I Got Reincarnated as a Zombie Girl

Three years had passed.

For the mortal beings on Earth, three years was a long time, filled with bloody struggles, tears, and countless changing seasons. There, Sofia, Celes, and Aurellia continued tirelessly slaughtering the oceans of living corpses. Yet deep within the underworld inside the Main Garden of Persephone’s Castle where space and time were locked by absolute magic those three years passed like the blink of an eye.

There was no sunrise or sunset. Only the silver glow of the artificial moon illuminating three giant cocoons floating silently in the center of the garden. Dense black, blue-silver, and metallic gray-gold. For three consecutive years, the three cocoons merely pulsed gently, absorbing pure underworld mana like bottomless black holes that were never satisfied.

At the threshold of the garden sat an entity whose presence was extremely unusual in such a beautiful flower garden.

Charon. The Ferryman of the River Styx.

His figure was terrifying. He wore a tattered, dull-gray robe that seemed woven from mist and the screams of curious souls. His face was hidden beneath a dark hood, leaving only a skeletal jaw that occasionally clicked and a pair of eye sockets burning with greenish-blue fire. In his right hand, which consisted of nothing but bones, he tightly gripped a giant black wooden oar that also served as his ultimate weapon.

By rights, Charon should have been at the edge of the River Styx right now, collecting silver coins from the souls of the dead and rowing his boat across the toxic waters toward their final resting place. That had been his sacred duty since the age of ancient mythology. Yet now the legendary ferryman was simply sitting slumped near a marble bridge, acting as a security guard for three sleeping girls.

Charon let out a long sigh or at least, he made a sound resembling the sigh of a graveyard wind.

’I, Charon, the soul-crossing entity, have been demoted to a door guard,’ Charon grumbled inwardly. He tapped the tip of his oar against the marble floor in boredom. ’But what can I do? Who would dare defy a direct order from Her Majesty Persephone?’

Charon’s skeletal shoulders shuddered in dread when his thoughts drifted to the Queen of the Underworld. To outsiders, Persephone might be known as Hades’ wife, the Goddess of Spring who was abducted and forced to live in hell. But the native inhabitants of the underworld knew a far darker and more terrifying truth. Persephone was no captive. She was the absolute ruler.

Hades, the original God of Death who ruled the underworld, had long been dead. And it was not a god from Olympus or a Titan who had killed him, but Persephone herself. Charon still remembered that historic day several years ago with perfect clarity the day Persephone tore open Hades’ chest with her slender bare hands, pulled out her husband’s God Core, and crushed it into cosmic dust. Since that bloody coup, Persephone had seized the throne. She became the highest, unchallenged entity in this domain. So if Persephone ordered Charon to stand as a goalkeeper for three full years, Charon would do it with a smile on his skeletal jaw.

DHUMMM!

Charon’s daydream was suddenly shattered into pieces.

The divine garden trembled violently. The marble bridge where Charon was leaning cracked, forming networks of fine fractures. The calm wind abruptly transformed into a raging storm of energy. The asphodel flowers around them swayed hard, as if terrified of something that had just awakened.

Charon immediately leaped to his feet, gripping his oar in a ready stance. The blue fire in his eyes flared brightly. He stared toward the center of the garden, exactly where the three cocoons of fate were located.

The sound of a thunderous heartbeat echoed from within those cocoons. No longer the slow, gentle rhythm of before, but a rapid, brutal beat that radiated mana fluctuations so dense they cracked the surrounding space like a mirror struck by a hammer.

DHUM! DHUM! DHUM!

"Spatial space is beginning to collapse!" Charon cried hoarsely, his jaw trembling as he watched the energy vortex starting to spiral out of control. "I must report this to Her Majesty the Queen immediately! Their Tier 7 evolution has reached its final stage!"

Charon had just turned around, preparing to chant a teleportation spell, when his movement froze in place.

SRINGG!

An elliptical dimensional tear opened directly in front of him. The portal radiated an elegant swirl of purple and black energy. From beyond that portal stepped a majestic woman in a purple silk gown that fluttered without any wind. Her crown of black rose thorns sat perfectly, and in her arms, Sol the golden dragon-cat curled obediently.

