Chapter 1: Volume One & Two: Chapter 1: Let’s Die Together

Linglan always had the same recurring dream.

An outbreak of the Hell Spores began, and she watched the modern apocalypse unfold through the eyes of a girl trying to survive.

By coincidence, the girl had the same name as her.

Even when she died in the apocalypse, she simply returned to the start of the dream and relived the path to her death, over and over.

Until one night, as she slept, she suddenly felt herself falling.

A jolt—

Linglan opened her eyes. She tried to gasp, but only a hollow breath came out, like scraps of cloth caught in a wind tunnel, fluttering with a dry rustle as the wind passed through.

The glaring sun made her squint. She raised a pale, slender hand, black veins standing out beneath the skin, to shield her eyes. Once the spots of light faded, she could make out the scene before her.

The city was a landscape of death and rebirth. Pale green roots pushed out through the windows and gaps in buildings, spreading across concrete walls where most of the paint had peeled away, leaving only cold gray behind.

Behind all that lush vitality lay the gray, lifeless remains of human civilization.

The roots growing outside sliced the sunlight into tiny fragments, like daggers. By the time any light reached the ground, it had passed through so many layers of obstruction that little remained.

But the room where Linglan lay happened to catch a shaft of sunlight.

If this were a dream, it couldn’t possibly feel so real.

Once she had recovered a little from the shock, she realized she had transmigrated.

This scene… Why did it look so familiar?

“Click. Creak—”

Before Linglan could think it over, a painfully loud door creaked open, drawing her attention.

As she turned toward the sound, she surveyed her surroundings. The room looked like an isolation cell in a psychiatric hospital: not a stick of furniture or a scrap of decoration, just soft padding covering the floor and walls.

Everything inside was gray. Dust had buried the original colors of the white, green, and other soft pads. Even the warm sunlight spilling in from outside couldn’t disguise the room’s desolation.

In this thoroughly unsettling place, the door swung fully open. A petite, slender young woman stood unguarded in the doorway.

She wore a long-sleeved shirt and shorts, both covered in patches. Her straight legs, visible below the hem, had grown lean and bony from a lack of food.

Even so, her chest strained against the shirt. It was hard to imagine where she’d managed to find enough nutrition.

Her waist-length black hair was sticky and clumped together. The ashen, oval-shaped face beneath it looked disheveled, but her delicate features showed no sign of displeasure. Instead, she gazed at Linglan with a strangely delighted expression.

Hey, is it really okay for such a cute girl to show up in a world this horrifying?

This kind of contrast belongs in a horror movie!

The girl didn’t speak. She drew a chipped dagger from behind her waist and dragged its blade over her scarred wrist. The fresh red blood that welled up was a sign of vitality.

The moment the blood appeared, Linglan felt a force tugging at her body, compelling her to follow the girl in a stumbling walk.

Her sluggish brain kicked into gear. Linglan immediately recognized something wrong with the pull.

She tried to resist the temptation.

Linglan! You have to learn to resist temptation!

Temptation? Where?

Resistance: failed.

Her gaze locked completely onto the blood. She could only move her eyes, as if she were a spectator, watching her own body move on its own.

Her muddled thoughts finally sorted themselves out, and Linglan’s hazy awareness snapped into focus.

Wait. This is a zombie! Isn’t this the apocalypse from my dream?

How the hell did I go from workplace hell back to zombie hell?!

As Linglan took a step forward, dust billowed off the padded floor. Each footfall scattered clouds of it into the air, like a series of exploding land mines.

The girl stepped back, raising a clean hand to cover her delicate nose. Her brows pinched together as if she were about to sneeze.

But she soon suppressed it. Seeing Linglan follow, she continued retreating toward another room, using herself as bait.

The isolation room opened onto a living room of about 480 square feet. Supplies had been neatly stacked everywhere: water barrels, toolboxes, a weapons cabinet, a rack of smoked meat, a pile of firewood. Animal hides and intestines had been cut into strips and left to dry in a sunny spot. It was clearly the girl’s survival base.

As Linglan followed her around a corner toward the dining table, she finally saw a huge full-length mirror—

She was a gaunt female zombie wearing nothing but underwear. And the zombie’s appearance was painfully, unmistakably familiar.

Her right eye was just an empty socket. A bullet hole marked her left cheek, and most of the right side of her face had been ripped away, exposing dark red facial muscles laced with green fibers.

The reattached right leg, along with the gaping wound in her abdomen that left most of her abdominal cavity exposed, was enough for Linglan to recognize herself.

Wasn’t this how Linglan had died in the dream?

She could manipulate gravity and electromagnetism. But when she was trapped by a horde, the city gate came down before she could roll through. It crushed her right leg. In the end, her companions abandoned her because she could no longer move. She struggled in despair until she had used up all the energy she needed to kill herself.

Then some idiot, no doubt, tried to put her out of her misery. The bullet struck her left cheek, tore through her teeth, and burst out of the right side of her face, taking flesh and shattered teeth with it.

It hadn’t killed her. The agony only sent adrenaline surging through her system, leaving her conscious as a predator ripped open her belly and devoured her organs. Only then had she died.

(；´д｀)ゞ

No more. I lived through that nightmare in first person. Let’s show it some respect.

Apparently, she and this zombie were fated to be together. Even death couldn’t separate them.

How many years had passed? Why had the girl taken her corpse and locked it away in a room by itself?

What was this? Did she want to raise a zombie girlfriend?

The girl circled halfway around the table. When Linglan followed her to a chair, the girl suddenly shoved her into it.

Linglan watched as the girl deftly climbed onto her lap and settled herself. One hand straightened Linglan’s crooked jaw, which had shifted because the masseter muscle on the right side of her face had been severed. Then the bleeding hand reached toward her mouth.

The moment the blood dripped onto Linglan’s tongue, a sense of satisfaction welled up inside her. She felt a little giddy, as if she’d been waiting a long time for this moment.

Has this body been trained? Why is it reacting like this?

“Ling, I’ll never let anyone separate us.” The girl stroked Linglan’s face, her voice a little hoarse.

A question mark slowly appeared in Linglan’s mind. Before she could think further, the girl’s face drew closer.

Linglan’s dead mouth could feel only the vague pressure of something soft entering it. Her zombie instincts took over, and she bit down.

“Gah!”

The pain made the girl pull away. With no support, Linglan’s jaw dropped, and the girl managed to escape.

“Hehe…” Blood ran from the corner of her mouth. Rather than getting angry, the girl let out a strange giggle.

She gazed at Linglan with affectionate black eyes, as if her stare could spin threads. A little bashful, she watched Linglan keep drawing closer, trying to eat her.

A small red tongue slipped past her lips and painted them with a seductive sheen of blood.

“Ling~ Do you know?” she asked with a playful smile, winking at Linglan. “From now on, you’ll have all the meat you could ever eat.”

Then she pulled out a grenade. Her small hand curled around the pin, and the carefree look on her face instantly turned grave.

“Let’s leave this hell together.”

Clink~

The moment the pin came free with a sharp metallic snap, Linglan suddenly realized the scene looked familiar.

She’d seen this before.