I Got Reincarnated as a Zombie Girl

Sylvia’s first steps upon the land of the Tianhua Kingdom were not greeted by a red carpet or ranks of honor guards, but by the oppressive silence of a coastal forest long abandoned by civilization. The air here felt heavy, filled with the scent of sea salt mixed with the musty odor of decaying leaves and the remains of unidentified animal carcasses.

The trees in this forest no longer held the natural green of flora from the pre-apocalypse era. Due to chaotic mana radiation and dimensional fusion in the past, the tree trunks grew twisted into strange shapes, as though they were suffering in pain. Their bark was pale gray like a corpse, with glowing purple veins pulsing slowly beneath the surface of the wood, indicating that the flora here had mutated into semi-magical energy-absorbing entities.

Yet despite the toxic and filthy environment, not a single speck of dust or drop of mud dared cling to the hem of Sylvia’s evening gown. A transparent mana protective layer passively enveloped her body, rejecting every form of physical dirt and negative energy. The Queen of Death walked with extremely graceful and leisurely steps, as though she were strolling through her private royal garden in Nocture rather than through the middle of an apocalyptic land ruled by monsters.

On her right shoulder, Sol the great dragon disguised as a gleaming golden-furred cat yawned widely. When its small mouth opened, tiny sparks of pure golden fire accidentally escaped, instantly reducing a mutant mosquito the size of a human fist that tried to approach them into ash. Sol wiped its nose with a small paw, then once again rested its head comfortably against Sylvia’s neck.

Meanwhile, Noir walked at Sylvia’s left side. The pitch-black cat with glowing red eyes stepped without making the slightest sound. Its shadow upon the ground appeared strange; it did not reflect the form of a cat, but rather the faint silhouette of a gigantic winged dragon that seemed ready to swallow the world.

"The mana energy on this continent is extremely wild and unstable," Sylvia murmured, her heterochromatic eyes scanning the surroundings. "There is no structured leyline network or earth arteries. No wonder the mutation rate here is so extreme. Creatures living in an environment like this have only two choices: evolve into mana-hungry monsters, or die and become the living dead."

The moment those words left Sylvia’s lips, the thorny bushes ahead of them suddenly rustled violently.

GRRRRRR...

A low growl that shook the ground came from behind the trees. Three pairs of yellowish-green eyes glowed within the darkness of the mutant trees’ shadows. Not long afterward, three ferocious creatures stepped out, blocking Sylvia’s path.

These creatures had once perhaps been an ordinary pack of forest wolves. Now, however, their bodies were the size of adult warhorses. Their fur had fallen out, replaced by layers of bone armor that had pierced outward from beneath their skin, protecting their chests, backs, and heads. Their jaws had elongated unnaturally, with curved fangs dripping toxic saliva that instantly caused the grass beneath them to hiss and wither.

They were Mutated Bone Wolves, one of the deadly predators that often became a nightmare for mid-level mages in the border cities of the Tianhua Kingdom.

The three mutated wolves stared at Sylvia with savage hunger. Their animal instincts could not detect how lethal the existence of the girl before them truly was, because Sylvia suppressed her aura to absolute zero. In the eyes of those monsters, Sylvia was merely a tender, helpless piece of human flesh.

One of the largest wolves, apparently the pack leader, let out a loud roar and leapt forward toward Sylvia’s throat. Its speed split the wind, bone claws ready to tear.

Yet Sylvia did not even stop her steps or blink. She simply continued walking with a flat expression.

The instant the giant wolf was two meters in the air, Noir the black cat at Sylvia’s feet stopped walking. Noir’s glowing red eyes narrowed, radiating a cold aura of absolute dominance. Without needing to transform into its black dragon form, Noir merely lifted one front paw and swung it through the air with an extremely casual motion, as though playing with a ball of yarn.

SWUUUSHH! CRASH!

Five spatial blades made of pure shadow and absolute darkness elements shot out from Noir’s small claws. Their speed far surpassed sound. The mutated wolf floating in the air was instantly sliced into dozens of symmetrical pieces of flesh and bone, before finally disintegrating into a mist of blood even before its body touched the ground.

