I Got Reincarnated as a Zombie Girl

Warm morning sunlight slowly filtered through the gaps of the spatial window in the main bedroom of the castle, replacing the silver glow of the underworld’s artificial moon. The golden light illuminated the magnificent chamber, driving away the remnants of night’s shadows and bringing a peaceful morning atmosphere.

On the wide bed with its black silk sheets, Sylvia slowly opened both eyelids. A pair of highly contrasting eyes, one the color of fresh blood and the other glowing like liquid silver blinked gently, adjusting to the morning light. There was no drowsiness or fatigue. As an Absolute Death entity now at the peak of Tier 7, her body was no longer bound by mortal biological needs such as long sleep to recover energy. She felt extraordinarily refreshed; her mana flowed calmly like a boundless ocean within her essence.

Yet the main reason this morning felt so perfect was not her limitless power, but the warmth embracing her side.

Sylvia turned her head. There, sleeping with steady and peaceful breaths, was Sofia. The blonde-haired girl’s face looked far more relaxed than the previous evening. The lines of tension that usually framed the Commander’s face had completely faded, replaced by an innocent and calm expression like a child immersed in sweet dreams. Sofia’s body, wrapped in the silk blanket, still retained a faint red flush, a silent trace of the longing that had burned itself out throughout the previous night.

A thin smile filled with affection bloomed on Sylvia’s pale lips. She shifted her body, propping her head with one hand, and gazed at Sofia’s face in silence for several minutes. She let her cold fingers trail through Sofia’s messy blonde strands, gently brushing them away from the girl’s forehead so they would not disturb her sleep.

"Sleep well, my hero," Sylvia whispered very softly, her voice as light as a morning breeze.

She lowered her head and placed a light, affectionate kiss on Sofia’s forehead. The touch did not awaken Sofia; instead, it made the girl sigh softly and bury her face even deeper into the pillow in comfort.

Feeling satisfied, Sylvia slowly rose from the bed. With a single flick of her fingers, the flow of mana responded to her will. An elegant black gown in gothic aristocrat style with neat silver lace instantly wrapped her flawless body. She flicked her fingers once more, releasing the three layers of absolute sealing formations that had locked the chamber from the outside world since the previous night.

CLACK! The sound of the invisible lock opening.

Sylvia stepped out of the room, closing the silver-carved double doors very carefully so as not to make the slightest sound.

In the castle corridors, the morning atmosphere had already begun to come alive. The crystal torches that had burned throughout the night slowly dimmed automatically, replaced by sunlight entering through the large obsidian windows. Servants in black servant armor high-ranking undead immediately bowed in respect until their foreheads touched their knees upon sensing the calming gray aura of the Queen. Sylvia merely nodded slightly, allowing them to return to their respective duties, while she walked down the long corridor toward the administrative wing of the castle.

Her destination this morning was the main office. Although she preferred to be lazy, she knew there was someone who was surely suffering there.

The moment Sylvia opened the giant oak door of the office, the sight that greeted her was highly organized chaos.

The high-ceilinged circular room was filled with a storm of parchment. Thousands of documents, holographic maps, and census scrolls flew through the air, moving in complex geometric trajectories. In the middle of that paper vortex sat a floating girl wearing glasses, her white shirt sleeves rolled up to the elbows. The ten pure-black wings on Stacia’s back flapped with a rhythm that indicated extreme stress and focus.

Stacia’s eyes moved wildly behind her lenses, reading hundreds of population data rows, logistics reports, and alliance requests in a single second. Magical inks from her grimoire wrote automatically on dozens of blank sheets, approving, rejecting, or revising the city’s bureaucratic policies.

Hearing the door open, Stacia paused her movements for a moment. She turned toward the door and stared at Sylvia, who walked in casually as if without any burden of life.

A vein of irritation immediately appeared on Stacia’s forehead. Her black wings trembled in protest.

