I Got Reincarnated as a Zombie Girl

Three years on Earth were not merely a count of time; they were a relentless, planet-scale meat grinder.

Under a sky that never stopped radiating a rust-red hue, the remnants of human civilization had long been buried beneath oceans of carcasses. The wind that blew no longer carried the scent of soil or rain, but the thick coppery stench of blood and the choking miasma of decay. In the middle of a concrete-rubble desert stretching to the horizon, a last, despair-filled defense was taking place.

"Hold the front line! Don’t let that mutant giant break through the Phalanx formation!" Zark roared, his greatsword flashing as it sliced the air and beheaded three Rank 5 zombies at once. The dense black armor of the Shadow General was now covered in dents and cracks. His skeletal horse had long been destroyed, forcing him to fight on the ground while leading the remnants of Nocture’s Death Legion. The army that once numbered in the hundreds of thousands had now dwindled drastically, swept away by the endless waves of death.

In the air, Celes moved at a speed difficult for the naked eye to follow. The space around her continuously warped and distorted. Yet if one looked closer, the silver-haired girl’s breathing was ragged. The tip of her sword trembled violently. Three years of constantly bending the laws of physics had pushed her mana circuits to the brink of collapse.

"Dimensional Severance: Cross Slash!" Celes swung her sword, creating a giant cross-shaped rupture in the air that swallowed thousands of zombies at once. The moment the magic finished, she coughed, spitting a drop of blood from the corner of her lips. Her body swayed briefly before she forced herself to float again.

"Celes! Fall back for a moment, let me take over your air sector!" Aurellia shouted from the ruins of a skyscraper. The fire enveloping Aurellia’s body was no longer bright red, but pale blue, a sign that she was burning her own life essence to maintain the thermal temperature of her magic. The area around Aurellia had turned into a sea of glass from the sand and concrete that had melted under the heat of her flames.

"Don’t be crazy, Aurellia! If you come down now, the entire eastern wing of our defense will collapse completely!" Celes replied, forcing herself to shoot back into the middle of the monster horde trying to climb the rubble.

At the center of the chaos, Sofia stood like the last beacon for humanity. The eight angel wings on her back had now lost most of their light feathers; they looked dim, cracked, and exhausted. Her combat dress was torn in several places, revealing black scratch wounds that refused to heal because of the deadly poison from the claws of high-level mutants.

Sofia drove the tip of her sacred spear into the ground. "Holy Nova: Absolute Purge!"

A wave of golden light exploded from the point where the spear struck, sweeping a two-kilometer radius around her. Hundreds of thousands of wild zombies evaporated into dust in an instant, giving the remnants of the Nocture army a brief breathing space.

Yet before Sofia could even draw a breath, the atmosphere of the battlefield suddenly changed.

The air filled with the screams and growls of millions of zombies abruptly fell silent. But it was not a comforting silence, it was a silence born of absolute terror. The earth did not tremble violently; rather, it seemed to freeze in fear.

In the distance, the ocean of millions of zombies that had been surging forward like a tsunami of flesh suddenly stopped. They parted, creating a path tens of meters wide through the middle of the horde, bowing their heads to the ground as if welcoming the arrival of a tyrant.

Sofia’s blue eyes narrowed sharply through the curtain of gray dust. From the end of the path carved by the sea of monsters, an entity stepped forward, radiating a miasma of death so dense that the ground it stepped on immediately blackened and rotted into toxic sludge.

This was no ordinary Zombie King. In the ecology of living-corpse mutation, low-level Zombie Kings were usually nothing more than selfish, cowardly conscious creatures. They possessed intelligence, yet their bodies were weak, so they always hid behind fortresses of countless zombie troops, using numbers to exhaust their enemies.

Yet the entity before them now was completely different. It was a Peak Rank 6 Zombie King whose power had nearly touched the Rank 7 realm. The creature stood about four meters tall, its entire body clad in biological armor of jet-black bone that could not be pierced by ordinary magic. In its right hand it dragged a giant axe made from the spine of a mutated dragon. It did not hide; it led from the front line with the arrogance of an absolute ruler, because its own strength was already enough to level a nation.

GRRRAAAARRRRGH!

The Zombie King roared. The shockwave from its voice alone flung hundreds of surrounding zombies away and severely cracked the remaining light shields of the Nocture army.

Zark clenched his skeletal jaw. "Lady Sofia! Pull every troop back to the city defense line right now! This creature’s presence radiates a necrosis domain. Our mid-level troops will crumble into dust simply by being within a ten-kilometer radius of it!"

Sofia bit her lower lip until it bled. She stared fixedly at the Zombie King, which was now raising its giant axe and gathering dense black miasma energy ready to split the battlefield in two. If Sofia retreated now, the creature’s attack would sweep away Zark and his entire army.

