I Got Reincarnated as a Zombie Girl

Masses of pitch-black storm clouds collided with red-black lightning that continuously struck the northern sky. Beneath a horizon distorted by giant energy fluctuations, the five-hundred-meter Main Dreadnought Ship of Nocture sailed slowly across the outer boundary of the Northern Sea Trench.

Hundreds-of-meters-high giant waves rolled without pause, tossing the Black Star Steel warship like a wooden twig in the middle of a giant boiling cauldron. Every time a wave slammed into the hull, the resulting hydrostatic impact produced tremendous shocks. The sound of steel humming loudly and energy shields vibrating violently echoed across the entire deck.

Beastmen soldiers anxiously gripped the iron handrails, their eyes wide as they stared at the insane scenery in the distance. The Elite Zombie Knights who had just climbed back from the sea stood rigid at their posts, their soaking-wet armor reflecting the flashes of magical lightning. Although their bodies were tossed extremely by the fierce rhythm of the waves, the living corpses showed not the slightest fear simply because their dead brains no longer knew the meaning of fear.

At the bow of the main bridge, in the place most exposed to the pounding of storm winds and the spray of seawater containing divine pressure, Sylvia remained seated casually leaning back in her lounge chair.

A cup of rose-petal tea floated elegantly a few inches above her palm, protected by a thin transparent spatial domain line that kept the warm liquid inside from spilling even when the ship rocked violently to a forty-five-degree angle. On her lap, Sol the ancient golden dragon in spoiled cat form merely yawned lazily while swaying its golden-tipped tail. Meanwhile Noir, the zombie dragon tower guardian, purred softly beside her feet, allowing the salty spray to soak its necrotic black scales.

"It’s rather terrifying when seen up close like this," Sylvia murmured softly, her heterochromia eyes sparkling with joy as she enjoyed the phenomenon of destruction before her. "But I must admit, this is a far more captivating spectacle than any theater performance in the capital."

Several dozen nautical miles ahead of them, the ocean split open to reveal the bottomless Northern Sea Trench. There, two continental-scale cosmic entities were engaged in a deadly duel that crushed the laws of physics.

On one side, Jormungandr the World Serpent of Nordic mythology stretched its colossal body like a moving mountain range. Its scales glowed with ancient runes of eternal ice and Eitr poison. Every time the giant serpent flicked its tail, the ocean rose into giant water pillars and the space around it cracked like glass struck by a hammer. Its fangs the length of skyscrapers vomited dense green poison capable of melting pure divinity.

On the other side, Envy the Leviathan Serpent, the concrete manifestation of the Great Sin of Envy, took the form of a pitch-black shadow enveloped in dense purple-black miasma. Envy’s body had no fixed form; it continuously changed, forming thousands of gaping jaws, bleeding eyes, and tentacles of darkness that constantly tried to steal, imitate, and absorb Jormungandr’s divinity. The envy radiating from its existence was so strong that the seawater around it rotted and turned into black toxic matter.

Persephone stood to the left of Sylvia’s chair. Her galaxy gown rustled softly. As an entity that had absorbed Nyx and Hades, her gaze could pierce the smallest essence of the battle.

"That Envy Serpent is fighting very pitifully," Persephone commented in a melodious yet cold voice. "It does not possess a pure divine core. Its entire power is built upon a foundation of jealousy; it hungers for Jormungandr’s existence, which has a real form and a stable cosmic origin. That is why it keeps biting and trying to swallow the World Serpent’s rune chains."

"Yet Jormungandr is not without problems either," the World Avatar interjected from the right side. She stood upright, allowing the earth’s ley lines to pulse beneath the soles of her feet. "Since this planet evolved and expanded a hundredfold, the spatial foundation of this Northern Trench is bound to my new structure. Jormungandr is trying to control primordial ocean currents that no longer exist. It is forcing old authority upon my new earth. That is why it is running out of breath faster than expected."

Sylvia listened to the explanations of the two cosmic ruler women while smiling faintly. "So, in essence, one is a hungry thief trying to eat its twin, and the other is an old fossil that refuses to accept that the floor of its house has already been replaced with a new one?"

"Simply put, yes, my dear," Persephone chuckled, smoothing a strand of Sylvia’s black hair blown by the wind.

BUMM! BBUUUUUMMMMM!

A spatial shockwave created by the clashing bites between Jormungandr and Envy shot rapidly toward the Nocture fleet. A three-hundred-meter-high tsunami of water mixed with green poison and purple miasma surged from the front.

"All crew, hold on!" Celes screamed from inside the main bridge through the magical loudspeakers. Her voice was full of justified panic. "Stacia! Divert one hundred percent of the Mana Crystal reactor power to the Front Shield! If that toxic tsunami touches the hull, the Black Star Steel will corrode within seconds!"

