Chapter Text
Yumiella Dolkness faced the greatest challenge of her fourteen-year-old life thus far. No… it was the greatest challenge she’d faced in either of her lives. And no matter how many times she vanquished this challenge, it always reared its ugly head again. The true bane of every gamer’s existence.
Boredom.
On one hand, Yumiella was appalled at herself. She was merely level 82 and only had around a year left before she’d be forced to interrupt her precious level grinding to attend school in the capital. Power leveling had been the greatest joy of her life. Both of her lives, really. And it definitely still was. Nothing could ever replace the rush getting a character to reach the greatest possible strength within a game’s world. And now, she could finally experience that rush first hand. Her joy was indescribable.
On the other hand, she was still bored. In her previous life, if she grew bored level grinding in a game, she’d just switch to another, and level grind there for a while instead. Light Magic and the Hero was hardly the only game she’d ever played, after all. The variety in leveling mechanics across various games added so much spice to her life. However, this was no longer an option, now that Yumiella had been isekai’d into the game world of Light Magic and the Hero.
But it got even worse. When she’d played Light Magic and the Hero in her previous life, she’d had the entire game world to explore, with its numerous dungeons and monsters of every type and description to defeat. Now, even with her beloved Monster Summoning Flute, she was still limited to the monsters native to Dolkness County. A county that sadly only sported a single dungeon. As of this morning, Yumiella had cleared this Dark-attribute dungeon 15,330.5 times. (The half being due to that time she’d had to use Turbid Flow to reattach her arm. An act that had cost her too much of the day to finish the dungeon before she’d had to sneak back to Dolkness Manor. Even after all this time, the incomplete run still rankled her pride as a gamer…)
What’s worse was that even the final boss of that dungeon was now 32 levels below her. Now don’t get Yumiella wrong, this fact was wonderfully efficient for level grinding. Being OP and one-shotting everything was very fun, of course. But it was terrible in terms of challenge. If this was her previous life, by this point she’d have upped the difficulty slider to max a long while back. Depressingly, yet another option stolen from her.
And she was still bored.
As Yumiella blew her Monster Summoning Flute for the 42nd time that morning and slaughtered whatever monsters answered the call with brutal yet unenthusiastic efficiency, a flower petal danced across her nose. Yumiella sneezed, and the trees shook. More petals swirled around her. The last monsters quickly fell to her Shadow Lance, and she grabbed a few petals in her hand to examine them. Sakura blossoms. Easily recognizable as a symbol of spring in her previous life’s homeland.
Yumiella smiled (which meant her lips moved no more than a tenth of a centimeter). If she recalled correctly (and she did), in Light Magic and the Hero there was a special exceedingly rare field boss that only spawned in early spring. Since this boss was optional/post game content… it was level 90. Her smile curled upward another tenth of a centimeter. How long had it been since she’d felt the thrill of fighting something stronger than her? Her old level 1 Dark Souls 3 runs were coming back to her. The only thrill greater was besting something stronger than her. Her smile was now wide enough that even a normal person might be able to see it. If they were paying close enough attention, that is.
This springtime boss spawned in the territory just south of here. Hillrose Duchy, if Yumiella’s vague recollections of the map hanging on the wall of the library in Dolkness Manor were to be believed. As uninterested as she was in geography, she believed her memory was correct in this instance. The library was one of the few rooms in the manor she’d ever frequented after all. (Her bedroom and the kitchens to steal food being the others.) From the age of five, she’d had to teach herself to read and write the language of the Kingdom of Balshine, after all.
The border of Hillrose Duchy was a considerable distance from here. And the spawn point of the field boss farther still. But Yumiella had broken the sound barrier at level 70. She could run there, fight the boss, and still have plenty of time to sneak back into the manor.
With a crack louder than the peal of thunder, Yumiella started sprinting to the south. Numerous trees were felled in the wake of her passing, including the original sakura tree that had inspired this entire endeavor in the first place. She remained entirely ignorant of the scar she was carving into the forest in her wake. Her focus solely on the boss that she was soon to face. All of the details were pushed to the forefront of her mind:
Vernal Timberwolf Rex
Type: Earth
Secondary Type: Dark
Weakness: Fire
Description: Giant plant monster composed of wooden logs held together by Dark magic in the shape of a great wolf. Approximately 10 meters tall and 20 meters long. Eyes glowed purple with dark magic. Vernal was a rare variant with green coloration (rather than the standard brown) and living flowers sprouting all along the length of the beast.
Combat Tips: Favored physical attacks in the guise of a wolf. Claw Swipe and Bite being the most common attacks. Could also use Earth magic attacks such as Earth Spikes. Summoned living roots to Entangle foes to immobilize them for the kill. Void Beams fired from the eyes were the sole Dark attack the monster was capable of.
Fire attacks against the boss did approximately 1.75x normal damage.
Body could be shattered if struck in between the timber composing its body, disrupting the Dark magic binding it together. However, if HP was not brought to zero quickly enough, the body would reassemble itself into its original form.
Unique Drops:
Wolven Axe of the Living Root
Drop Chance: 50%
Level Required: 85
Element: Earth
Damage: 200-250
Stats: + 50 STR
+ 50 MAG
Description: So long as this axe is equipped, the wielder gains the Entangle All spell, immobilizing all enemies for 3 turns. This spell is gained even if the wielder lacks aptitude in the Earth element.
