I Got Reincarnated as a Zombie Girl

The reports neatly arranged on Stacia’s holographic desk indeed showed fantastic numbers, displaying economic growth curves and demographic stability that were almost absurd for a post-apocalyptic world. The birth rates of various races were beginning to rise, the mortality rate due to starvation was at zero percent, and food reserves had broken through their maximum limits.

However, for Sylvia, a series of numbers and ink on parchment remained just a report. Something that could only be read with logic, but could not be felt with the soul.

After spending more than an hour listening to Stacia’s nagging and skimming through the document summaries handed over by Alicia, Sylvia finally decided that she had dealt with enough bureaucracy for today. She wanted to see and feel for herself the fruits of Sofia and all her subordinates’ labor during the three years she had been asleep. She wanted to breathe the air of the new civilization they had built upon the foundation of her protection.

"I’m going out for a short walk," Sylvia said, rising from the velvet sofa with a relaxed movement.

Stacia, who was still buried behind a tower of documents, merely waved her hand in the air without looking back. "Go. Don’t cause trouble. And please, don’t randomly blow up the commercial district just because you’re bored."

Sylvia chuckled softly. She snapped her fingers, and instantly the elegant gothic aristocrat black dress she was wearing was covered by a dull gray cloak made of coarse fabric, complete with a deep, large hood. Low-level illusion magic and aura-suppressing magic immediately enveloped her body. The hood covered most of her face, hiding her pale porcelain skin and, most importantly: hiding her highly iconic heterochromic eyes. If any of the city’s residents saw those eyes one as red as blood and the other as silver as the moon it was certain the entire street would immediately bow down in panic to worship her.

And that was the last thing Sylvia wanted for her relaxing stroll agenda this morning.

With light steps that produced not the slightest sound, the Absolute Death walked past the castle’s obsidian gates, slipping out like a shadow, and slowly blending into the hustle and bustle of mortal life below.

As soon as Sylvia’s feet touched the cobblestone streets encircling the city center, her senses were immediately greeted by an extraordinary explosion of life.

The air no longer smelled of pungent acidic miasma or the stench of rotten blood that once always accompanied every gust of wind on this continent. Instead, the morning air felt fresh, filled with the aroma of freshly baked wheat bread from roadside stalls, the fragrance of sautéed spices, as well as the scent of metal and charcoal from the blacksmith workshops that were starting to get busy.

The city of Nocture had developed in a very organic and unique way. As Sylvia looked around, she realized that its building models did not imitate the modern era’s glory before the apocalypse at all. There were no concrete skyscraper structures, no boring gray cement, and no giant steel-framed glass. This made sense, considering the heavy industrial facilities had been destroyed and the undead lacked the capability to produce large-scale cement without the guidance of human engineers, whose numbers were exceedingly rare.

Instead, Nocture was built by combining the handcrafting expertise of various races. The buildings here, which averaged two to three stories high, mostly used natural materials such as giant oak wood, pine logs, and precision-cut mountain stones. To bind the stone and wood structures together, they did not use cement, but a simple yet incredibly strong adhesive made from a mixture of magical tree sap, special clay perfected by earth element magic, and wooden pegs designed using ancient carpentry techniques from the Dwarven race.

The result was a city with a very beautiful yet sturdy medieval fantasy aesthetic. The roofs of the houses were made of wooden shingles or reddish clay tiles. The balconies were adorned with trailing flower pots, providing a lively color contrast amidst the dominance of wood brown and stone gray. The main streets were made very wide, paved with neatly arranged cobblestones to facilitate merchant carts, horse-drawn carriages, and large, tame riding creatures.

Of course, these citizen buildings looked very simple and down-to-earth compared to the Castle standing haughtily in the center of the city. The castle seemed as if it were not from this dimension, made of pure pitch-black obsidian, radiating an absolute magical aura that made it look like a demon god’s lair in the middle of a warm fantasy city.

Sylvia walked along the sidewalk, pulling her hood a little tighter as a group of Beastmen citizens walked past her laughing uproariously, carrying large barrels of clean water on their shoulders. Across the street, she saw a group of Elves with their distinct pointed ears negotiating in a melodic tone of language with a human merchant, exchanging spices from an underground hydroponic garden for rolls of silk fabric. The city’s atmosphere was very vibrant. Racial differences that once frequently sparked wars on the old continent had now melted away under the protection of the Queen of Death.

