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2025-04-25
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2025-05-09
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3/?
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A Child's Guide to Befriending Ominous Clouds of Darkness

Summary:

When Alicia is eight years old, she meets Yumi, an odd-looking girl with unusual hobbies - but, well. Grandma always said not to judge a book by its cover.
Even if the cover is very evil-looking.

Yumiella's plan is simple - meet the heroine early, introduce her to the wonders of Level Grinding, and maybe watch out for signs of other reincarnators. As far as she's concerned, the plan is going perfectly.

Notes:

This is my first fic. I highly recommend that those with feedback give it in the comments, so that I might learn from my mistakes.

Chapter 1: Yumi

Summary:

Yumiella introduces herself.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Alicia had been helping her grandma with the field, the first time she saw the black mist that would become her best friend. She had been asked to help with a bag of fertilizer, since grandma was too old to carry it herself, and she had seen it out the corner of her eye. It was pretty far away - it looked like it was hanging around the corner of the fence, way down at the edge of the field.

Then - and she gasped at this, almost dropping the bag until she remembered to carry it properly (they’re really heavy, so they hurt the ground if they get dropped!) - the mist turned to look in her direction, glowing eyes seeming to lock on to her the moment they saw her. She had to keep herself from running as the moment seemed to stretch, and then all of a sudden the mist was right up in her face and she dropped the fertilizer with an “Eep!”

And then the mist seemed to lower itself a bit. “Hello,” it said, in a voice that was a lot like a little girl’s except it was weirdly flat and not at all what she would think a scary fog creature would sound like, “I’m Yumi. Do you want to be friends with me?”
And she nods because she’s scared and she’s afraid of what’ll happen if she says yes (what if Yumi’s like one of those fairies in some of grandma’s stories that whisk people away to fun adventures except instead of meeting a bunch of fun friends she gets eaten!?) but she’s more afraid of what sort of things’ll happen if she’s rude to her.

“Thank you,” Yumi says, and Alicia almost misses it over the sound of her own heart beating in her ears. Then, her eyes drift over to the bag of fertilizer she’d forgotten about, and she asks, “Would you like some help?”
“Y-yea-u-uh-um thanks!” Alicia manages as she scrabbles to her feet. The top of Yumi’s mist (and Alicia only just now notices that Yumi’s only a bit taller than her, and based on her voice she might actually be not that much older than Alicia herself is?) dips in what might be a nod, and then she moves over to the bag and crouches down and Alicia assumes that she’s picked it up somehow, though she’s done it much more easily than Alicia herself would.

The two of them stand there, staring at each other. It takes Alicia longer than she’d like to admit to realise Yumi probably doesn’t know where Alicia was going to take it.
“Ah! Um, follow me!” She says and walks off, making sure to go around Yumi because while she isn’t sure if she has a physical body (she picked up the fertilizer so maybe? But also she didn’t make the sort of noises Alicia would associate with someone picking up something that heavy, so she might’ve stored it in some sort of mist dimension or something) she thinks it’d be pretty rude of her to just walk through her as if she wasn’t even there!

It’s a pretty long walk though, so Alicia thinks she should probably make some small talk.
“Hey, Yumi?” she calls behind her. Yumi hums in a sort of questioning way. “I like to read books. What do you like to do?”
“I like books too.” Yumi responds, and she’s pretty sure it’s a good thing they both have the same hobbies (Alicia’s never really had friends before. For as long as she can remember she’s been living with grandma out in the country and there aren’t really that many people her age here and she’s honestly too scared to talk to them most of the time and while she’s also scared of Yumi she’s also the first person to just come up and ask to be her friend so maybe she’s actually pretty nice?) “I also kill monsters.”

Alicia has to take a few seconds to process that. She almost trips over her own feet when she does. “Huh!? You- kill monsters? Aren’t they scary?” She says, almost yelling.
“Not really.” Yumi replies nonchalantly. “I can show you how to, if you’d like.” She stops, and Alicia has to remember that she’s taking her somewhere so she can’t just stop to think about why this possibly-an-eight-or-nine-year-old-girl apparently likes to kill monsters (for fun? Maybe it's like an adventure? But- focus!).

