Ch.23Chapter 23 – This is that famous bakery, right? (1)

After leaving Pathos’s repair shop, Mina and Elena walked straight toward Glesius Academy.

Passing through the main gate and heading to the dormitories, the two had to part ways in front of the building.

This was because Mina was a commoner and Elena was a noble, so they stayed in separate quarters.

Usually, they would exchange goodbyes when parting, but today, both returned to their respective dormitories without saying a word.

Upon returning to their rooms, they each tossed the items they were carrying onto their desks and lay down on their beds.

Tomorrow would mark the end of the weekend and the beginning of a new week, but as if they were one person, both remained silently lying on their beds without uttering a word.

However, neither was trying to sleep. There was still too much time left before the weekend ended.

The current time was just before noon.

Noon was when people who had finished breakfast would have a light meal to sustain themselves until dinner time.

—Grumble.

Right on cue, loud rumbling sounds echoed from both their stomachs, demanding food.

Since the academy’s cafeteria was closed on weekends, most students either went out to eat or brought in enough food to last all three meals.

Normally, Mina and Elena would have gone out to eat or enjoyed food they had purchased outside on the terrace of the dormitory.

But having caused a scene at Pathos’s repair shop since morning, neither had eaten anything.

They hadn’t even bought any food to bring back, leaving them in a situation where they would have to go hungry.

“Hmm?”

Just then, a savory, appetite-stimulating aroma began to reach their nostrils.

Feeling hungry, Mina and Elena got up from their beds and walked toward the source of the smell.

The aroma was coming from the standard desk in their dormitory rooms.

More precisely, it was emanating from the bread that Pathos had forcibly given them as they left his shop—a delicious, savory smell.

Unable to resist their hunger, Mina and Elena wanted to grab the bread, tear it apart, and stuff it into their mouths immediately.

But they didn’t do that.

Elena, because of the etiquette education she had received since childhood.

Mina, because of the noble manners she had learned from observing Elena.

Instead of tearing the bread and bringing it to their mouths, they chose to take it outside.

“Oh.”

“Ah.”

And so, Mina and Elena met again outside, looking exactly as they had when they entered their dormitories.

Without exchanging any words, they headed to the outdoor terrace near the dormitories.

At the terrace, which was filling up for lunchtime, students were gathered in small groups, eating and chatting.

Mina and Elena chose a suitable table and sat facing each other.

After sitting down, an uncomfortable silence hung between them.

“Elena.”

“Yes, Mina.”

Mina was the first to speak, and Elena responded to her words.

“Why exactly did you go to that repair shop?”

Mina asked with a slightly furrowed brow as she looked at Elena.

Seeing Mina like this, Elena felt a pain in her chest.

It was like someone was squeezing her heart tightly.

“Well, you see…”

Elena explained to Mina why she had visited Pathos’s repair shop.

She started from the incident of Mina’s crystal orb being damaged, through her efforts to solve the problem, to how she felt the perfectly repaired crystal orb must be fake, which led her to visit the shop.

As she listened to Elena’s story, Mina’s face showed deep emotion.

“Elena, I understand that you went to all that trouble for me. But Pathos isn’t a fraud. The crystal orb he repaired still had my name on it, you know?”

“What?”

Only after hearing Mina’s words did Elena recall one important fact.

That the magic wand Mina’s parents had bought for her had her name engraved on it.

Elena had been so focused on how pristine the crystal orb looked that she had completely forgotten the most important detail.

“Is that true?”

“Yes. I told you before. The crystal orb attached to my magic wand has my name engraved on it.”

Hearing Mina’s additional explanation, Elena felt her face burning.

She now realized what mistake she had made.

She had barged into someone’s shop based only on surface observations, without any certainty, looking down on him and berating him.

She had been able to act that way because she was confident in her abilities and background.

The daughter of the great mage Ielron Sandrios.

A member of the Sandrios family, known as one of the most prestigious noble houses.

A promising mage with a bright future.

All these things had shaped Elena Sandrios into who she was now.

But she hated using her status or abilities to bully others.

That’s why Elena had visited Pathos’s repair shop—thinking Mina had been defrauded, she wanted to help the first special friend she had ever made.

Of course, what Elena saw there was completely different from what she had expected.

A man with the ability to transform a rusty dagger into a clean new one with just three hammer strikes.

The owner of Pathos Repair Shop, the man called Pathos, was an ability user who had received his gift from the Great Goddess Epitrina.

Yet despite seeing this ability with her own eyes, Elena couldn’t believe it.

According to everything she had been taught, “abilities” only manifested in the seven attributes: “Water, Fire, Wind, Earth, Light, Darkness, and Void.”

And these were supposed to help users enhance their magic or martial arts to achieve greater destructive power.

