I Got Reincarnated as a Zombie Girl

Sylvia’s boot steps echoed rhythmically, shattering the absolute silence that had blanketed the white palace hall for millions of years. Behind her, Celes and thousands of Elite Zombie Knights marched in disciplined formation, making no sound whatsoever except for the soft creak of their steel armor.

The moment the last Zombie Knight stepped across the threshold, the giant gem-encrusted marble gate behind them closed of its own accord. A heavy booming sound echoed, locking them away from the outside world and cutting off the anomalous winds from the Inverted Gravity Archipelago.

Yet there was no darkness inside.

The chamber beyond the gate required neither torches nor mana crystals. The air itself seemed to radiate a soft silvery glow. As their eyes adjusted, Celes held her breath in awe. The spatial structure within this palace had clearly been manipulated to the absolute limits of creation’s logic. From the outside the palace had appeared mountain-sized, but its interior expanded like an independent dimension without end.

The floor they walked upon was made of obsidian glass that reflected their images like a clear water mirror, while the ceiling was invisible, replaced by an illusory projection of a slowly rotating galactic expanse. The supporting pillars of the chamber were not made of stone, but of pillars of pure light that had solidified into physical form.

"Transcendent-level space compression technology..." Stacia murmured through the communication channel in Sylvia’s ear, her voice trembling with academic passion. "Your Majesty! The mana density inside that chamber is a hundred times purer than outside. My reading instruments nearly exploded just from capturing residual radiation from where you are standing!"

"Calm yourself, Stacia. Keep your scanners from burning out," Sylvia replied casually, letting her hand trail across a console table made of pure white gold. "This place was once the command center of a civilization capable of creating an army of soulless executioners. It is only natural that their headquarters possessed a grandeur equal to the domains of the gods."

The moment Sylvia’s pale fingers touched the surface of that console table, a chain reaction occurred. The automatic defense systems might have been destroyed outside, but the building’s archive and memory systems were still functioning.

SCRAAAK! WHOOOOSH!

Millions of light particles suddenly scattered from the obsidian floor, floating into the air and merging to form gigantic holographic projection walls along the left and right sides of the hall. The projections were extremely realistic not appearing as two-dimensional images, but as perfectly recorded slices of reality.

"Hold your weapons," Sylvia ordered the Zombie Knights who had nearly swung their swords at the light projections. "These are merely echoes of the past. An abandoned library of history."

Celes half-sheathed her sword again and walked closer to one of the projection walls. There, a strikingly beautiful humanoid civilization was depicted. The beings within the projections possessed tall, slender postures, skin that radiated golden light, and a pair of wings made purely of interwoven energy without physical feathers.

"Are they the Angel race from the ancient religious pantheons?" Celes asked, trying to process what she was seeing.

Sylvia slowly shook her head, her heterochromatic eyes scanning the stream of strange symbols scrolling beneath the projections. Thanks to the absolute language gift she had obtained from devouring the souls of so many gods, she could translate that ancient language with ease.

"No. They called themselves the Lumina Race," Sylvia explained, walking past the series of projections that narrated the history of that civilization. "They were not the creation of any god. They were the original children of the ancient stars, born from the condensation of galactic dust and the energy of the universe in the first era of creation."

The projections shifted, displaying gigantic cities floating across various solar systems. The Lumina Race did not worship gods; they worshipped science, stellar alchemy, and mechanical engineering. The images showed how they harvested energy from supernovae, froze the cores of dying stars, and transformed them into eternal power sources for the machines they created.

"They were extremely brilliant, extraordinarily arrogant, and... far too ambitious," Sylvia continued, a thin smile blooming on her lips as she read the final archive text. The projections now showed the Lumina Race constructing a masterpiece structure, a gigantic mechanical entity whose size surpassed that of a planet.

"What were they trying to build, Your Majesty?" Celes asked, her eyes widening at the scale of the projection.

"They were trying to create an Artificial God," Sylvia answered, her tone carrying dark appreciation. "They realized that no matter how advanced their technology became, their race still possessed the limitations of mortal lifespan. So, instead of practicing cultivation or begging immortality from the primordial gods, they decided to assemble a machine capable of manipulating the laws of reality itself. A Conceptual Furnace that could rewrite the law of death within their domain of power."