Persephone’s Crown
Drop Chance: 50%
Level Required: 1
Element: N/A
Description: Cosmetic Item (does not occupy helmet slot). Equipped character will gain a flower crown in all Character Portraits and Event CGs. Item is retained in New Game Plus, allowing a character to be crowned from the very beginning in subsequent playthroughs.
Yumiella considered her painstakingly accurate personal Game Guide. Considering that she could barely light a candle with her frankly pathetic affinity for Fire magic, she dismissed the boss’s Fire weakness as irrelevant immediately. Using Shadow Lance in the gaps to disrupt the boss’s body was the obvious strategy. She’d then be free to pummel the Timberwolf safely while it tried to reassemble itself. Rinse and repeat until the boss was dead. On the one hand, not exploiting an obvious vulnerability a game boss gave you was a total newb move. On the other… it’d been so long since she’d had a fight like this… she kinda wanted to see how tough the boss would be if she didn’t exploit its weakness.
As for loot… obviously Yumiella was aiming for the axe. Her own Earth affinity was rudimentary at best, so she’d never be able to cast Entangle All otherwise. It’d be very nice to have another spell, since she’d only had access to the five spells that the Hidden Boss Yumiella had in the original game. Dark Flame, Shadow Lance, Dark Bind, Turbid Flow and of course her favorite of the bunch, Black Hole. Alongside her signature Yumiella Punch, for when she was trying to be mana efficient, of course.
As much as she’d tried over the years, she’d never been able to use her Dark magic to cast any spell she didn’t already know Yumiella was capable of from the game. Little surprise, she supposed, since she was entirely self-taught. Casting a spell with her own mana was far more complicated than simply selecting a spell in a game menu, after all. Even after thoroughly scouring the library at the manor, she’d never managed to find a single book even remotely related to Dark magic. That was to be expected though, given the associations Dark magic had with the Demon Lord.
She wasn’t the Demon Lord, though. She may have black hair. (And every servant in the manor may refuse to speak or even look at her because of it… Some even ran away at the sight of her. And the things they’d whisper… her high-level hearing was more curse than blessing, sometimes.) She may even have Dark magic. Yumiella might even be the Hidden Boss, but she wasn’t the Demon Lord, dammit. Still, she hardly minded their behavior, in the end. After all, it gave her all the time in the world to level grind to her heart’s content. She’d NEVER complain about that.
So a new spell would definitely be more than welcome. Even though its stats boosts were woefully low for that level of gear… (Probably to balance out the unique spell bonus.) And don’t even get her started on a level 90 boss only dropping level 85 loot. Five whole levels below the boss level. Five! She hated when games did that. It was nearly as insulting as when FromSoft kept putting really common loot at the end of really obscure side paths… She swore that every Rainbow Stone she found in Elden Ring was nothing short of a personal affront...
As for the other potential drop… Yumiella shuddered even as she didn’t break her stride in the slightest. Cosmetic Loot equaled Trash Loot. It was as simple as that. To think that so many games would clutter up their loot tables with items utterly useless to leveling-up… it boggled her mind how any game dev could do such a horrendous thing. Such devs deserved pummeling far more than any boss or monster ever would. What utter trolls.
Running at her top speed, Yumiella soon felt a great source of Dark magic nearby. Rather than slow down gradually as she pinpointed the source (like a sane person), she leaped forward. Her lips curved up an entire centimeter! She landed and jumped forward again. Once, twice, thrice, shedding speed each time as she skipped along the ground like a stone across a pond. The ground deformed into a crater on each landing, and uprooted trees sounded a great cacophony as they met the earth. She remained blissfully unaware of the toll her strength was leaving upon her land, focused entirely as she was on the impending boss fight.
Her forward momentum finally stopped upon a small hillock. The Dark magic was so close now, she had but to turn her head to find the boss. One would think that a being consisting purely of vegetation would blend in quite well in a forested landscape. One would be quite wrong. Turns out a Kaiju made up entirely of flowers and spite stood out quite prominently. The beast was taller than most of the nearby trees, and its body was longer than the rise she stood upon.
Unfortunately, Yumiella did not have long to study the field boss, for no sooner did her eyes fall upon the Timberwolf, than burning purple malevolence turned to meet her own.
Aww, it had giant leaves as eyebrows. And there were even blossoms along the edges like eyeshadow! It was sooo cute! The impulse to pet it filled her. She just had to feel the texture of those petals beneath her fingers…
Alas, it was never to be. One moment Yumiella was indulging in the pleasant fantasy of having the cutest pet in all the kingdom, and the next she was flying through the air. She barely felt the impact as her body struck a tree trunk in mid air and soared straight through it. She felt it a lot more when she hit the ground a few moments later. Dust and forest detritus rained down all around her. Yet again, she didn’t notice.
Yumiella blinked. Once. How did she even…? Oh right. Level 90 speed. Right. Oh, her arm was bleeding. Oh.
Automatically, Turbid Flow began to repair the damage. Her arm wasn’t all the way off, but the Claw Swipe had mangled the limb almost beyond recognition. Huh. Who knew that bones were that color? She always thought they were white like in anime. Huh. And when was the last time her HP had been in the yellow like this? Yumiella smiled. A full 2 centimeters! This was exactly what she’d been hoping for, after all. This was going to be so much fun.
Not even a breath passed between the spell finishing stitching up her flesh and Yumiella sprinting back into the fight.
Time to lock in.