However, there was one thing that stood out the most and caught Sylvia’s attention as she navigated the city’s alleys, from the grand commercial district to the outskirts of the ordinary citizens’ residential district.

There were absolutely no slums. Not a single one.

In the past, every human city even in the era before the zombie apocalypse occurred always had a dark side. There were bound to be dirty, narrow alleys, rickety shacks built from scrap zinc and rotten wood, as well as outcasts huddled in street corners with empty bowls, begging for coins from passersby.

But in Nocture, such sights had been completely erased from existence. The streets were very clean, the drainage system ran smoothly beneath the stone layers, and every house, no matter how small, was built to humane livability standards.

Did that mean Sofia handed out gold and houses for free to everyone? Of course not.

Sylvia paused her steps for a moment when she noticed a minor commotion near the eastern sector gate.

A human man dressed in rags could be seen shouting angrily, kneeling on the ground while holding out his hands. "Please! Please give me a piece of bread or a few coins! The ruler of this city is so rich, why am I left to starve on the streets?! You heartless rich people!"

Several Dwarven and human citizens passing by only glanced cynically at the man, clicking their tongues in disgust without the slightest intention of giving coins or sympathy.

It didn’t take long before the sound of heavy, clanking metal footsteps was heard from the direction of the guard post. CLANK. CLANK. CLANK.

Two two-meter-tall Undead Guards, wearing pitch-black plate armor with eyes glowing red behind their visor helms, walked towards the man. Without saying a word because the living dead indeed do not speak, one of the Undead Guards extended its steel hand clad in an iron gauntlet, grabbed the back collar of the beggar’s shirt, and lifted him into the air with one hand like lifting a kitten.

"Hey! Let me go! What are you doing?! I am a weak citizen!" The man struggled in terror.

An Elf patrol officer walking behind the Undead stepped forward. He carried a clipboard containing a scroll of the city’s legal decrees. The Elf’s green eyes stared at the wretched man with an ice-cold gaze.

"Name: Vargo. Physique: Intact, healthy, and lacking any magical defects. Status: Rejected three job offers from the Livestock Association and two offers from the Sanitation Bureau over the past month," the Elf officer stated, reading the man’s violation record. "In the City of Nocture, work is available for anyone who has two hands, two feet, and the will to survive. You can pull weeds in the hydroponic fields, you can sort glowing mushrooms in the mine caves, you can tend to the mounts in the stables, or even clean the ditches at the border."

The Elf officer rolled up his parchment, his voice rising an octave to be heard by the small crowd that had begun to form. "Her Majesty the Queen of Death and Lady Sofia have provided safe lands, decent homes, and fertile fields. If you still end up as a vagrant, it’s not because you are unlucky. It’s because you are a lazy slacker who only wants to live as a parasite relying on the pity and sweat of others. People like you are a disease to civilization. And the City of Nocture never harbors diseases!"

The Elf gave a hand signal. "Expel him beyond the outer wall limits. Let him try begging to the remaining mutants out there."

The man turned deathly pale, screaming and begging for mercy as the two Undead Guards hauled him away toward the banishment gates, ignoring all his cries. The law here was very black and white.

Watching the scene from afar from beneath her hood, Sylvia smiled faintly. She felt very proud. That was the golden rule of Nocture. This city was not an orphanage for crybabies. It was the last bastion for humanity and other races that valued hard work. In a place where the threat of extinction always lurked beyond the walls, laziness was the greatest unforgivable sin. The kindness given by Sofia was the kindness of ’opportunity’, not a spoiling kind of kindness.

Resuming her steps, Sylvia finally arrived at an open area in the middle of a middle-class residential district. It was a spacious city park, overgrown with lush green grass, silver-leafed willow trees, and dandelion flowers whose petals danced in the wind. In the middle of the park, there was a stone fountain with clear water reflecting the sunlight.

Sylvia found an empty wooden bench situated beneath the shadow of a giant willow tree. She sat there quietly, relaxing her shoulders.