Seeing their leader die in an instant without resistance, the other two mutated wolves suddenly froze. Their survival instincts finally pierced through their hunger. The fur on their napes stood on end, and they immediately turned around, attempting to flee in panic into the forest.

Sol, still on Sylvia’s shoulder, meowed softly in a dismissive tone. The golden cat flicked its tail. A hair-thin golden light needle shot from the tip of Sol’s tail, simultaneously piercing the heads of both running wolves and burning their brains from within without damaging the outer skin. The two giant wolves collapsed to the ground at once, dying without a sound.

"Good work, both of you," Sylvia praised with a thin smile, stroking Sol’s head before bending slightly to scratch Noir’s chin, which immediately purred in satisfaction. "Let us continue. The scent of blood will attract other lowly creatures, and I currently have no desire to dirty my eyes with carcasses."

Sylvia and her two guardians continued walking through the forest until they finally found an old asphalt road that had cracked and become covered in moss. It was the remnant of an elevated highway from the modern civilization era before the apocalypse occurred. Along that road lay scattered rusted and destroyed car wrecks, some of them overgrown by large trees whose roots had burst through the steel bodies of the vehicles.

As Sylvia walked along the remains of the elevated highway, her extremely sensitive ears caught foreign sounds from several kilometers ahead.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

BOOOM!

The sounds of mechanical firearms firing in succession, followed by the crude explosions of gunpowder. Gray smoke began to rise high above the trees in the distance, staining the afternoon sky that was beginning to turn orange.

"Conventional firearms?" Sylvia murmured softly. "Stacia’s report was correct. Ordinary people without magical talent still use these primitive weapons to survive."

Curiosity took hold of the Queen of Death’s mind. Rather than continuing to walk without direction, she decided to see firsthand how the mortal humans of this continent fought and survived. With a simple thought, Sylvia’s body floated as light as a feather, ignoring the law of gravity. She shot into the air and landed extremely gracefully atop a still-intact elevated highway pillar that towered high, giving her a perfect vantage point toward the source of the commotion.

She sat leisurely on the edge of that concrete pillar, allowing her black-booted legs to swing gently in the air. Sol leapt from her shoulder and curled up in Sylvia’s lap, while Noir sat upright beside her like a gargoyle statue watching over the land.

Below, about five hundred meters from Sylvia’s position, a life-and-death hunting scene was unfolding.

A group of five humans was running for their lives along the destroyed highway. Their appearance was utterly wretched; their protective clothing was torn to shreds, covered in mud and dried blood. Three of them were men armed with automatic assault rifles who kept firing backward while running. One carried a large steel sword whose blade was already chipped in places.

In the middle of their formation was a thin young man in a tattered robe holding a wooden staff with a cheap mana crystal at its tip. The youth occasionally turned and shouted short incantations, firing fist-sized fire projectiles low-level Fire Bullets toward their pursuers. It was clear that he was a low-class magic user protecting this group of ordinary people.

"Hurry! Keep running toward the bridge ruins! If we can climb up, we might be able to avoid their sight!" shouted the sword-wielding man, his breath ragged and fresh blood flowing from his temple.

Yet the enemies chasing them were not something that could be easily avoided.

Behind the group of humans, hundreds of terrifying creatures crawled and ran at unnatural speeds. They were zombies, but not ordinary slow-walking living dead. These were Hunter Variant Zombies mid-level mutations of the new continent. Their bodies were skinny and skinless, revealing only blackish-red muscles exposed to the air. They ran on all fours like giant spiders, and their fingers had mutated into long bone claws capable of tearing through iron plates.

Ratatatatat!

Assault rifle fire struck the bodies of several zombies, but ordinary lead bullets had almost no stopping effect. The zombies merely jerked for a moment before continuing to run, feeling no pain at all. Occasionally, a fireball from the young mage succeeded in burning one or two zombies, but their numbers were too great. One hundred... two hundred... the size of the horde kept increasing from behind the forest, drawn by the sounds of gunfire and the scent of human blood.

"His fire magic is extremely inefficient," Sylvia murmured from atop the pillar, propping her chin while analyzing. "The mana structure is chaotic, wasting energy. Those firearms are also pitiful. Fighting living dead that feel no pain using kinetic penetration is foolishness. They should be destroying the head or the spinal cord."