"No need to trouble yourself reporting, Charon. I can sense this spatial anomaly even from the depths of my throne room," Persephone said. Her voice was soft, flowing like the bells of death, yet filled with the tenderness of a mother awaiting the birth of her child.

"Your Majesty Persephone!" Charon immediately dropped to one knee and bowed his head deeply.

Persephone paid Charon no attention. Her pair of purple eyes locked straight onto the three giant cocoons that were now beginning to radiate blinding light. "The time has come. Awaken, my little princesses. Show the universe your new forms."

KRAAAAKKK!

The sound of extremely loud shattering glass echoed throughout every corner of the underworld.

The first cocoon to react was the blue-silver one on the right side. The threads of sacred crystal wrapping it began to crack from within. The next second, an explosion of pure silver-white light swept across the garden. The light was so bright that Charon had to cover his skeletal face with his sleeve, feeling as though his soul were being burned by something far too pure for him.

From within that pillar of light, a spirit body floated downward.

Alicia.

Her appearance had changed drastically. Her spirit form now looked far more solid, radiating an unmatched noble elegance. Her long silver hair flowed like a river of stars on a night sky. The once-simple spirit gown had mutated into a pure-white imperial robe embroidered with golden heavenly characters along the edges. Yet the most striking change was above her head. A crown made of pure spirit crystal floated several centimeters above her head, radiating absolute authority.

When her sky-blue eyes opened, the storm pressure around them suddenly subsided. An aura of absolute calm spread outward. This was no longer mere healing magic; this was the authority of a Spirit Emperor, an entity capable of commanding every pure soul in the universe with a single glance.

"Tier 7... the Realm of Divinity," Alicia murmured softly, clenching her palm. She could feel an ocean of limitless mana flowing through her essence.

Yet before Alicia could fully enjoy her new form, Stacia’s metallic gray cocoon began to crack and shatter, transforming into thousands of light fragments that fell like a rain of parchment pages.

From the center of that radiance, Stacia stepped out. Her steps felt lighter, radiating a lively energy far removed from her previous stiff demeanor. She still wore her neat shirt and archivist skirt, with the thin-framed glasses always perched on her nose. Yet her bookworm aura now felt more alive and filled with warm enthusiasm.

What made Charon’s eyes and even Persephone’s widen was the girl’s back. The pure-black fallen-angel wings that had previously numbered only six feathers now stretched magnificently. The black feathers radiated dark-golden light at their tips, moving lightly in response to her excited mood.

One... two... three... four... five pairs. Ten wings!

Her gray Grimoire was no longer a physical book she had to hold. Instead, glowing parchment pages floated constantly around her, responding to every glance and desire before vanishing back into her body.

Stacia drew a long breath, her eyes behind the glasses sparkling with pure wonder. She touched one of the light pages in the air with a wide, sincere smile. "This is truly extraordinary," she murmured cheerfully, her eyes rapidly tracing the flow of mana around her. "The ancient magic books in the library weren’t lying. The energy flows and spatial laws in this place... I can read all of them as clearly as an encyclopedia whose pages I’ve just opened!"

She adjusted her glasses, looking extremely satisfied. "My mana volume feels overflowing. It feels like I could study millions of universal magic literatures at once without feeling the slightest dizziness!"

Seeing her sister so enthusiastic, like a scholar who had just discovered an infinite library, Alicia smiled softly. Their evolution had been a massive success. They had transcended the limits of their species and entered a realm feared by the gods.

Yet Stacia’s cheerful smile suddenly faded.

The movement of her hand that had been touching a magic page froze in mid-air. Her sharp bookworm instincts had caught an extreme anomaly in the ’book of the universe’ she was reading. The glowing pages around her immediately trembled and radiated a warning red color.

"Wait a moment..." Stacia stepped backward, the hairs on the back of her neck standing on end. Based on the absolute magic literature that had now fused with her memory, she realized an anomaly. The density of energy in the center of the garden was shrinking in a way that defied reason.