But Pathos’s ability didn’t match anything she had been taught about abilities and ability users.

He even casually spoke the Great Goddess’s name.

Ordinary people who merely mentioned it would suffer divine punishment—contracting mysterious illnesses, business failures, or sudden loss of vitality leading to death.

Yet he had spoken the Great Goddess’s name without hesitation, and no divine punishment had befallen him.

“Mina.”

“What is it, Elena?”

“How… does one go about apologizing?”

“…You want to apologize to Pathos?”

Mina understood what Elena was trying to say.

Clearly, she wanted to apologize to Pathos for the trouble she had caused him yesterday.

“First, I think it needs to be sincere.”

“Sincere?”

Elena questioned Mina’s statement that an apology needed sincerity.

And she seemed to understand why sincerity was necessary for an apology.

No matter how many times someone comes to apologize, if there’s no sincerity behind it, one wouldn’t feel inclined to accept it.

“So with sincerity…”

—Grumble.

Elena was about to ask Mina how to apologize properly and how to convey sincerity, but the embarrassing sound from her stomach made her stop mid-sentence.

“…Should we eat something first?”

“…Yes, let’s.”

Since Elena was just as hungry as Mina, the two carefully placed the bread on the table.

It looked like ordinary white bread from a bakery, but strangely, it still felt warm and emitted a savory aroma.

Mina and Elena carefully tore off a piece of bread and brought it to their mouths.

And the moment they put the bread in their mouths and carefully chewed it with their teeth.

“Mmph!”

“Mmmm.”

An intense burst of flavor spread across their tongues.

‘It’s delicious, so delicious!’

‘What kind of bread is this that it tastes so amazing?’

Mina and Elena were overwhelmed by the intense sensation they felt as soon as they tasted Pathos’s bread.

Mina was a commoner who had grown up in an ordinary household, so the most delicious food she had ever eaten was the roast beef at village festivals.

It was only after entering Glesius Academy that she began to eat proper food.

The first meal she tasted at Glesius Academy had stimulated her palate and introduced her to a new world of flavors.

But the bread she was tasting now seemed like something that had never existed before and might never exist again.

There might be people who had never tasted it, but it seemed like anyone who tasted it once would be hooked.

‘Is this bread considered the finest of the finest?’

‘I’ve never tasted bread this delicious, even at imperial banquets…’

This was true even for Elena, who was a noble.

Thanks to her father, the great mage, Elena had often attended various banquets.

The foods she tasted at these events were dishes that even she, as a noble, rarely got to enjoy in daily life.

This was because delicious food inevitably required large amounts of spices.

However, spices didn’t grow well in the Gelebrio Empire, so the only way to obtain them was through trade with the far Eastern Continent.

Therefore, Elena could only taste food made with spices at banquets.

The dish that had left the deepest impression on her was the veal cream soup she had eaten at an imperial banquet.

Thinly sliced veal with soft cream soup, topped with sprinkles of pepper that balanced out the richness.

Even now, if asked about the best food in her life, she would mention the cream soup with veal.

But today, her perception changed.

This delicious loaf of bread before her.

Though it might look rustic on the outside, its aroma and taste could rival a masterpiece created by a great chef.

“Excuse me…”

“Miss Elena? Could you let us taste just a piece of that bread? It smells so delicious…”

And at some point, people from the outdoor terrace had gathered around her.

Their eyes were fixed on the bread in Elena and Mina’s hands.

The savory and delicious aroma emanating from the bread had drawn them in.

Elena and Mina each tore off a piece to share, excluding what they would eat themselves…

“Wow! What is this?”

“Amazing flavor!”

“Where did you get this bread?”

Everyone who tasted just one piece of the bread was astonished and asked where it came from.

To make them back off, Mina and Elena had no choice but to seek help, and only with the assistance of the dormitory supervisor were they able to disperse the students.

“Really, all this fuss over a piece of bread…”

The dormitory supervisor took a piece of bread from Mina and ate it.

“…Say, could you tell me where you got this bread? If you tell me about the shop, I’ll use my authority to turn a blind eye if you go out on weekdays and don’t come back.”

Mina and Elena accepted the dormitory supervisor’s sweet offer, and so the next day, while the students were in class, the supervisor went out alone to find Pathos’s shop.

Originally, Pathos had wanted to hear this story from Mina and Elena, but he learned about it when the dormitory supervisor spilled the whole story first.

After hearing everything from the dormitory supervisor, Pathos sighed and tossed him a loaf of bread, then gave him two more in exchange for not revealing the shop’s location.

“This isn’t the picture I wanted.”

The dormitory supervisor left satisfied, but Pathos felt that something was going seriously wrong.

And soon, that feeling became reality.