Stacia listened from the ship with bated breath. "Creating an artificial god from a machine? That... that is absolute blasphemy against the laws of universal balance!"

"And the universe answered cruelly," Sylvia replied. She pointed toward the final projection. There, a storm of chaos was depicted. The universe rejected the existence of that Artificial God. Gigantic roots from the primordial Tree of Life and the will of ancient planets tore through dimensions, dragging the entire main continent of the Lumina Race and sealing it inside an endless void dimension, cutting them off from the flow of time and energy. Without resources, that transcendent civilization slowly starved to death from pure energy, until only the automaton machines remained to guard this dead city.

"They perished not because they lost in war, but because they tried to pierce the veil of divinity through a mechanical shortcut," Celes murmured, feeling a slight chill at the tragedy clearly displayed before her eyes.

"A tragedy for them, but a great fortune for us," Sylvia turned around, no longer interested in the remaining history. Her eyes were now locked onto a long corridor that radiated a blue-purple glow at the far end of the hall. The Ley Line Compass in her hand trembled violently, its needle nearly snapping as it pointed toward the end of that corridor.

"The primary energy source of this floating city is still burning down there. Let us greet the remaining legacy of their Artificial God," Sylvia stepped forward, leading her troops down the corridor that slanted sharply into the belly of the ruins.

The descent down that corridor took nearly half an hour. The deeper they walked, the denser and heavier the air felt. It was not physical gravity that pressed upon them, but pure energy fluctuations so thick it felt like swimming through a sea of mercury. Ordinary Zombie Knights might have crumbled to ash from this radiation pressure; fortunately, those Sylvia had brought were an elite rank infused with high-level protective miasma.

At last they arrived at the end of the corridor and stepped into a gigantic spherical dome chamber whose size equaled a small city.

At the center of that chamber floated a structure that made common sense scream.

It was a gigantic sphere formed from stacked thousands of white-gold metal rings that continuously rotated at extreme speed in every direction, forming a three-dimensional geometric cage. Within that cage of mechanical rings pulsed a core with tremendous force. That core was not a stone or crystal, but a genuine miniature star shining with a blinding supernova-blue color.

"The Astral Star Furnace..." Stacia murmured across the communication channel, her voice sounding like someone who had just attained absolute enlightenment. "Your Majesty! That is an eternal fusion energy reactor! If we can transfer that object and connect it to the hull of our Primary Dreadnought... the Nocture fleet will never again need mana crystals! We will possess an energy supply equal to the heart of a god!"

"I know, Stacia. I can feel it," Sylvia’s smile widened until it revealed her row of white teeth. Dark ambition exploded within her chest. With this object, the process of creating demigod-level alchemical monsters would no longer be hindered by fuel problems.

However, before Sylvia could step any closer to claim the furnace, the metal rings surrounding the miniature star suddenly stopped rotating.

ZRRRTTT... VMMMMMMM!

An invisible sonic shockwave swept through the chamber, forcing Celes and her troops into defensive stances. The blue light from within the furnace projected a thick beam onto the floor in front of Sylvia. That beam rapidly solidified, forming a gigantic holographic silhouette of a Lumina Race man wearing layered mechanical robes. His face was nearly expressionless, but his eyes radiated endless mathematical calculations.

"WARNING. CONTAMINATION PROTOCOL THREAT LEVEL OMEGA," the man’s voice echoed from every direction not from his mouth, but broadcast directly into the minds of everyone in the chamber. "I am Supreme Architect Oris, the final guardian of the Heart of Aetheria. The entity before me is identified as a Necrotic Anomaly. Carrying the essence of Absolute Death. Access to the Astral Furnace is officially DENIED."

Sylvia was not intimidated in the slightest. She tilted her head, regarding the artificial soul projection with a dismissive gaze. "A guardian program created from the remnants of its creator’s soul. How touching. Unfortunately, I did not come here to request access permission, Architect Oris. I came to seize it."