Stacia turned in panic toward Sylvia’s cocoon. "Alicia! Get away from Sylvia’s cocoon right now! That’s not magic, that’s absence!" she cried, her previous liveliness replaced by high-level vigilance. Her ten wings beat hard, carrying her shooting backward toward Persephone at lightning speed.

Alicia, who also felt the horror of her spirit instincts, wasted no time. She manifested a ten-layered spirit shield and flew backward following her sister.

In the center of the garden, Sylvia’s dense black cocoon had not yet broken. It had not even cracked.

Yet the cocoon began... devouring.

The aura it radiated was not one of intimidation, but of absolute absence. Like a conceptual black hole that had just been born. In the blink of an eye, pure underworld mana within a radius of several kilometers was forcibly sucked into the cocoon.

The emerald grass of Persephone’s garden divine plants that could even survive in oceans of magma instantly withered, dried, and turned into gray ash within seconds. The air lost its moisture. Even the artificial moonlight above them faded, as if the photons of light themselves died the moment they approached Sylvia’s cocoon.

Charon collapsed into a sitting position, his bones trembling violently. He was an entity of death, yet what he felt now was not elemental magic, but primordial fear.

"What... what is happening?!" Charon screamed. "Her Majesty’s divine garden is drying up!"

Persephone narrowed her eyes. She waved her hand, releasing a wave of purple mana to protect the remainder of her castle from the absorption effect. "This is conceptual transcendence. That girl is not evolving into something stronger... she is rewriting the definition of herself."

Suddenly, the absorption process stopped. An extremely dense, empty, and heart-rending silence enveloped the entire underworld. There was no wind, no heartbeat, no sound of any kind. Time seemed to freeze.

Then the black cocoon did not shatter. The cocoon simply vanished. It faded into cosmic mist blown away by absence itself.

In the place where the cocoon had been, Sylvia stood.

Physically, Sylvia’s appearance had not transformed into a terrifying monster or a giant goddess. She still appeared as a beautiful girl wearing a long black gown that flowed like the shadows of night. Her raven-black hair cascaded neatly. Her skin was as pale as porcelain.

Yet the sensation radiating from her existence had changed completely.

There was no longer any fluctuation of death mana. There was no longer the miasma of decay that usually accompanied the presence of an undead queen. Sylvia’s body felt so empty, as if she were not there, yet at the same time she felt like the end of everything. If someone stared at her for too long, they would feel their own existence slowly being erased.

In Stacia’s eyes, which could now clearly read the laws of the universe, Sylvia’s existence registered as nothing. The girl was like a blank page in the book of fate, an absolute anomaly that ruled above all else.

Sylvia was no longer of the undead race. From this second onward, she was Death itself. She was the law, the end of the cycle, and absolute absence. Every being that could die stood under her authority.

Slowly, very slowly, Sylvia opened her eyelids.

A pair of eyes, one blood-red and the other silver gazed upon the universe in a completely new way. The world no longer appeared as a collection of objects, mana, or energy. To Sylvia now, she could see the ’final line’ or ’thread of death’ of all things. Plants, marble stones, the air, even Charon she could see when and how they would meet their end. She only needed to touch or think of that line, and their existence would be erased from reality.

Sylvia raised her right hand and stared at her slender, seemingly fragile palm. She clenched it slowly. As her hand closed into a fist, a jet-black dimensional crack formed in the air not from physical force, but because the space itself ’died’ from her touch.

"So this is... the view from the peak of Tier 7," Sylvia whispered. Her voice was not loud, yet it echoed in the soul of every entity that heard it, carrying a bone-chilling cold.

She tilted her head, looking at Stacia and Alicia who were watching her with a mixture of relief and dread. A thin, familiar, and charming smile bloomed on Sylvia’s pale lips, shattering the absolute tension that had been choking the air.

"Sorry for making you wait so long," Sylvia said casually, as if she had simply woken from a deep afternoon nap. "Let’s go back. There’s a world that needs cleaning, and someone I’ve missed very much."