"I’m already doing it, Celes! Don’t shout in my ear!" Stacia replied quickly, her fingers dancing across the holographic magic panels at extreme speed. Her reading glasses trembled violently as she read the wildly surging energy calculations. "Reactor towers three and four are overheating! The Dwarves on the lower decks are inserting Rank 6 Monster Cores manually!"

The storm-repelling shield dome radiated intense golden light, forming a barrier like the brow of a giant ship.

DSRRRRHHH!!

The impact of the toxic tsunami wave slammed into the Nocture shield with a deafening roar. The Main Dreadnought Ship was lifted high into the air, tilting drastically to a fifty-degree angle before being slammed back onto the sea surface with a hard impact that sprayed water as high as the clouds.

Beastmen crew members screamed as they were flung against the internal walls. Tactical equipment on the bridge fell. Yet the Elite Zombie Knights remained unmoved some of them who were thrown off the deck immediately used shadow chains to calmly pull themselves back onto the ship.

In the middle of the insane shaking that could give ordinary humans lifelong trauma, Sylvia’s teacup did not even tremble. A two-meter transparent black domain dome enveloped her lounge chair, isolating herself, Sol, Noir, Persephone, and the World Avatar from the physical impact of the ship’s shaking.

Sylvia observed how Jormungandr’s clumps of Eitr burned Envy’s miasma, creating green-purple plasma explosions that illuminated the night sky.

"Outstanding," Sylvia praised honestly. "Their form of combat is extremely raw. No modern magic tricks, no complicated rune formations, only the weight of cosmic mass, conceptual poison, and pure divinity colliding with each other. Celes, how is the visual data recording?"

From the communicator, Celes’s voice sounded breathless. "We... we are recording every second, Your Majesty. But could you ask your Mother or the World Avatar to stop these waves?! Cruiser number five is almost capsizing!"

Sylvia laughed softly. "Why should it be stopped? It feels like riding an amusement park attraction. When else can you experience being tossed by waves produced by the battle of two world-destroying entities?"

Stacia, who heard the conversation through the communication channel, cut in with a resigned tone. "Only a madwoman like you would call this ecological apocalypse an amusement ride, Your Majesty. The energy fluctuations in front of us have already pierced ten million standard mana units. If our shield breaks even once, we will not become shipwrecks, we will evaporate into atoms."

The battle in the distance intensified further. Jormungandr coiled its hundreds-of-kilometers-long body around Envy’s neck. The World Serpent sank its giant fangs deep into the shadow flesh of the Leviathan. Black toxic blood sprayed like a waterfall from Envy’s neck, burning the ocean below and creating poisonous vapor that obscured vision.

Envy screamed a piercing scream that contained a mental shockwave. That scream carried the essence of the Great Sin of Envy, capable of damaging the minds of living beings who heard it, triggering deadly envy in their hearts until they slaughtered one another.

The mental wave spread rapidly through air and water, slamming into the Nocture fleet.

Several Elf officers at the bridge control tables immediately clutched their heads while groaning in pain, their eyes beginning to redden from illusions and jealousy-driven impulses. "Why... why is she the commander... why not me..." one soldier muttered dizzily.

Yet before that mental anxiety could damage their minds further, Persephone furrowed her brow.

"A worthless joke," Persephone hissed.

She flicked her fingers horizontally. A wave of deathly calm, a fusion of Hades’s divinity and Nyx’s darkness swept across the entire Nocture fleet. Instantly, Envy’s mental shockwave was completely neutralized. The Elf soldiers woke from their mental trance, breathing hard with sweat soaking their foreheads.

"Thank you... Your Majesty Persephone..." Celes whispered in gratitude.

"Concentrate on your ship, Knight," Persephone answered flatly. "I will not allow a spark of that filthy miasma to disturb my daughter."

Sylvia’s eyes never left the wounds that were beginning to pile up on both giant monsters.

Jormungandr had lost thousands of rune scales on its chest from the raking of Envy’s shadow jaws. Its golden-glowing flesh was now exposed, vomiting Eitr poison that was beginning to weaken. Meanwhile, Envy’s shadow form had been torn into several pieces by Jormungandr’s bites; its body struggled hard to regenerate because it was poisoned by the eternal poison law of Nordic mythology.

"They are both beginning to tire," Sylvia said in a calm yet calculating tone.

"Do you intend to harvest both of them?" the World Avatar asked, glancing at Sylvia from the corner of her eye. "Jormungandr’s divine core contains primordial water authority and freezing poison, while Envy’s is a highly unstable Great Sin of Envy crystal. If you absorb both without preparation, your soul could experience conceptual conflict."

