Dungeon Bakery

Author: isuzuuy

“This makes no sense, ppi! Who clears quests like this, ppi?!”

“Who does? Me, obviously.”

After putting the cleaning supplies away in the storage room, Baek Seol plopped down on the now completely empty shop floor.

“Ow, my back.”

Her back, which had suffered for an entire week, cracked several times.

If she kept cleaning like this, her body would have completely fallen apart.

She was exhausted enough to die, so there was no way she was going to listen to the bush warbler’s endless nagging.

Baek Seol let the bird’s chatter go in one ear and out the other.

Just then, the system window chimed.

<System: You have 10 completed quests. Please check your rewards.>

Ah.

She had cleared a ridiculous number of quests and received a ridiculous number of rewards.

Baek Seol opened the quest window and pressed the confirmation button for each quest.

Every time she did, the item window flashed brightly, clearly indicating that something was being added.

“Hmm. Is this…… a store uniform or something?”

After quickly checking all the quests and opening her item window, Baek Seol tilted her head.

The first item she received was a piece of clothing that looked similar to an apron.

When she touched the clothing in the window, the actual item suddenly popped into existence right in front of her.

‘Oh. That’s interesting.’

It was a rather girlish-looking apron with a slice-of-bread-shaped accent on the right side of the chest.

Have you been waiting for a uniform made just for you? Here it is! A proper bakery needs to have a uniform, after all!

Equip Effect: Makes you look like the owner of a bakery.

After reading the description, it didn’t seem particularly useful.

There was no buff or anything.

It was just decorative.

Baek Seol had been playing games for a long time, but she had never been interested in dressing up her characters.

She pursued nothing but extreme efficiency.

For someone like her, an outfit without even a single useful additional effect was completely meaningless.

Besides, all that girlishness didn’t suit her at all.

Baek Seol tried to put the outfit into the trash-can icon at the bottom of her item window.

Surely that was how she deleted items.

And right at that moment—

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

The system sent her a message as if it would be terribly hurt if she threw away an item it had given her.

Does the system remember my actions?

She had played games before where the characters’ reactions gradually changed according to the player’s choices.

This felt a lot like one of those games.

Back then, watching the NPCs’ reactions gradually became colder depending on her choices had been……

……a little scary.

“…….”

Baek Seol quietly pulled the apron back before she could push it into the trash.

Throwing away something the system had given her immediately after receiving it did make her feel a little guilty, even for someone like Baek Seol.

She wasn’t going to wear it anyway, but for now, she decided to leave it tucked away in a corner of her window.

She shoved it into the empty slot right beside the trash icon.

The way she put it there made it look like she had absolutely no intention of taking it back out.

<System: The effect of the Bakery Uniform has been changed.>

However, at the sudden system message, Baek Seol quickly put the apron on.

An effect that hadn’t been there before had appeared.

<Equip Effect: Makes you look like the owner of a bakery.

** +Reduces debt by 1P every hour while equipped>**

……The system was pretty clever, wasn’t it?

It really knew how to manipulate people into doing exactly what it wanted.

As an extreme efficiency fanatic, Baek Seol actually liked this effect quite a bit, so she decided to play along with the system’s little scheme.

Of course, she had no choice but to.

If she wore this all day, 24 points of debt would disappear every day!

Converted into real-world money, that was a whopping 24,000 won!

Baek Seol grinned and checked the points at the bottom of her item window.

“The quest rewards gave me exactly 10,000 points.”

“Of course, ppi. You were originally supposed to unlock that door after completing all the beginner quests, ppi.”

The bush warbler tapped her tiny feet against the floor as though she was extremely displeased with what Baek Seol had done.

It wasn’t scary at all.

If anything, it was just cute.

“Then can I just open that door now?”

Baek Seol approached the door the bush warbler had said would allow her to make money.

What was on the other side of this door?

Because she had skipped most of the previous quests, she didn’t have a single clue that could help her guess what was beyond it.

“What do you mean, open it right away, ppi?! You’re not prepared at all yet, ppi. There’s nothing inside the shop. Do you really intend to welcome customers like this, ppi?”

“……Customers?”

Now that she looked at it, there was a sign hanging on the unlocked brown door that hadn’t been there earlier.

The sign read ‘closed,’ so apparently it was what determined whether the shop was open or closed.

‘This is the door customers come through?’

No matter how she thought about it, it was strange.

There was no other door visible from outside besides the one she had been using all this time.

Was it different because this was an Awakened person’s shop?

Would opening that door somehow make customers appear by moving through space?

“Then the door I’ve been using isn’t for customers?”

“That door is for customers too, ppi.”

The bush warbler answered with a dissatisfied pout.

“See what happens when you skip all the quests that came before, ppi! I knew this would happen, which is why I had those beginner quests made in the first place, ppi!”

“…….”

So all those beginner quests had come from this bird?

Having learned where the quests originated, Baek Seol narrowed her eyes.

And just then, the system window chimed.