“Oh, um. Um! I mean! Maybe?” Alicia’s only really seen a monster once before, when one wandered onto the farm and her grandma told her to stay inside and they had to wait for it to go away, so she wasn’t really sure if it was safe to go fighting monsters on purpose but Yumi seemed to do it all the time so maybe? Yumi hummed at her answer, and Alicia wasn’t really sure how to get the conversation going again until she spotted grandma.

“Grandma!” She called as she ran over, “Grandma, meet my friend! This is Yumi!”
Yumi takes this chance to introduce herself, dipping a bit. “Hello, Miss. I am Yumi. A pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

Grandma laughs at that. “Oh-ho-ho-ho, what a polite young miss you are! Just put the bag over here, dearie.” She gestures with her walking stick, smiling kindly. “Now, ‘s not often my Alicia makes new friends. How’d the two o’ you meet?”
“I saw your granddaughter and asked her to be friends.” Yumi’s bluntness startles another laugh out of grandma.
“Just like that, hm? Just like that.”

Notes:

Yumiella's level is currently somewhere in the 60s-70s right now, according to my math & level scaling (based on When Will My Reflection Show, and the exp formula therein). She is currently the strongest person in Valschein, even if she doesn't think about it.

Chapter 2: Monsters

Summary:

Yumiella takes Miss Heroine on a combat tutorial.

Chapter Text

Yumi sticks around to help a bit after that, until it starts to get dark. She says, “Thank you for your time, but I unfortunately must go now. My caretakers may worry if I am back too late, but I will take the time to visit you both again soon.”

Both of them hope she’ll return soon, and both for (about) the same reason - so Alicia will have someone her own age to play and make friends with.

-

Yumiella returns at about the time she usually does: past when children would normally be expected home but before they’d usually be expected to go to bed.

All in all, the plan was more successful than she’d thought it would be. She had set aside a few days when she wouldn’t have lessons to go search for Miss Heroine. Normally, this wouldn’t be very successful, as she was an eight-year-old with no convenient access to a vehicle and little information with which to find her, but thankfully she could remember an unskippable CG that showed her grandmother’s farm by the sea, and her level grinding excursions had left her with very powerful legs.

Not only that, but Little Miss Heroine had also provided a conversation topic which she could easily link into grinding, and even expressed an interest in fighting monsters.

In other words, Phase One: Meet the Heroine is complete, and Phase Two: Heroine Levels Up is well under way. This should provide Alicia - likely Alicia Enlight, the default name for Miss Heroine - a major advantage once the game starts.

Unfortunately, Yumiella has lessons for midday tomorrow, which means that she cannot give Alicia a proper combat tutorial immediately. At least the surrounding time can be used to produce a lesson plan based on her region - a neighbouring marquis’ territory, further from the shore than Yumiella had initially assumed, which meant she wasted several days hugging the coastline and searching farther and farther from Dolkness County until she had reached the end of Valschine’s meager coastal area with nothing to show for it.

She’s nowhere near as far away as Yumiella had feared, however, and she can get from her manor to the Enlight farm within about an hour - a time that is likely to decrease as Yumi’s speed and stamina increase from both levels and exercise.

--

The next time Alicia sees her friend, it's mid-morning. “Yumi!” Alicia calls out to her, and runs up to meet her. As she draws closer, she hears breathing, and she notices the faint scent of sweat (she wouldn’t think Yumi could sweat, but grandma didn’t seem to notice anything weird about her yesterday so maybe it’s just that some people look like weird fog and she just hadn’t known about it because she’s lived out in the countryside all her life? It could be, but then why do the people in stories seem to be like her and her grandma and everyone else she’s met? Maybe the people who write them just don’t know how to make fog people different enough?) and she’s pretty sure Yumi’s been running or something, but she has to check, so she asks “Did you run here?”