"There is no retreat," Sofia said coldly, her voice filled with a determination ready for death. She pulled her spear free from the ground once more. Her eyes radiated a dazzling golden light. "I will burn my soul core completely. Celes, Aurellia, focus all your remaining mana into the tip of my spear when I give the signal. If we don’t kill it here, this creature will walk toward Nocture and destroy the city’s barrier!"

"Sofia, you’re insane! Burning your soul core will erase your existence!" Celes cried in panic, forcing herself to teleport to Sofia’s side.

"I am the substitute ruler of Nocture. Your Queen entrusted this world to me," Sofia beat her dimmed wings, preparing to shoot toward the Zombie King that was beginning to swing its axe. "I will not disappoint her!"

Yet exactly before Sofia’s sacred spear collided with the Zombie King’s deadly axe... the world suddenly fell silent.

Not figurative silence, but absolute silence. The Zombie King’s giant axe froze in the air only a few meters from Sofia’s face. Aurellia’s roaring flames froze. The wind stopped blowing. Time itself seemed gripped by an invisible hand and forced to stop beating.

Then a very strange and mesmerizing visual phenomenon occurred.

The blood-red sky, the blazing flames, and the gloomy colors of the sea of corpses... all began to fade. Like a master artist tearing apart a messy oil-paint canvas, replacing it with a blank sheet of parchment, then drawing pure charcoal across it.

Reality itself was swept into monochrome. The sky turned ashen gray. The ruined buildings lost their color, appearing like thick shadow sketches on white paper. The Zombie King’s black miasma transformed into fading ink strokes. Light and shadow were reduced to sharp black-and-white contrast highly dramatic, filled with deep melancholy and calm.

Sofia, Celes, and Aurellia stood frozen. Their bodies still retained color, but the world around them had been completely transformed into a living charcoal painting.

"W-what happened to this space...?" Celes whispered, her eyes wide in disbelief. She did not dare move even a fingertip. Her spatial authority was completely powerless. The laws of physics had been overwritten by a far more absolute law.

In the middle of the monochrome gray sky, right above the head of the Zombie King that now stood frozen in fear, space split without a sound.

There was no epic energy explosion, no blinding heavenly pillar of light. Only a thin crack that then slowly widened, as if someone were opening a new page of the book of fate.

From within that fissure, three figures stepped out.

On the right, a girl in a pure-white imperial robe, a spirit crystal crown floating above her head, radiating a soothing sacred aura. On the left, a highly lively girl wearing glasses, with ten pure-black fallen-angel wings spread freely across her back. Glowing magic parchment pages fluttered cheerfully around her like autumn leaves, responding to her overflowing curiosity.

Yet every eye on the battlefield, especially the glowing red eyes of the Zombie King, was fixed solely on the figure in the center.

A girl in a flowing black gown as elegant as a starless night shadow. Her raven hair moved slowly, in rhythm with the fluctuations of the reality canvas now under her grasp. Her skin was as pale as porcelain. A pair of eyes, one blood-red, one glowing silver gazed across the entire monochrome battlefield with absolute boredom.

"Ah... the canvas is far too messy for my taste," Sylvia said softly.

Her voice was not loud, yet it overpowered every noise in the world. When Sylvia spoke, space itself trembled from respect and terror.

The Peak Rank 6 Zombie King, the arrogant entity that had just been preparing to destroy Sofia and dominate the continent, now thrashed backward. Its giant axe slipped from its grip and crumbled into dust the moment it touched the ground. Its death instinct screamed hysterically. It tried to turn its massive body to flee, attempting to sacrifice the troops behind it to hold back the small girl. The once-fearless king now trembled so hard that its bone armor rattled.

Yet inside the Domain of Absolute Death, no one could escape their end.

"You danced upon my land, hurt my people, and believed yourself the ruler of death," Sylvia slowly raised her right hand, her slender fingers extending forward casually. "The page of your history is finished. I will erase it."

Sylvia flicked her fingers. A soft ’click’ as light as a feather falling onto water echoed.

In the blink of an eye, the most terrifying miracle occurred. There was no epic battle. There was no ear-splitting scream of pain. The mighty Zombie King, along with the millions-strong ocean of wild zombies across the entire continent as far as the eye could see, suddenly transformed into dense black charcoal dust.

One second they stood as an apocalyptic threat. The next second they were nothing more than dry black dust particles floating helplessly on the monochrome wind, before finally vanishing completely as if they had never existed. The aura of their existence was totally erased from reality. Clean. Empty. Without a trace.

Domain of Absolute Death: Erasure of Existence.

Witnessing that spectacle beyond all reason, the surviving remnants of the Nocture army, led by Zark, immediately dropped their weapons. They knelt in unison until their skeletal foreheads touched the ground, trembling in fanatical devotion.

