucy had said came to mind.

‘When Black Rabbits and Black Elephants eat sugarcane and relieve themselves, more sugarcane grows from it, ppi. So normally, there shouldn’t ever be a shortage of sugarcane, ppi. Could it be because they’ve been isolated for too long, ppi……?’

If that was true, it explained why sugarcane had disappeared from other dungeons in the past.

The role of the Black Rabbits and Black Elephants was to spread sugarcane populations.

Since the two monsters didn’t exist in other dungeons, the sugarcane had quickly disappeared.

‘I wonder why the two of them don’t exist in other dungeons, though…….’

Baek Seol shrugged and carefully wrapped the red bean buns before handing them to Oh Juk-heon.

Since he had bought ten at once, 1,000 points had been deposited into her account.

“Thank you again today. Ah, come to think of it……”

Oh Juk-heon, who had been about to leave, suddenly stopped in place.

“Hmm?”