“Yes,” Yumi replies, only a little bit out of breath, so she must live somewhat close by (but then why has Alicia never seen her before? Maybe she just moved here recently? Or- well, Alicia’s pretty sure she hasn’t actually seen everyone who lives around here, even if they are pretty distinct, so maybe that’s it?) “Would you like to learn how to fight monsters?”

Alicia’s begun to notice that Yumi’s always really direct when she says things, so she’s a lot more prepared for this than last time. “I mean… let me ask my grandma, she might want me to do some stuff today.”

“Please do,” she responds, so Alicia goes and asks her.

After a moment or two of thought, grandma says, “Well, s’ppose it might be alright. Jus’ make sure you stay near town so y’ can get help. And nothing more dangerous than a slime, okay?” As Alicia’s running back, she hears, “Goblin almos’ did me in, back in the day. So don’ underestimate ‘em!”

-

After that, Yumi takes her out to a small field, way out past the farmlands, where a bunch of slimes live. “This,” she explains, “is a slime. They are one of the most nonthreatening enemies you will encounter, with minimal attack and defense, a slow speed, and no magic or special abilities. Slimes as a whole lack any particular strengths or weaknesses, though as these slimes are water-element, they will take half damage from fire magic, but double damage from earth and dark magic. I will now demonstrate a basic dark-element attack spell.” As she says this, a tendril of fog sweeps up towards a slime. It extends, almost seeming to go into the slime, and Alicia watches as the fog proceeds to sort of… roll out of it, and the slime evaporates, leaving behind a little blue stone.
“That was the dark magic spell Drain. This spell deals a small amount of dark-element damage to a single target. Contrary to its name, this spell does not have any health- or mana-draining properties, and is purely an attack spell. As I have killed this slime, it has dropped a mana stone. When killed, monsters leave behind mana stones, with a size proportional to their strength. These mana stones will be an important source of income in the future, so please take care to collect them in the future. I will now collect the mana stone.”
While Alicia is still processing that (Mana stones are a source of income? Is that why she likes killing monsters? Does her family not have very much money so she kills monsters to help them pay for stuff?), Yumiella moves so fast Alicia can barely even see her move, and within a second the mana stone’s gone from the ground and Yumi’s already beginning on the next thing.
“There is another reason to kill monsters besides mana stones, and that reason is experience points, or XP. When you kill a monster, you gain XP proportional to its strength. Once you have enough XP - equal to the cube of your current level plus one - you will advance to the next level, increasing your attribute points. The amount of attribute points you gain each level depends on the individual - you, for example, will gain 4 attribute points or AP each level, whereas Jessica Monford will only gain 2 - and each attribute point will increase one stat by one. While those outside of your party will have their AP distributed according to their class, you will be able to manually distribute AP gained from level ups so long as a person is in your party. It is advised that each person have at least some of their attribute points distributed to Constitution as well as their primary attributes unless you are confident in your ability to protect that party member and/or eliminate enemies before their low HP becomes a problem. Please use this tree branch or your basic light magic spell Glow to defeat these slimes and level up.”

“Eh… EH!?”

Chapter 3: Questions

Summary:

Alicia has some questions for Yumi.

Chapter Text

“Wh- wha-how do you know these things!?” Alicia asks, frantically, because- XP? AP? Stats? Who is Jessica Monford and why does Yumi know how much AP Alicia gets per level and why does she know about her light magic!? (She had only told grandma about it, and she- they hadn’t talked about it when Yumi was here so she couldn’t know but she did and it really scary because how does she know)

“Ah.” Yumi says, looking away. “That… don’t worry about it.” Alicia’s eyes are getting teary, and she has to resist the urge to grab Yumi by the shoulders she maybe has and shake her and yell WHAT DO YOU MEAN DON’T WORRY ABOUT IT?!

But that would be really rude, so instead she wipes the tears from her eyes, looks at Yumi with the most determined stare she can muster, and says “Please. Don’t- just tell me. How do you know things about me?”

