I Got Reincarnated as a Zombie Girl

The sea wind carrying the scent of salt and thin miasma swept across the steel deck of the Abyssal Sovereign. The Eclipse-Class fleet had sailed thousands of kilometers through the open ocean since the massacre of the Sea King’s army. Under Sylvia’s absolute command, the giant ships sliced through the waves without mercy, leaving a long trail of white foam across the dense blue waters of the Outer Ocean.

After weeks of seeing only endless stretches of water and occasionally crushing the foolish sea monsters that tried to attack the Black Star Steel hulls, a drastic change finally appeared on the horizon.

The thick fog that usually obscured vision was slowly parted by a gust of hot wind. Behind that white curtain, a massive landmass gradually revealed itself. This was not merely a coral island or a small stopover; its coastline stretched beyond the limits of the magical radar’s range, indicating that the land ahead of them was at least the size of a small continent or a giant archipelago from the pre-apocalypse era.

"Drop the main anchors! Reduce reactor output to ten percent! We stop here," Sylvia’s voice echoed calmly yet irrefutably through the fleet’s internal communication channel.

The sound of giant metal creaking and extremely loud water impacts rang out as the anchors weighing tens of tons were dropped from the five Dreadnought ships and twenty cruiser vessels. The ships stopped precisely in the shallow waters, about two kilometers from the shoreline of that mysterious land.

From atop the bridge, Sylvia gazed at the land with narrowed eyes. Its coastline was adorned with extremely clean white sand that glittered under the midday sunlight. Yet the beauty of the beach ended just a few hundred meters from the water’s edge. The rest was a terrifying green wall.

The forest behind the beach was completely abnormal. Its trees had trunks as black as charcoal with emerald-green leaves that radiated wild mana. Roots the size of train carriages intertwined and strangled one another as they competed for nutrients from the soil. The height of those giant trees reached hundreds of meters, creating a dense canopy that blocked sunlight from reaching the forest floor. The air above the land trembled, indicating a magical energy density far higher than that of the ocean.

"Extreme environmental conditions," Stacia murmured as she stood beside Sylvia, her glasses reflecting data from her alchemical tablet. "The concentration of wild mana on that land is three times denser than in Nocture. The oxygen is too rich; this will trigger gigantism in any flora and fauna living there."

Sylvia nodded slowly. She then turned toward the lower deck. Unlike the zombie workers and skeleton knights who could stand motionless for centuries without feeling fatigue, the living crew members of her fleet had reached their limits.

The expert Dwarf engineers lay sprawled around the cooling steam vents, snoring loudly with hammers still in their hands, exhausted after weeks of maintaining reactor temperatures. The Beastkin from the reconnaissance division sat leaning against the ship walls, their ears and tails drooping listlessly as they finished their drinking water rations with ragged breaths. In another corner, the support-magic Elf users sat cross-legged, meditating in silence with pale faces, trying to restore their mana circulation that had been drained while piercing the Death Storm Wall.

Although Sylvia was a Queen of Death who commanded an undead army, she was not an irrational tyrant. She knew exactly how to maintain her living pawns so they remained efficient.

"Let them rest," Sylvia ordered Zark, who stood rigidly behind her. "No living beings are permitted to leave the ships. Raise the passive defense shields. I will inspect this place myself."

"Alone, Your Majesty? Do you not wish to bring Sol or Noir as aerial mounts?" Celes asked, slightly worried given that the land was completely unmapped.

Sylvia smiled faintly a curve of the lips that radiated the absolute arrogance of an existence that had transcended mortal limits. "I no longer need them merely to fly, Celes."

Since her evolution had pierced Rank 7, Sylvia’s structure of existence had changed drastically. She was no longer merely an entity that borrowed the power of death; her body itself was now a manifestation of that law. The gravitational laws of this world no longer held absolute authority over her.

Sylvia walked to the edge of the bridge railing. Without any preparatory motion, she threw herself forward.

Yet before her body touched the sea surface, a silent explosion of dense black energy erupted from beneath the soles of her feet. Space around her distorted for an instant. In the next second, the slender body clad in a black gown shot straight into the sky at a speed that broke the sound barrier, creating a ring of vapor clouds that exploded in the air.

WUSSSHHH!

There were no magical wings, no shadow dragon mount, and no solar crows. Only pure manipulation of absolute energy that rejected the pull of the earth. Sylvia floated at an altitude of ten thousand meters in only a matter of seconds.

From this height, stratospheric winds roared fiercely, slamming against her face with temperatures below freezing, yet her pale skin did not even redden. Her heterochromia eyes radiated a dim light as she began using her magical vision to scan the land below.

Sylvia began circling the giant island. Her speed in the air was equivalent to the fastest fighter jets of the old world era, leaving thin black trails across the blue sky.

The scenery beneath her was silent testimony to the cruelty of the apocalyptic fusion. This continent had clearly once been a center of civilization. As Sylvia flew across mountains covered by ancient forests, she could see remnants of steel and concrete protruding from beneath the green canopy.