Below, despair finally enveloped the group of humans. The young mage collapsed to the ground, his staff broken. "I-I’m out of mana... I can’t cast any more magic!"

"Damn it!" The sword-wielding man stopped running and stood in front of his exhausted, fallen companions. He raised his chipped sword with trembling hands. In front of them, hundreds of Hunter Zombies had formed a semicircle, completely surrounding them right beneath the elevated highway pillar where Sylvia sat. The growls and the grinding of hundreds of living dead teeth sounded terrifying.

The sword-wielding man swallowed hard. He knew this was the end. Yet when he looked up reflexively, his eyes widened.

Atop the twenty-meter-high concrete pillar directly above them, he saw a young girl of otherworldly beauty. The girl’s hair was black as night, and she wore an elegant evening gown that bore not a single stain of the apocalypse. The girl was sitting leisurely with two cute cats in her lap, looking down at them with a bored expression like a spectator at a cheap theater.

"H-hey! Miss! What are you doing up there?!" shouted one of the firearm-wielding men who had also noticed Sylvia’s presence. "Run quickly! Run from here or you’ll be eaten by these monsters too! You’re a noble from the central city who got lost, right?! RUN!"

Even though their own lives hung by a thread, the men’s instincts still tried to warn the beautiful girl they considered fragile and unaware of the danger.

Hearing that warning shout, Sylvia was slightly surprised. A thin, genuine smile finally appeared on her lips. "Oh? They’re about to die, yet they still have the time to worry about a stranger’s safety? Unlike the reports about the cruel city rulers, these lowly humans actually have rather pure hearts."

Sylvia stood from her seat, slowly straightening her gown. She decided that this spectacle had been enough. Because this group of humans had been polite enough to warn her, there was nothing wrong with granting them a small "miracle" descending from the sky.

Below, dozens of Hunter Zombies let out long howls and leapt forward in unison, ready to tear the five humans into shreds of flesh. The humans squeezed their eyes tightly shut, waiting for the pain of inevitable death.

Yet that pain never came.

Suddenly, the air around the elevated highway ruins plummeted dozens of degrees. An extremely absolute, dense, and chest-oppressing cold aura descended and enveloped the entire area like a gigantic ice blanket.

WUUUNG!

Sylvia’s blood-red eye glowed brightly. She did not chant any spell, did not move her fingers, did nothing except release a fraction of her authority’s aura.

To the five humans below, that cold aura merely made them shiver and struggle to breathe. But to the living dead... it was an absolute command from the Creator of Death herself.

CRASH! CRASH! CRASH!

Dozens of Hunter Zombies that had been floating in the air suddenly lost all their motive power. Their bodies fell and slammed hard onto the asphalt, stopping just one span in front of the faces of the five terrified humans.

And that was not all. The hundreds of other zombies that had been surrounding them suddenly froze in place. Their savage growls vanished, replaced by a deadly silence. Then a scene that completely defied logic and contradicted every principle of Tianhua civilization unfolded before the eyes of the five humans.

The hundreds of fearless, terrifying monsters simultaneously bent their knees. They threw their bodies to the ground, pressed their foreheads against the filthy asphalt, and trembled with all their might. The hundreds of monsters that had mercilessly slaughtered humans now prostrated in the lowest posture of surrender, not daring to raise their heads even slightly, let alone utter a single growl.

The five humans slowly opened their eyes. Their jaws dropped until they nearly touched the ground. Their weapons slipped from their grips. The sword-wielding man rubbed his eyes repeatedly, thinking he had already died and was dreaming.

The five of them slowly looked up toward the pillar.

There, the elegantly gowned girl was no longer sitting. She stood upright, looking down with the aura of a Queen who held the lives of all creatures in her hands. The moon that was beginning to appear on the eastern horizon cast a mystical glow behind her back.

Sylvia tilted her head slightly, regarding the five humans who were frozen in extreme shock. Her melodious and authoritative voice echoed through the silence, piercing their eardrums like a divine bell.

"You entertained me sufficiently today," Sylvia said casually. "So, as repayment for that small warning of yours earlier... Let us talk. Which city is the closest to this filthy place?"