“I… cannot answer that. Rest assured, I have not spied on you in any way, but- I cannot speak of the source of my knowledge.” Yumi’s mist seems to shrink when she says this, and Alicia can’t help but deflate a bit when she sees it.

“I- I don’t want to- but can you…” Alicia trails off, looking for the right thing to say. “Can you at least tell me why you can’t tell me?”

“The reason I know these things is… not believable.” Alicia’s read enough stories to know how this goes.

“Please. Tell me. I’ll believe you, no matter what.” And she’s going to try her hardest to do it, too. People don’t say that sort of thing if they’re lying.

Yumi takes a deep breath. “Understood.” She pauses, briefly. “I am… I have knowledge of the future. Your future, and tangentially my own. One might say that I am your future self, but that is far from the most accurate way to phrase it.

“It might be more accurate to say that I am, or was, a third party, who observed your actions from afar, but that is also not the full story. I directed your actions, in that future, the future that encompasses your high-school years – your attendance at Valschein’s Royal Academy.”

“Directed?” Alicia questions. This is- a lot. She isn’t sure she understands most of this, and Yumi uses a lot of words that Alicia doesn’t know, but she thinks she gets the gist of it. At least she’s speaking slower, this time.

“Yes. It would, perhaps, not be inaccurate to say that I controlled you, though that has implications that are not wholly true. I could ‘tell’ you - and at times others, though I am... unsure of if that was done through you or not - to do or say certain things, but I would always be limited to the things you might do on your own.

“I might, for example, be able to praise someone’s performance, or offer gentle criticism, but I would not be able to speak harshly unless they had done something to agitate you, and I would be unable to say something off-topic. Similarly, I could tell you to use a particular spell, but I would not be able to tell you to use offensive magic outside of combat, and I could not make you use a spell you did not know.

“While you attend the Royal Academy, you will come to know… a group of companions. Jessica Monford, a water mage and daughter of a baron; Edwin Valschein, a magic swordsman and prince; William Ares, a physical fighter and son of a knight; and Oswald Grimsarde, a magical prodigy and son of a mage. Together, you will go on adventures and combat monsters. During your third year, the Demon King will revive.”

“I thought the Demon King was dead?” Alicia asks. She’s still a bit surprised at the whole friend-with-a-prince thing, but for now she’s just trying to get this all straight in her head.

“He is. However, he will return, heralded by an increase in dark-attribute monsters, and attempt to destroy the world. You and the- your friends, will quest through his domain, and defeat him again, this time permanently.

“I intend to raise your level so that you can do so as effectively as possible.”

Alicia waits for her to continue, but that seems to be it, so instead she asks, “Um-! Are you, um, training the others, too?” She thinks that’s how it would work, anyway, right? If they’re going to defeat the Demon King together, then it would make sense if they were all trained to do it again. And- “If we won, then, why have you come back?”

“The Capture Targets- Edwin, William, and Oswald all have their own training, independent of me. While Jessica Monford does not, Monford Barony is on the other side of the country from where I live, so that would likely hinder training,” Yumi says. “And, the reason I am here is unrelated to your quest. I simply desire to live in peace.” That makes sense, she guesses. If they beat the Demon King, then they’d have to be pretty strong, and it’d make sense for a knight or a mage to want their kid to grow up knowing how to fight.

“Regardless, I intend for you to exit this tutorial at Level 5, at a minimum. Please defeat the slimes nearby.”

Oh, right! She had almost forgotten- they were here to fight monsters!

-

Yumiella watches as Miss Heroine beats up the slimes with the stick she had given her. While she did have to explain more than she would like about herself, the tutorial was otherwise going well.

Soon, she’d be able to take her to the Dolkness Territory Dungeon, and from there her level gains would increase greatly. She would have to train in order to reduce commute times, though - she’d be able to visit some important locations from the game and defeat monsters while she was at it, so it wouldn't cut into her level grinding too much.

While she was thinking this, Alicia managed to defeat the slime she was fighting. “Yumi! I think I levelled up!” She calls, loud enough that Yumiella would be able to hear her even if she were Level 1. For now, though, she has a tutorial to continue.