"Oh, look who finally decided to wake up!" Stacia grumbled with thick sarcasm. She let a stack of documents fall onto the table with a hard thud. "Who is the Queen of this city, anyway?! Why am I, who should be researching magic, stuck being a bureaucratic stamp machine since before the sun even rose?!"

Sylvia did not look offended in the slightest. On the contrary, an amused smile adorned her lips. She walked toward the most luxurious and softest velvet sofa in the room, sat down elegantly, and leaned her back casually.

"Don’t get so angry, Stacia. Your glasses might crack," Sylvia replied in a teasingly flat tone. She crossed her legs and looked at her sister leisurely. "Besides, your brain’s capacity for processing information far surpasses anyone else in this world now. You can read and finish administrative work a thousand times faster than I can. So I think this is an efficient division of labor. I’m just washing my hands of anything that doesn’t require violence."

Stacia’s eyes widened in disbelief at the blatantly shameless reason coming from the mouth of a Queen of Death. "What kind of excuse is that?! Do you think handling censuses and taxes is..."

THWACK!

A hard knocking sound echoed through the room.

Sylvia’s eyes widened as she let out a soft cry of pain while holding the top of her head. Even though her body was now a Tier 7 existence immune to every type of physical or magical attack in the mortal world, the pain she just felt was conceptually very real.

From the shadows behind the sofa, Alicia stepped out. The Spirit Emperor held a parchment document scroll that she had just used to rap the head of her all-powerful little sister. The crystal crown above Alicia’s head radiated a soft glow, yet the smile on her face radiated the aura of an eldest sister who accepted no argument.

"Don’t be lazy, Sylvia," Alicia scolded, her voice melodious yet firm a sharp contrast to Sylvia’s status as the most feared entity in the universe. "Hurry and help your sister. Stacia has been sorting thousands of documents since last night without sleep. At the very least you should know how the city you protect has developed while you were sleeping in the underworld."

Receiving a direct reprimand from Alicia the only figure she respected most and dared not oppose Sylvia could only let out a long sigh. She rubbed the top of her head, then slightly pouted her lips in unspoken protest.

"Alright, alright... you win," Sylvia muttered in resignation.

Seeing the Absolute Queen of Death submit to a rap from a parchment scroll, Stacia snorted in satisfaction, feeling compensated. She flicked her fingers, and instantly a thick stack of documents glowing golden floated and landed right on Sylvia’s lap.

"That is the summary of the construction, demographic, and economic reports of Nocture for the past three years compiled by Sofia and Aurellia," Stacia explained, diving back into the vortex of documents. "Read it, and you will be surprised by what your wife, I mean, your deputy has done for this city."

Sylvia snorted softly at Stacia’s correction, yet her hands still opened the document stamped with golden wax. Her eyes began to scan the extremely neat lines of writing.

And sure enough, after only a few minutes of reading, Sylvia’s expression slowly changed from boredom to seriousness, tinged with genuine admiration.

Nocture was currently not merely a gloomy sanctuary city for humanity. This place had evolved into a giant metropolis that had become the heart of a new civilization.

The first thing that made Sylvia raise an eyebrow was the racial demographic census data.

At the beginning of the apocalypse, Nocture had been nothing more than a shelter for the remaining human factions. Yet according to the document in her hands, Nocture’s population was now highly heterogeneous. Various non-human races that had previously been isolated or nearly extinct on other continents due to zombie invasions such as the Elves from the western forests who had lost their sacred trees, the Dwarves whose mines had been seized by underground mutants, and the Beastmen who had lost their grasslands had migrated en masse to Nocture.

Remarkably, they had all gradually begun to trust the governing system of this city. It was a highly poetic irony: the safest sanctuary city for living beings was led by a Queen of Death who had originally been a zombie, and the majority of its security forces were a Legion of the Living Dead.

But the numbers did not lie. These races felt far safer under the protection of Zark and his skeletal troops than sheltering in their own racial kingdoms. Why? Because the laws of Nocture were absolute. The undead gate guards could not be bribed. They never slept, possessed no desires that triggered corruption, and showed no favoritism in enforcing justice. In this city, an Elf noble and a common human received equal protection.

