Interlude 3: Yumiella
The Royal Capital of the Kingdom of Valschein, known widely as one of the most bustling cities in any of the surrounding kingdoms, was completely empty, without any signs of life.
A lone girl stood on a balcony of the Royal Palace, looking over the now-devastated townscape. Her face was hidden by her long bangs, making her expression difficult to read. Looking over the deserted streets, it was apparent that there weren’t any other humans left who could give her the haircut she so desperately needed.
The black-haired girl looking down at the Royal Capital was the very person who had destroyed not only this kingdom, but all of humankind. Her name was Yumiella Dolkness.
“Where did I go wrong...?” she mumbled.
“Do you actually think you did something wrong?” Despite the evidence that there was no one left in this deserted world who could respond, there was a reply to Yumiella’s words. The voice was garbled, and the speaker’s age and gender were unclear.
“Well, I’m probably in the wrong,” Yumiella calmly replied, seeming unsurprised to hear a voice from an invisible owner.
“Do you regret controlling monsters and exterminating humans?”
“How could I have any regrets or repentance after all that happened? I’m not the only one who made the wrong choices. Everyone around me did too... Everything in the world was wrong. That’s how we ended up here.”
“That’s right!” Yumiella’s conversational partner exclaimed, their voice gaining vigor. “These worlds are all wrong. That’s why I’m going to free them.”
Ugh, he doesn’t shut up when he gets like this, Yumiella thought wearily. Although she didn’t know his identity, she did know his moods. She thought back on her life—her life until this moment, riddled as it was with mistakes, both her own and others’.
The first mistake was that she had ever been born. Yumiella resented the fact that she had been given a life, and she resented even more the appearance she had been born with and the circumstances she’d been born into. If only her hair were any other color than black, if only she hadn’t been born into the nobility, if only she had been born into a kingdom where black hair wasn’t so reviled. She daydreamed about the various “if onlys,” but nothing could reverse what had already been.
“I was pretty foolish in the past,” she mumbled.
As a child, Yumiella had been desperate for her parents’ love. She’d believed that the sadness she’d felt for as long as she could remember would melt away with affection from her father and mother—she’d longed for strict but kind parents, but she only ever saw them in stories.
She’d believed she would see her parents one day, and she’d imagined the way they would greet her with a warm hug when they reunited. She’d never doubted that. Those fantasies had sustained her until she entered the Academy, motivating her to study hard while she was in Dolkness County.
While she was a student, she’d continued to chase dreams that would never come true. On the inside, she’d looked down with disdain on the duke’s daughter, who was manipulated by those around her to do what they wanted, but outwardly, Yumiella still fawned upon her. In order to stay in the faction, she’d volunteered to do the dirty work. That had drawn the attention of the royal family, and her faction consequently dismissed her.
All of her hopes had been destroyed. The truth was, there had never been any hope from the very beginning. She realized this obvious truth around her third year at the academy. Right around then, news of the Demon Lord’s resurrection spread across the kingdom.
The Demon Lord was a new source of hope for Yumiella. The Demon Lord surely would do something about the people that had continuously treated her cruelly, this poor excuse for a kingdom, and the world that had no value in its existence—surely the Demon Lord would destroy it all.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have relied on someone else to help me,” she reflected in a flat voice, as if she were speaking about a stranger.
She had lost hope once again. The Demon Lord had been defeated, and the new hero and saintess were praised by the entire kingdom.
Yumiella knew then that she couldn’t trust others. The only person she could rely on was herself. She’d made a decision: she would destroy the world in place of the Demon Lord who had let her down.
Yumiella had known for a long time that she was stronger than the people around her, and that she could use magic of an incredibly strong element. She had known how powerful she was, and she kept it hidden.
She’d never used this power of hers during her childhood or while she was a student, fearing that she would only cause others to be even more terrified of her than they already were. Though she now understood that there was nothing to fear when the world had already cast her out so cruelly, at the time, she was truly terrified of doing anything that would inspire others to hurt her more.
And so, Yumiella began walking the path towards becoming the hidden boss. It was right after this turning point that she first met the figureless voice.
“Hey,” Yumiella abruptly called out to the voice, who was still rambling on and spewing thoughts of resentment.
“...which is why beings that look down on this world definitely exist.”
“Are you listening to me?!”
“They observe as if it’s entertainment and are delighted... Hm? What is it?”
“Never mind...”
He’d been like this since they’d first met. The mysterious, invisible being didn’t care to have anything resembling a real conversation. He just wanted to listen to his own voice.
She didn’t even know his name. Yumiella wasn’t inconvenienced by this, since there was no one else left to talk to anyway, but internally, she referred to him as the god of evil.
