Dungeon bakery

<10>

“Kyuu…?”

Lucy, who had been happily flapping her wings, suddenly froze.

Baek Seol crossed her arms and stood there stubbornly before speaking again.

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

<……>

Why did the system assume she would obviously accept the quest?

Baek Seol had absolutely no intention of doing that.

She was a little tempted by the thought of getting 30,000 points all at once, but she wasn’t desperate enough to risk her life for money.

To her, dungeon = monster = death!

No matter how much debt she had piled up, it still wasn’t worth risking her life.

“You can’t do that, kyuu!”

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

“W-Well, that’s true, kyuu…”

See?

Even Lucy didn’t really have anything to say.

Baek Seol was now certain that her reasoning was completely sound.

Just then, the slime watching their conversation began flattening itself against the floor.

Was it just her imagination, or did it look like the poor thing was completely heartbroken and disappointed?

“Uh… I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can take that order, customer. How about ordering something else?”

“Kyuu…”

The slime’s antennae drooped sadly.

Even the little hearts at the ends seemed to shrink.

Watching the cute slime become so disappointed right in front of her, Baek Seol started feeling a little guilty.

‘Ugh… But I really can’t help it.’

That was when the completely tone-deaf system decided to make its presence known.

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

Baek Seol quickly looked away from the slime and tapped Y.

Surely the quest would be rejected now…

“Huh?”

It wasn’t.

Instead, another system window appeared.

<System: An attempt to reject the quest has revealed a hidden condition of the ‘Your First Bulk Order!’ quest.>

A hidden condition?

Baek Seol blinked.

Then something new appeared in the quest window.

Quest: Your First Bulk Order!

Your regular customer, Slime No. 97, wants to place a bulk order. Successfully complete your first bulk order!

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

Reward: Dungeon Bakery Owner Lv. Up!

30,000p

Slime’s Gratitude

If Failed: Slime appearance rate drops to 0%

“……”

Baek Seol’s eyes widened when she saw the new line at the bottom of the quest window.

If Failed.

Why was the system being so extreme?

Did this mean that if she rejected the quest, the slime would never come back as a customer?

Just as Baek Seol frowned at the quest window, she made eye contact with the slime.

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

Its big, round eyes even seemed to sparkle slightly, almost as if they were filled with tears.

It looked like it was asking her,

Are you really going to leave me forever?

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

The rewards looked pretty good.

And the penalty for failing was absolutely terrible.

She would lose the only source of income she currently had.

But still…

‘No matter what, I can’t go into a dungeon…’

Right then, the same system window appeared again.

<System: One last time. Are you really sure you want to reject the quest? Y/N>

Even so, there was no way she could go into a dungeon.

Baek Seol raised her finger, ready to reject it again.

That was when Lucy let out a small sigh and stepped between Baek Seol and the slime.

“The Beginning Dungeon was the first place □□□□□ prepared for this world, kyuu.”

Baek Seol paused at the sudden change of subject.

Lucy continued.

“But during that process, ‘he’ interfered, so the dungeon never properly settled into this world, kyuu. As a result, the Beginning Dungeon became isolated, kyuu. And that was different from what ‘she’ intended, kyuu.”

Lucy was talking about something Baek Seol didn’t understand at all.

But one thing was clear.

The Beginning Dungeon was isolated.

“The creatures living inside the Beginning Dungeon… Even the beings humans call monsters were trapped inside along with it, kyuu.”

“Ah…”

Baek Seol glanced at the slime.

So this slime was trapped inside the Beginning Dungeon too.

But what did that have to do with her quest?

“No matter how small and cut off a world the dungeon may be, after being isolated for such a long time, all the creatures inside have developed their own problems, kyuu.”

“Problems?”

“That’s right, Kyuu. The slime race is suffering from a major problem too. Completing this quest would help them a lot, Kyuu.”

The pink slime let out a soft whimper, almost as if it were begging her for help.

Baek Seol lightly bit her lip.

‘But still…’

A dungeon.

A place filled with monsters.

Her family had spent years warning her to stay as far away from dungeons as possible, almost as if they had brainwashed her.

So naturally, she was much more wary of them than ordinary people.

‘Risking my life for a monster still makes no sense.’

Sure, they were suffering.

But they were still monsters, weren’t they?

Baek Seol couldn’t bring herself to look at the slime, so she slowly turned her head away.

That was when another system message appeared.

It was one she had seen once before.

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

Baek Seol froze.

Then another system window appeared.

<System: The system is reflecting your personality and modifying the quest rewards.>

It seemed the system desperately wanted her to accept this quest.

It was even changing the rewards for her.

But that still wouldn’t change her mind.

Baek Seol casually glanced over the modified rewards.

Then she suddenly froze.

She slowly rubbed her eyes.

“Gasp.”

“Baek Seol, kyuu? What’s wrong, kyuu?”