She lifted her head slightly, letting her hood slide down the back of her neck, exposing her face to the warmth of the morning sunlight piercing through the gaps in the leaves. The spring breeze blew gently, caressing the strands of her black hair. The sunlight felt warm on her skin, which always felt cold. This was a mortal sensation she very rarely enjoyed consciously. Usually, her presence was always accompanied by an ashen blizzard, a blood-freezing aura of death, and the wails of shattered souls.

Yet here, on this wooden park bench, Sylvia felt... peaceful. Death was sunbathing, enjoying the warm spring. A beautiful irony.

Amidst that tranquility, Sylvia’s gaze drifted far away. Unconsciously, her mind began to dive into the spiritual ocean within her body. She reviewed her current condition, gazing at the core essence residing at the center of her soul.

Rank 7.

That was the limit at which she stood now. In universal laws, reaching Rank 7 was not merely an increase in strength or an addition to mana capacity. It was a conceptual leap. It was the point where a mortal discarded their shell of life and transformed the structure of their soul into a transcendent entity.

Technically and by cosmic identity, Sylvia was currently equal to a Demigod, a Half-God figure whose existence had begun to be etched into the laws of the universe, a being whose essence could not be erased simply by destroying their physical body. A Demigod possessed minor authority over a concept. For Sylvia, that authority was ’Death’ and ’Extinction’.

However, there was a massive paradox nesting within her.

Although the shell of her existence was classified as a Rank 7 Demigod, her actual combat power, reality-manipulating capacity, and the absolute dominance over the undead race she possessed had already broken through the boundaries of reason. With all her terrifying titles, passive aura of destruction, and an army of Zombies numbering in the tens of millions, the pure destructive power and cheat-like abilities Sylvia could currently unleash were completely on par with Top-Tier Gods in higher dimensions.

If a True God from the race of light or fire element descended to this world and challenged her to a duel, Sylvia had no doubt that she could rip off the god’s wings and turn them into her new undead collection, even though her official status on paper was still below theirs.

But, this anomalous power paradoxically became a shackle of its own.

Sylvia tilted her head, staring at her slender, pale palms. She tried to focus the flow of energy to see the path toward Rank 8, or whatever lay at the peak of this cosmic cultivation pyramid.

All she found was endless emptiness. The pathway seemed to have been cut off.

"It’s a bit hard to develop any further now, huh..." Sylvia muttered softly, her voice only heard by the spring wind.

To step past Rank 7 and touch the realm of True Divinity, she could no longer simply gather energy, kill enemies to gain ’experience’, or meditate to absorb the mana of nature. That level was already obsolete for her, let alone the fact that evolving to Rank 8 required 1,000 levels, which she had no idea when she could reach.

Realizing this abstract dead end, Sylvia fell silent for a few moments. She watched a group of human and dog-beastmen children running and chasing each other over a rattan ball near the fountain. Their uninhibited laughter filled the air, so pure and free of burdens.

Sylvia finally smiled. Her shoulders, which had tensed up from thinking about cosmic laws, slowly lowered, relaxing.

She let out a long breath, a sigh that seemed to release the remnants of unnecessary ambition and anxiety.

"Why should I stress over this right now?" Sylvia whispered to herself while closing her eyes, enjoying the sunlight that pierced through her closed eyelids.

There were no gods threatening her at the moment. There was no apocalypse that could harm her. She had already become the absolute apex of the food chain in this world. Sofia was by her side, her castle was safe, and the city she protected was rapidly thriving as it embraced the future. If this Rank 7 power was her bottleneck limit, then let it be bottlenecked for a long time.

Sometimes, being too strong was indeed boring. However, having a place to return to and sitting around lazily under the sunlight like this was a luxury she could never have imagined in the past.

She decided to let go of the burdensome thoughts regarding cultivation levels, godly powers, and universal authorities. For her right now, the most important thing was to ensure the happiness of the people she loved.

"Let everything just go with the flow," Sylvia murmured in resignation yet full of contentment.

Death leaned her head back, pulled her hood back down to cover part of her face, and enjoyed the peaceful morning in that city without beggars, letting time flow slowly like the fountain before her.