She saw a giant valley that was actually a massive highway from the pre-apocalypse era, now cracked and filled with a half-frozen magma river. In the northern region of the island she discovered the ruins of an extraordinarily vast metropolitan city. The skyscrapers that had once been made of glass and steel now lay piled upon one another, destroyed, and entangled by vines the size of giant pythons.

In the middle of that ruined city, Sylvia saw a sight that caught her interest. There were no humans. Not a single sign of life from any intelligent race. This place had been purely reclaimed by the universe, evolving into a nightmare habitat.

A giant crater in the center of the city ruins served as a nest for a pack of monsters resembling bears, yet the size of three-story buildings, with red crystal spines growing along their backbones. Above the skies of the ruins, giant predatory birds whose wingspans matched those of Boeing airliners tore at one another in the air as they fought over territory.

Sylvia continued circling the island for several hours. She memorized every contour of the mountains, every river flow contaminated by miasma, the positions of monster nests with high mana fluctuations (several of which even touched the Rank 6 threshold), and the coastal boundaries of the landmass.

After feeling that the information she had gathered was sufficient, she changed direction and glided back down toward the coast where the Eclipse-Class fleet was anchored. She landed on the deck of the Abyssal Sovereign extremely smoothly, without producing the slightest sound, her gown rustling from the residual wind of her landing.

Stacia immediately approached her with hurried steps. "How was it up there, Sylvia? Is that land safe to use as a temporary base foothold?"

Without answering, Sylvia walked toward the holographic round table in the strategy command room. She raised her right index finger, and dense black energy seeped out from her fingertip, forming a magical ink brush. With a speed that would make ordinary human eyes dizzy, Sylvia began drawing on the table.

She was not merely drawing; she was projecting her perfect visual memories back onto the magical canvas. The coastline was drawn with mathematical detail. Giant-scale mountains, valleys, rivers, and red dots marking the locations of city ruins as well as high-level monster nests were placed with terrifying precision.

In less than three minutes, a detailed topographical map of the giant island was presented on the table.

Stacia leaned forward, her eyes widening behind her glasses as she observed the shape of the land her sister had just drawn. The genius bookworm of Nocture furrowed her brow, tapping her chin with an alchemical pen.

"No humans," Sylvia said while leaning her back against the chair and twirling a strand of her black hair. "That island is unclaimed territory. It is only filled with mindless giant wild monsters that evolved due to miasma gigantism, and the ruins of dead cities. They live according to the absolute law of the jungle."

Stacia remained silent, her eyes rapidly scanning the map Sylvia had created and comparing it with residual pre-apocalypse satellite data stored in her memory archives.

"Sylvia... the shape of this island," Stacia finally spoke, her tone a mixture of confusion and focal admiration. "This doesn’t make sense, yet geologically it is very possible as a result of dimensional collisions."

"Explain," Sylvia ordered briefly.

"The shape of the coastline on this eastern side... this is extremely similar to the contours of the Japanese archipelago from the pre-apocalypse era," Stacia pointed to the right side of the map. "But on the western and southern sides... This landmass has fused and thickened, forming a land mass that resembles a combination of fragments from the Australian continent and several islands from Southeast Asia. This is not merely a continent that survived the apocalypse. This is several different continental plates that were crushed and forcibly fused by the world’s fusion laws, creating a giant chimera continent."

Stacia then tapped her tablet screen, projecting another image beside the map of the new continent. It was the map of the continent where Nocture was located, the one they had lived on and conquered until now.

"To give perspective," Stacia enlarged the map of Nocture. "The continent where Nocture currently stands is a land mass ten times larger than the pre-apocalypse Eurasian continent. And if this outer ocean separates us from chimera continents like the one you just discovered..."

Stacia swallowed, imagining the true scale of this post-apocalyptic world. "That means the size of our planet has currently expanded to tens or perhaps hundreds of times the size of the original Earth. This world is extremely vast, far vaster than we ever estimated. And the ancient gods in the oceans are merely gatekeepers isolating these giant continents from one another."

Hearing Stacia’s explanation, Sylvia showed neither surprise nor anxiety. On the contrary, a thin grin slowly bloomed on her pale face. Her heterochromia eyes radiated a very dangerous spark of interest: the gaze of a conqueror who had just realized that the chessboard she was playing on actually possessed thousands of additional squares she had not yet touched.

"Good," Sylvia said, her voice lowering and vibrating with anticipation. "A planet that is too small would be extremely boring to conquer. If this new world presents so many chimera continents and ancient monsters hiding behind them..."

Sylvia stood up, placing both hands on the holographic table, staring directly at the red dot that marked the metropolitan city ruins on the giant island.

"Then we will begin from here. Awaken the undead army. We will not merely hunt fish today. We will cleanse this island of those giant parasites, plunder whatever remains of its dead city, and turn it into the Main Military Base of the Nocture Fleet in the Outer Ocean."