"LONG LIVE THE QUEEN OF DEATH!" the thunderous voices of thousands of skeletal troops echoed, splitting the absolute silence. "WE WELCOME THE RETURN OF HER MAJESTY!"

The world that had been black and white gradually regained its color as Sylvia withdrew her aura. The sky returned to a pale blue, the clouds parted, allowing true sunlight to touch the earth’s surface for the first time in the last three years.

In the sky, Stacia immediately spun cheerfully and dove downward at full speed. Her ten black wings flapped enthusiastically like a child in a playground.

"Wow, wow, wow! My goodness, this is extraordinary!" Stacia cried lively while shooting toward the pile of ash where the Zombie King had stood. Her eyes sparkled with curiosity behind her glasses. Her hands moved nimbly through the air, and instantly her magic pages analyzed the residual energy. "The biological evolution of that Zombie King was truly beyond conventional literature! He condensed billions of necrotic cells into muscle structures that nearly approached immortality! It’s such a shame you erased him right away, Sylvia! I wanted to read his bone structure and add it to my grimoire index!"

Sylvia only smiled faintly at Stacia’s enthusiastic chatter.

Alicia, on the other side, smiled softly and full of affection. She floated downward slowly with the grace of a goddess. The spirit crown above her head radiated waves of warm silver light that enveloped the entire battlefield.

That light touched the bodies of Sofia, Celes, and Aurellia. Instantly, absolute healing miracles occurred. The poisonous black wounds on Sofia’s body closed without a trace. Celes’s completely dried-out mana filled to overflowing. Aurellia’s pale blue flames extinguished, replaced by exploding vitality. The fatigue, trauma, and pain accumulated over three relentless years vanished as if they had been nothing more than a nightmare that had ended.

"Truly extraordinary hard work," Alicia said gently, her eyes narrowing into calming crescent moons. "All of you have fought heroically holding this front line. Now, rest."

Aurellia dropped her magic staff. She collapsed into a sitting position on the ground, her mouth half-open in disbelief as she stared at her now-intact hands filled with strength. Celes sheathed her sword with stiff movements, her hands still trembling slightly as she realized the absurd level of power that had just been displayed before her eyes. Tier 7. Undeniable conceptual authority. The three of them had struggled desperately for years, only to have it resolved by Sylvia with a single casual flick of her fingers.

In the middle of the now completely empty, peaceful, and pest-free battlefield, Sylvia stepped down from the air as if walking on invisible glass stairs.

She walked slowly past the remains of gray ash, past the ranks of Zark’s troops still prostrating in reverence, past the frozen Aurellia and the breath-holding Celes. Sylvia’s steps finally stopped right in front of Sofia.

Sofia stood rigid. Her sacred spear had fallen to the ground with a soft clink. Tears that for three years she had locked tightly behind a cold, hard, and steadfast mask of leadership now could no longer be held back and welled in her blue eyes. She stared at the black-haired girl before her, a girl who looked physically exactly the same as her memories, yet whose aura now felt so absolute and limitless.

Sylvia gazed at Sofia with a tenderness that was extremely exclusive, a tenderness she showed to only one person in the entire universe. Slowly, Absolute Death raised her cold, pale hand and gently wiped the stain of black blood mixed with dust from Sofia’s cheek with her thumb.

"Your beautiful face has become so dirty like this," Sylvia whispered. A thin, sincere, and extremely charming smile bloomed on her pale lips. "Three years is a very exhausting time for a mortal human, isn’t it? You must have suffered greatly replacing my position, my great Substitute Queen."

Hearing that tone of voice, Sofia’s mental defenses shattered into pieces. She no longer cared that she was currently being watched by Celes, Aurellia, Stacia, Alicia, and tens of thousands of undead troops. She no longer cared that Sylvia was now a conceptual existence on the level of the highest gods.

Sofia rushed forward, crashing into Sylvia’s embrace and hugging the slender body tightly as if afraid Sylvia would disappear again.

Instantly, the eight angel wings on Sofia’s back now once more shining brightly curled forward, wrapping the two of them in a cocoon of light that hid them from the outside world’s view.

"You’re back..." Sofia sobbed, burying her face in the crook of Sylvia’s neck and inhaling the scent of night she had missed so desperately. "You’re really back, you lazy Queen."

Sylvia laughed softly. Her laughter, though as cold as ice, felt as warm as a fireplace in winter to Sofia. Sylvia returned the embrace just as tightly, one hand stroking Sofia’s blonde hair with full affection.

"I’m home, Sofia," Sylvia whispered into her ear. "Good work keeping our home safe. And this time, I promise not a single entity in this universe will dare disturb our afternoon nap again."

While that emotional reunion unfolded inside the embrace of glowing wings, far away in the sky, the Earth’s Avatar watching from an abstract dimension could only fall silent. The planetary entity had just witnessed its authority being completely and mercilessly suppressed by a girl who now held full control over the life and death of this planet.