The next page discussed the economic structure and job market.

Sylvia smiled faintly while reading this section. Sofia had truly built a brilliant self-sufficiency system. Unlike cities on other continents that forced their people to become cannon fodder for a piece of stale bread, Nocture offered absurd stability.

Jobs here were extremely abundant and the compensation highly satisfying. In the agricultural sector, the giant underground hydroponic systems designed with water and light elemental magic now flourished, managed on a massive scale and produced abundant harvests of fresh vegetables. In the livestock sector, Sofia had succeeded in capturing and purifying low-level mutant animals such as iron bulls and giant poultry, cleansing the miasma from their bodies so that their meat was safe to consume and even contained health-enhancing mana.

For those with greater courage, the Nocture Monster Hunter Association offered sky-high salaries. Because Zark’s main forces focused only on guarding territorial borders and eliminating large-scale threats, independent hunters were permitted to scour the outer areas for valuable materials from remaining monsters. Their risks were far smaller because Nocture provided real-time radar information and emergency reinforcements if they were cornered.

The third page Sylvia read discussed the trade sector.

Apparently, news of a prosperous city in the middle of an apocalyptic world spread faster than the wind. Many tough merchants from outer regions were willing to risk their lives crossing the dead plains just to trade in Nocture. The markets in Nocture grew rapidly because of one strict law enforced by Sofia: No monopolies.

Sales in this city were based on product quality, not on power or political lobbying from giant trade guilds. Sofia implemented a system in which merchants were not allowed to hoard goods to manipulate prices. Anyone caught monopolizing basic necessities would face the headless executioners of Zark’s forces directly. In addition, stall rental taxes in Nocture were made very wallet-friendly for new merchants, encouraging healthy competition that kept prices stable and affordable even for the poor.

The final section of the document was the diplomacy report, which almost made Sylvia burst out laughing.

Kingdoms from across the continents, arrogant noble factions, and militaristic cities that had once regarded Nocture as a heretical death-worshipping cult now behaved like dogs begging for bones.

They flocked to send envoys, bowed, and pleaded to establish friendly cooperation with Nocture. Their reasons were very simple and pitiful: Food resources.

While other kingdoms had to sacrifice thousands of elite troops just to secure a small wheat field with poisoned soil, Nocture’s granaries overflowed so much that they had to build extra-dimensional warehouses. Kings from other kingdoms were willing to trade ancient artifacts, high-level magic books, rare metals, and even expert weapon craftsmen as captives, all just to obtain annual food distribution contracts from Nocture.

Without needing to raise a weapon or spill blood, Nocture had become the center of hegemonic power controlling the lifelines of every remaining race on this planet.

Sylvia closed the document slowly and placed it back on the marble table. Her sharp eyes gazed out through the large office window at the expanse of rooftops and busy city streets below. From a distance she could see humans, elves, and beastmen interacting in the markets, trading, and laughing, guarded by undead in black armor who stood like statues at the street corners in obedience.

Her feelings swelled with extraordinary pride. This entire prosperous, just, and stable civilization had been built upon the foundation of protection she had left behind, yet it had blossomed perfectly thanks to the cool hands, tireless hard work, and future vision of the blonde girl currently sleeping soundly in her room.

"She’s extraordinary, isn’t she?" Alicia’s soft voice broke Sylvia’s reverie. Her eldest sister offered a cup of warm green tea with a calming aroma.

Sylvia accepted the teacup. A sincere smile full of satisfaction adorned her pale face.

"Yes," Sylvia answered softly, sipping her tea. "She truly is a consort worthy of a Kingdom of Death. I think... our task now is simply to ensure that not a single speck of dust in this universe dares to ruin her beautiful work."

Stacia snorted from behind the piles of paper, though a small smile also formed on her lips. "Good that you’ve realized it. Now stop philosophizing and help me sort this border magic district construction proposal! I’m about to go crazy looking at these subsidy numbers!"