“The eldest daughter of Count Dolkness, Yumiella Dolkness. L-Level...99.”
We were gathered in the great hall of the Royal Academy, the school for the Kingdom of Valschein’s children of the aristocracy, where the entrance ceremony had just concluded. The warm, inviting atmosphere of the occasion dissipated as my level was announced, and the excitement of the teachers and upper-level students greeting the incoming students vanished as everyone stared at me, speechless.
At that moment, I came to the realization that I would already have to give up on my goal of being as inconspicuous as possible. As I accepted my fate, I began to think back on the events that led to me reaching level 99 as if to escape from my current reality...
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I was five years old when I regained memories of my past life and realized that I had been reincarnated as the villainess of an otome game. It all started when I was looking in the mirror in my room and felt strange about how young I appeared.
The face reflected back at me was a doll-like face with dark black eyes. Though my eyes had been black in my past life, this was a much deeper black that seemed to consume all the surrounding light. The perfectly straight hair also complimented the other features.
If I wore a kimono, I might look like a Japanese doll.
Upon thinking about my own appearance, I realized that I knew terms that I had never heard before, like “kimono” and “Japanese doll.”
From there, my memories of my past life came back one after another—I was born during the Heisei period in Japan, I was an introverted female college student, and I probably was killed by a car that crashed into the sidewalk. In a matter of seconds, twenty-something years of memories flashed before my eyes, and I was left gasping for air while my heart was beating out of my chest. All I could do was crouch down, close my eyes, and take deep breaths until I calmed down.
When I felt a little bit better, I thought about what I knew of my current life, only to realize that I didn’t know much at all. The extent of my knowledge was that my name was Yumiella Dolkness, I was five years old, and I was an aristocrat. I had almost no memories that took place beyond the doors of my bedroom, nor any memories of meeting my parents. Though the servants did the bare minimum in caring for me, they didn’t offer much in conversation—I suspected they were avoiding me—so I was left not even knowing the name of the kingdom I was living in.
Naturally, my first course of action was to bombard the maid with my arsenal of questions. She was surprised that the quiet child, who she had barely spoken to before, was suddenly so talkative, but she took the time to answer everything I asked about. Through my interrogation, I found out that I was in the Kingdom of Valschein and that I lived in the lord’s mansion in the county of Dolkness, where I was the eldest daughter of the count. My parents lived in their mansion in the Royal Capital and hadn’t returned to this county since before I was born.
Though the maid was hesitant, I coaxed her into spilling the reason why I was sent here alone. She said it was because my parents wanted to distance themselves from me, their black-haired child. Apparently, black hair was seen as unlucky and a symbol of evil in this kingdom, which explained why the servants around the mansion were so unfriendly. A quiet little girl with black hair would seem creepy. On top of that, my parents, who despised me, were their bosses. It only made sense that they’d be cautious in dealing with me.
Aside from all that, the name Yumiella Dolkness rang quite a few bells. It was the name of a character in an otome RPG that I played in my past life. She’d been the villainess, or more accurately...the hidden boss.
The title of the game was Light Magic and the Hero, commonly known as LMH. It was a world with swords and magic, and despite being a commoner, the main character could use light magic. Thus, she was allowed to attend the Royal Academy, where she worked together with her love interests to grow stronger and eventually defeat the Demon Lord. It was a very classic story; at worst, it was predictable. The game alternated between the academy portion, where you raised the affection levels of the love interests, and the RPG portion, where you worked together with them to defeat monsters.
Yumiella was a typical villainess. She occasionally appeared during the academy portion of the gameplay to bother the main character and get in her way. However, as the story progressed, she appeared less and less, and by the time the main characters began their journey to defeat the resurrected Demon Lord, she was already forgotten. But that wasn’t the end of Yumiella’s story.
After the game’s ending, if you went back to the Demon Lord’s castle, there was a hidden boss that appeared as bonus content. Most players were probably shocked to see her as the hidden boss. That’s right. The hidden boss was Yumiella Dolkness, also known as me!
Of course, as a hidden boss, she was much stronger than the final boss. As most players probably experienced when going up against her with a party that just barely defeated the final boss, you’d get your ass kicked and end up having to flee the scene. Wearing equipment with dark magic resistance and then using light magic to weaken the damage you take from the dark magic may have worked on the Demon Lord, but Yumiella would just hit you with a physical attack and kill your whole party. If you took the opposite strategy of defending against physical attacks, you’d only be left vulnerable to her strong dark magic.
The RPG portion of LMH was actually quite well-balanced for an otome game. All of the enemies had weaknesses to physical or magical attacks of various elements, and exploiting them was the key to beating the game. But Yumiella? There was no other strategy other than to level grind and beat her with brute force. She was the embodiment of unreasonableness. Players called her the Balance Breaker.
According to a member of the production team, she was only added in because they felt that the villainess didn’t have enough screen time. She was built to be strong enough that grinding to the maximum level was the minimum requirement to defeat her. In contrast, players only needed to be around level 70 to defeat the Demon Lord. The developers made Yumiella detest the heroine for getting closer to all the love interests so much that she awakened the ability to use dark magic. The reason wasn’t that deep; they probably didn’t put too much into it since the hidden boss was just bonus content added after the fact.
I was someone who loved level grinding in my past life, so of course, I’d beaten her once. Though I will say, Yumiella must have morphed from a villainess into an entirely different beast because she was able to hold her own against my party of four level 99 heroes.
However, it still would have been premature to say that this was indeed the universe of LMH just because my name and appearance matched that of Yumiella’s. I had to gather more information to be sure. When I told the maid I wanted to learn how to read, a tutor was immediately hired, and my lessons began. Once I learned my new skill, I proceeded to spend all my time in the mansion’s library. I read through everything, regardless of the genre, from picture books to discourse on history and politics, and found too many similarities between the game and this world. The names of the members of the royal families, detailed names of places, legends about the kingdom...the list goes on. As a result, I had no doubt that this was the world of LMH and that I was Yumiella Dolkness.