The hologram of Architect Oris stared at Sylvia without blinking. "Probability calculations indicate that this necrotic entity possesses authority capable of destroying the furnace’s protective cage. If the Astral Furnace falls into the hands of Death, the dimensional structure balance of this place will collapse. Activating Apocalypse Protocol. Initiating star core destabilization. Reactor will detonate in sixty mechanical seconds."

Celes flinched in shock. "Your Majesty! If the miniature star inside explodes, the blast will sweep this entire Inverted Gravity Archipelago into atomic dust!"

Architect Oris’s projection began to flicker, while the blue star within the ring cage started expanding violently, shifting its color to blood-red that signaled critical instability. "Fifty seconds until facility erasure."

"Stacia, prepare to launch the transmission anchors from the ship," Sylvia said casually, showing no panic at all. She began walking toward the projection of Architect Oris.

"Your Majesty! That thing is going to explode!" Celes tried to warn again, ready to deploy her holy shield.

"Be silent and watch, Celes," Sylvia reprimanded coldly. The authority of a Queen of Death instantly froze the air inside the dome.

Sylvia stopped directly in front of the towering projection of Architect Oris. Her black-and-white hair began floating against gravity as she released an explosion of Conceptual Death aura. Her heterochromatic eyes blazed through the illusion of the architect.

"You machine race rely far too heavily on numerical calculations and the probability logic of the past," Sylvia hissed. Her voice echoed to every corner of the chamber, carrying the weight of the universe’s fundamental laws that pressed upon that artificial soul.

Sylvia raised her right hand, directing her palm straight toward the Astral Star Furnace that was expanding and ready to detonate.

"Architect Oris, allow me to teach one new law into your outdated database," Sylvia said, her voice shifting into a deathly whisper that halted time. "Before me, Death is not a natural ending. Death is an exclusive patent."

The Domain of Absolute Death exploded in a spectrum of void-gray, swallowing the entire dome chamber.

"Thirty seconds... Error... Warning... Unknown Law Intervention," Architect Oris’s voice began experiencing severe glitches.

"Something cannot explode, cannot be destroyed, and cannot ’die’ if the Queen of Death has not granted it permission to die!" Sylvia shouted, unleashing the full measure of her power.

Instead of using force to destroy, Sylvia inverted the concept. She applied Death to the process of destabilization itself. She killed the ’time’ inside that reactor. She forced the nuclear chain reaction within the miniature star to undergo absolute freezing.

WHOOOOSH!!!

A gray shockwave slammed into the Astral Star Furnace. In that instant, the violent expansion of the red star froze perfectly in place. Its angry red color was slowly forced to subside, cool, and shrink back into its original calm blue. The deadly humming of the reactor was replaced by the stable purr of pure energy.

Sylvia had strangled the reactor’s suicide process with nothing more than a command of her mind.

The projection of Architect Oris stared at the reactor, now fully controlled by Sylvia’s gray waves, with the remnants of its mechanical consciousness severely shaken.

"Logic paradox... Authority... exceeds parameters... of the machine," the artificial soul murmured, its holographic body beginning to shatter into fragments of light pixels. "Our Artificial God failed... but You... you are..."

"Sleep peacefully, remnant of the past," Sylvia interrupted the architect’s final words. She snapped her fingers, and the remaining projection of Architect Oris’s soul completely disintegrated into meaningless stardust, vanishing from reality forever.

The chamber fell silent once more, now filled only by the gentle rotation of the protective rings of the Astral Star Furnace radiating a soothing light.

Celes dropped to one knee, breathing heavily, cold sweat soaking her temples. Watching her Queen manipulate the laws of reality so easily made her even more aware of the gulf of power between them.

"Stacia," Sylvia called in a cheerful tone, as though she had simply picked an apple from a tree, "the target has been completely tamed. Begin the partial space teleportation process. We will bring this new toy back to the ship. I want this object installed in the main engine room before dawn breaks."

"Y-Yes, Sylvia! Spatial anchoring process is uploading. We will pull it up right now!" Stacia replied, her voice a mixture of hysterical joyful laughter and overwhelming relief.