Sylvia smiled faintly, stroking her smooth chin. "Who said I would absorb that Envy crystal directly? I have an entire alchemy laboratory and Stacia on this ship. Besides, wouldn’t the meat and bones of the World Serpent make excellent raw material for building a new generation of warships? Or perhaps... a continental-scale sea dragon zombie?"

Sol on her lap meowed softly, as if agreeing with its owner’s crazy idea.

"A zombie from Jormungandr..." Persephone murmured, her lips carving a proud smile. "A very imaginative idea, Sylvia. Turning the World Serpent of ancient mythology into an eternal servant in your death fleet. Mother likes it very much."

Ahead, the battle entered its most crucial phase. Jormungandr, feeling its honor as the World Serpent threatened by the sin creature that kept clinging to it, burned all remaining Nordic divinity within its body.

Jormungandr’s eyes glowed with cold white light that froze. The entire Northern Sea Trench, tens of kilometers deep, suddenly froze into eternal ice within seconds! Thick blue ice spread at thousands of meters per second, locking Envy’s shadow body.

Envy roared in panic. Purple-black miasma erupted from its body, trying to melt the Nordic divine ice. Yet the Eitr poison trapped inside the ice burned its conceptual form.

"GRAAAAAAHHHHH!!"

Jormungandr opened its continent-wide jaws. Inside its throat, a plasma energy ball of ice and cosmic poison several kilometers in diameter gathered, radiating mad gravity that pulled everything around it. This was the World Serpent’s ultimate attack Eitr Breath in pure form!

Envy, unwilling to lose in its envy and hatred, gathered all the Great Sin of Envy from the ocean. Thousands of suffering faces and shadow jaws fused on the Leviathan’s chest, forming a dense black miasma ball that absorbed all light around it Abyssal Sin Burst!

The two apocalypse-level attacks were aimed directly at each other from close range.

"Oh no," Stacia muttered from behind the bridge monitors. Her usually calm face was now deathly pale. "Energy calculations... show a convergence explosion of one hundred fifty million gigatons of mana. The air pressure will erase a five-hundred-mile radius."

"Stacia! Shut down all secondary functions! Divert one hundred percent power to the shields!" Celes screamed.

Sylvia finally stood from her lounge chair. She walked elegantly to the tip of the ship’s bow, allowing the sea wind carrying the aura of eternal ice to blow against her black gown.

"Calm down, Celes. No need to panic," Sylvia said, her voice clear as it cut through the rumble of thunder and cracking ice.

Sylvia slowly raised her right hand. Monochrome black-and-white light radiated from her palm, expanding the Domain of Absolute Death until it formed a circular dome that enveloped the entire Nocture Eclipse-Class Fleet.

"Let them unleash their best shots," Sylvia’s smile widened, radiating a dominant charm that was both captivating and deadly. "After that explosion ends and both of them are severely wounded at the bottom of the ice... that is when our true performance begins."

DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!!

The two ultimate attacks from the cosmic entities finally collided in the middle of the Northern Sea Trench.

The world instantly lost its sound. A blinding light that was a combination of ice-white and dense black exploded, burning the atmosphere and erasing millions of tons of seawater into void in the blink of an eye. Kinetic shockwaves shot at light speed in every direction, cracking the ocean floor and creating a giant dome of emptiness in the middle of the sea.

The wall of the giant shockwave slammed into Sylvia’s domain.

BZZZZZZT...!!

The Chain of Abyss chains surrounding Sylvia’s domain hummed loudly, withstanding the weight of that apocalypse-level explosion without cracking even slightly. Behind the absolute protection of the Queen of Death, the Nocture Dreadnought Ship tossed on the empty waves that had been created, filled with the sight of the cosmic energy storm burning the night sky.

Sylvia remained standing upright at the bow, her black gown fluttering elegantly amid the flashes of the explosion’s light. She sipped the remaining tea in her magically protected cup, her eyes unblinking as she stared at the center of the explosion that was slowly beginning to subside.

Smoke, poison, and eternal ice mist billowed high into the sky. Inside the giant crater hole created in the frozen seabed, two giant bodies lay helpless. Jormungandr had lost half of its lower jaw and was gasping with divinity almost extinguished. Envy was split into three parts, its Great Sin aura dimmed drastically until it was nearly invisible.

The fierce battle between the two giants had reached its peak, leaving two severely wounded predators on the brink of death.

Sylvia discarded the tea dregs into the frozen ocean, then looked back toward Celes and her entire fleet that was still stunned by the magnificent sight.

"The performance is over," Sylvia said in a calm tone of voice that nevertheless radiated unmatched killing intent. "Now... it is time for us to harvest the results."