“……”

Was it really going to give her this as a reward?

Baek Seol stared blankly at the screen.

Then, little by little, she composed herself.

This was a reward she absolutely could not refuse.

Her expression suddenly became so serious that she looked like a hero who had just been given the sacred mission of saving world peace.

She opened her mouth.

“I’ll accept it. The quest.”

“Kyuu!”

The slime bounced happily.

Lucy flapped her wings and shouted.

“Good choice, kyuu! Everyone will recognize the uniform you’re wearing, kyuu. So you shouldn’t be in too much danger inside the dungeon, kyuu. Don’t worry, kyuu!”

Right.

If Lucy was saying that, then maybe the dungeon really wasn’t that dangerous.

Baek Seol glanced at the modified quest rewards again and tried to calm 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 going to die, right?’

But…

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

She had no idea she was actually going to end up in a life-threatening situation.

KROOOOAR!

A monster shaped like a black bull roared right behind her.

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

She didn’t dare look back.

Keeping her eyes fixed straight ahead, she continued running.

She pushed herself even harder, digging her toes into the ground and kicking off with everything she had.

Strange black bushes she had never seen before scratched against her cheeks as she ran past.

The gloomy-colored ground seemed to be soaked with moisture, sinking deeply every time her feet hit it.

“Huff… huff… I’m going to die…”

Mom!

Please save me!

The silent scream seemed to come from every part of her body, but there was no one around to hear it and rescue her.

Baek Seol was devastated.

I’m an idiot!

I never should’ve come into this dungeon!

No matter how amazing the reward was!

Cursing under her breath, Baek Seol ran for her life.

‘It looked completely safe at first…!’

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

There really had.

Baek Seol’s thoughts went back to the moment she had first entered the dungeon.

When she opened the brown door and stepped outside, what greeted her was a huge grassland stretching as far as she could see.

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

It was a smell she had never encountered before, but Baek Seol quickly figured out where it was coming from.

‘Wow. It’s huge…’

A massive tree.

Calling it simply a tree almost felt wrong.

It was so enormous that it was taller and wider than most apartment buildings.

It was so huge that clouds could be seen lazily floating around some of its branches.

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

The door she had just walked through was incredibly attached to one of the tree’s branches.

A huge branch stretched down from high above, almost like it had been driven straight into the ground.

And on the enormous branch touching the earth, a brown door had been embedded all by itself.

‘That’s strange.’

This must be the Yggdrasil Lucy had told her about.

Baek Seol recognized it from the leaves hanging from the branches.

They were the same leaves with the strange patterns Lucy had brought back before.

‘And these are the baby Yggdrasil’s fruits.’

The things scattered randomly across the ground were fruits she recognized.

If the fruits were lying around like this, that meant there had to be baby Yggdrasils somewhere nearby.

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

‘Just like Lucy said.’

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

Which meant there were probably countless baby Yggdrasils growing underneath the grassland she was standing on.

Baek Seol carefully walked over to the fruits and began placing them one by one into the bag she had prepared.

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 roots of the baby Yggdrasils growing underground.

Picking fruits directly from the ground was such a strange experience that Baek Seol quietly hummed to herself.

“Nice. This is easier than I thought.”

Her goal for the day was to fill this bag with baby Yggdrasil fruits.

She remembered how confidently Lucy had told her that there was absolutely nothing dangerous here.

What?

Lucy really had been right.

There was nothing to worry about.

The grassland was incredibly peaceful.

Just looking at the black cow leisurely grazing in the distance made the whole place seem calm.

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

Baek Seol carefully placed the mop she had been holding since entering the dungeon into her inventory.

There wasn’t much she could use as protection against unexpected danger, so the mop was basically her only option.

And it had cost a whopping 500 points!

It was a fully upgraded +10 mop, so after giving it some thought, she decided it should work as a weapon.

“Hehe. I’m already halfway there.”

She still couldn’t make the rest of the ingredients needed for the bread.

Even if she gathered the raw materials herself, she didn’t have a way to process them yet.

So she had no choice but to buy those ingredients from the underground shop.

Baek Seol was actually quite happy about that.

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

“Okay. Just a little more… Huh? What’s this?”

Baek Seol’s eyes widened.

She had reached down thinking she had found another fruit, but what she pulled up wasn’t a fruit at all.

It looked almost exactly like a ginseng root.

In fact, it looked so completely different from the fruits that she wondered how she hadn’t noticed it sooner.

The green leaves sticking straight up from the top looked tough and sturdy.

And the part that looked like a ginseng-shaped root had…

Eyes.

And a mouth.

“Huh?”

Why does it have eyes and a mouth?

Before Baek Seol could even process what she was seeing, the plant’s tightly shut eyes suddenly snapped open.

Its mouth opened wide.

And then—

It started screaming.

“EEEEEEEEEEEK—!!”

“Eek?!”