<System: With the completion of Beginner’s Quest ①, ‘Connection with Staff of the World ???’ has been activated. Please greet your supporter, who will actively assist you in operating the bakery.>

Supporter?

Baek Seol blinked at the unfamiliar word.

Hmm.

The Staff of the World was obviously referring to the grumpy-looking bush warbler right in front of her.

“Greeting is unnecessary, ppi. We’ve already done that, ppi.”

“……You’re the supporter?”

“That’s right, ppi. You may take pride in receiving support from this body, ppi. Even though you trampled all over the beginner quests I prepared, ppi.”

I didn’t trample them……

Baek Seol muttered silently to herself.

More importantly, this bush warbler was her supporter?

The fact that she had deliberately created the beginner quests……

Wasn’t that just because she didn’t want to deal with the hassle herself?

Baek Seol stared at the bush warbler suspiciously.

Then another system message appeared.

<System: Your supporter is waiting for you to give them a name.>

Huh?

Baek Seol blinked.

The bush warbler in front of her didn’t look like she was waiting for Baek Seol to give her a name at all.

Just look at that sulky little beak.

“Do I have to name you?”

“……Hmph. That’s right, ppi. Because from now on, I’m truly your supporter, ppi.”

“U-um.”

A name.

Baek Seol looked troubled.

Whenever she played tycoon games, there were times when she had to name her pets or livestock.

Whenever that happened, Baek Seol was too lazy to come up with names and simply used numbers.

For example, if she were raising several cats—

One Cat, Two Cat, Three Cat……

If she only had one pet—

‘I’d just call it Baek Seol-ko.’

But the moment she called this bush warbler Baek Seol-ko, there was no doubt she would get pecked in the cheek by that tiny beak.

After spending a week learning just how fussy the bush warbler was, Baek Seol had no desire to create unnecessary trouble.

But there was a problem.

As explained earlier, Baek Seol, an extreme efficiency fanatic, had absolutely no talent for naming things.

“How about Bush Warbler?”

“Bush warbler? Bush warbleeer? I cannot possibly share a name with such a lowly creature, ppi!”

But you are literally that lowly creature.

The bush warbler, apparently unaware of her own identity, glared at Baek Seol with an enraged expression.

“Then…… since you’re white…… How about Whitey?”

“Ppiii!”

“Your eyes are black…… So how about Blackie?”

“Ppi! Ppi!”

Phew.

Why was she so picky?

Baek Seol clicked her tongue.

“Do I really have to choose a name? Can’t I just call you a Supporter?”

“No, ppi! What kind of careless name is that, ppi?!”

“Then what should I call you?”

“Ppi ppi!!”

The bush warbler flapped her wings and stomped her tiny feet against the floor.

Of course, that was only stomping hard from the bush warbler’s perspective.

In reality, it didn’t make a sound.

“What? Ppi Ppi? You want to be called Ppi Ppi?”

“…….”

The bush warbler looked like she was about to foam at the mouth.

Baek Seol looked around with slightly more reverence.

At this rate, the bird might actually faint.

“Okay, wait a second. Hmm…….”

Baek Seol tried to think of some cool or pretty names she had encountered so far……

“What name do you want?”

She quickly gave up.

She didn’t trust her own naming sense.

The bush warbler immediately spread her wings and gave a smug little laugh.

She looked remarkably confident, which made Baek Seol think that surely she had better naming sense than Baek Seol herself.

“Luidris Shaygre Katana Ohanius the First. How does that sound, ppi?”

“…….”

No.

Let’s retract that thought from a moment ago.

Baek Seol felt she had been a little too careless and muttered quietly,

“Then…… how about Lucy?”

“……Ppi?”

The bush warbler narrowed her eyes.

Her expression seemed to say, I just gave you an amazing name, so why are you suddenly calling me Lucy?

“Luidris…… whatever-Shaygre is too long. Here, the first part is the family name, and Luidris is too long too, so let’s just call you Lucy.”

“I don’t like…….”

“What if you’re in danger someday and I shout, ‘Luidris Shaygre Katana Ohanius the First! Watch out!’ and your golden window of opportunity passes while I’m still saying your name?”

It was ridiculous reasoning.

But the bush warbler seemed surprisingly convinced.

She placed one wing beneath her face as if propping up her chin and nodded solemnly.

“I see, ppi. Still, the fact that my name is Luidris Shaygre Katana Ohanius the First will not change, so for now, I shall allow you to call me that arbitrarily, ppi.”

“Then that’s settled? Lucy!”

“Understood, ppi.”

<System: Supporter’s name has been set to ‘Lucy.’>

Great.

The most difficult part—coming up with a name—was solved.

Lucy looked at the smiling Baek Seol with an unimpressed expression and gave an indignant snort.

“By the way, have you checked all the previous system messages, ppi?”

“Huh?”

“You cleared so many quests that the messages probably all appeared at once, ppi. Go through them carefully again, ppi. Just in case, ppi.”

Lucy had a point.

Baek Seol began checking the system windows that had been pushed upward, one by one.

Just as Lucy had said, there were several messages Baek Seol had missed.