Yumiella thought back to several months ago. The first words he’d said to her were, “You’re going to die if you’re not careful.” He’d warned her that at her current strength, she wouldn’t be able to stand up against Alicia and the other heroes, and that she would be killed if she tried.
He’d then suggested a completely ridiculous method of level grinding. It was an incredibly severe method of training, so much so that it seemed impossible that any sort of mortal being had come up with it.
“What’s wrong?” the voice asked, shifting into a more conciliatory tone as it snapped Yumiella back to the present. Perhaps he’d noticed her distracted irritation. “We’re going to the neighboring world tomorrow, remember?”
“I’ll go,” Yumiella sighed. “You really don’t think about what it’s like to be human, do you? I can see how you’re the one who would’ve come up with such a crazy level grinding method.”
“You’ve got that wrong. The method I shared with you wasn’t something I thought of.”
“What? Who else would?”
“It was you who pioneered that method. A you from a parallel world. The same you that you’ll be fighting tomorrow.”
Yumiella’s next opponent was a different version of herself from a parallel world. She had known this for a while, but she hadn’t thought that she was that ridiculous of a person.
I always assumed she just lived a depressing life until now like I did, but...
Yumiella became curious about this person, although she hadn’t expressed any interest in her until now.
“What’s my other self like? Is she different from me?”
“She’s completely different, and since that’s coming from someone who can’t tell the difference between humans, you know she must be pretty different. She’s also much stronger than you are.”
“What? Why don’t you just have her kill me, then? You just want more henchmen who have unlocked their level caps, right?”
“Well... It’s not that simple. The you over there doesn’t have any weaknesses. She doesn’t hate the world like you do. She’s difficult to control.”
Yumiella couldn’t imagine a version of herself that didn’t hate the world. Even if she had the chance to redo her life, she would probably still dislike this world.
“Why is there a version of me like that?”
“Oh, that’s easy. I did it.”
“Explain...?”
“I’ve had my eye on you for a long, long time. Your abilities are some of the most incredible out of all the humans I’ve ever observed. I’ve wanted you as a pawn very badly. But you always die. No matter how much I interfere, that never changes.”
Yumiella recalled her battle with Alicia and the others. The battle to the death against those four had been won by a razor-thin margin. If she hadn’t used that crazy leveling method, she would definitely have died.
They had just been that strong, and they’d had that many advantages against Yumiella.
She returned her attention to the voice.
“So I thought I might as well try something else,” he continued. “I put a different soul into a version of you. It was a weak soul that was skirting the border between dimensions. Doing that goes against every law of the universe, but I was feeling so lost that I tried it anyway.”
“And that’s my opponent, right?”
“Exactly. I can’t believe what I accidentally created. On top of that, she even found something I’d lost. What a shock.”
“What kind of life does she live?”
“She’s the lord of a territory, or something like that, and she spends her days doing nothing. She’s a very boring human.”
“I see,” Yumiella said consideringly, before hastily amending, “...not that I really care.”
If the other Yumiella had become the lord of a territory, that meant she might have succeeded her father’s title and become a countess. Yumiella couldn’t imagine how things could have turned out so well for her other self.
Yumiella reflected on her life once more. She desperately looked away, pretending not to see it, but there was likely a path where she could have been saved. A helping hand might have been right by her all along, if only she had chosen to see it.
The first option would have been for her to rely only on her own power, without so desperately seeking the approval of those around her. With her strength, she likely could have done very well for herself, especially if she had gone to another kingdom.
Another option would have been to ask those around her for help. Eleanora, whom Yumiella had hated so much, was just a puppet being controlled by those around her. Yumiella didn’t think she had been a bad person. If she had shamelessly asked Eleanora for help, things might have turned out differently.
The last possibility Yumiella could think of was the boy at the Academy who spoke to her from time to time. That boy, who would ask Yumiella if she was having trouble with anything and periodically check in on her, was undeniably a source of hope for her. But the one who had scorned his overtures was none other than Yumiella herself. She didn’t associate with him because he was the son of a margrave, meaning his family had little influence over the centralists of the kingdom.
“But maybe that lack of influence was actually a blessing. His mark was probably much less corrupt than the Royal Capital. I wonder if I could’ve lived peacefully there, away from all of the politics and discrimination... Hey—” Yumiella was about to say the boy’s name, so she covered her mouth. She wasn’t certain of his fate, but he was likely dead as well, swallowed like everyone else by the sea of monsters.
I basically killed him, Yumiella thought.
“What’s wrong? It seems like your will to fight is ebbing again.”
“Of course not. I can’t go back now. I decided that I’m going to kill everyone I don’t like.”
Yumiella was glad she could learn about her other self, the one who lived peacefully in the parallel world. Knowing about this version of herself that was so disturbingly different strengthened her resolve—there was only one being left for her to take down.
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