I Got Reincarnated as a Zombie Girl - Chapter 316

Chapter 316: Chapter 312 – The Breathing Forest
The moment their feet stepped into Syvalith’s breath, the world shifted again from white marble plains into a dense, pulsing green. Sounds changed; no longer the thunder of metal or explosions of fire, but the hum of woody fibers, the sigh of roots, and the whisper of leaves folding like old paper. A green mist crept between their feet, thick and full of fine particles that felt like the touch of a thousand tiny hands against the skin.

The little treant that had been perched like a living crown on Sylvia’s head suddenly trembled down to the core of its leaves. Its small leaves quivered rapidly; foliage that was usually soft now hardened as if answering the call of the land. It stared at Sylvia with its red eyes not in fear so much as like a coal waiting to flare.

Plop…

(I feel it. Now it’s my turn.)

The simple utterance was not human language; it came as the tapping cadence of twigs against bark, a beat Sylvia could feel in her bones. She was worn from the fight with Korthan; their battle had left marks on her soul but she also understood: another will had risen in that small body. This was no mere pet. Mortifera’s change had spread even to the tiny being.

Sylvia turned aside for a heartbeat, giving space. Alicia held her breath; Stacia briefly closed her eyes and counted probabilities. Sofia pressed a hand to Sylvia’s chest, worried yet trusting.

The little treant leapt down not falling, but defying gravity with determined leaves. It landed on Syvalith’s soil, and the earth seemed to answer: small roots bowed and made way. The treant raised a single twig like a spear; its body expanded quickly, not by slow organic growth but by revealing layers that had been hidden.

From inside its trunk, from hollows never seen before, something burst forth.

Plop plop plop!!!

Not one. Two. Hundreds of small points exploded out: little branches, black leaves, the echoes of trees whose faces were distorted by death. Hundreds of tiny figures unfurled and transformed into Death Treants, not the gentle forest treants, but limbs of death given form: bodies veined like bone, bark charcoal-dark with a glossy purple sheen to their leaves. They stood tight as a hardened clay army.

The forest fell silent. Every watchful eye birds, tiny beasts, moss clinging to stone turned toward them. The wind stilled. Even the mist held its breath.

Then, from between colossal trunks, an answer came.

The sound came as a trunk’s vibration, not a spoken word. From the thickets of roots and thick folds untouched by human hands, ancient treants rose guardians with bodies like root-made towers, bark thick with millennia of moss. Their eyes were rings of glowing fungus; their mouths gaped like torn bark capable of issuing resonant rumble; their giant limbs were monuments.

Hundreds of those ancient treants awakened, walking slowly but unerringly to position themselves between root and path. They shook their branches into leaf-shields. The mood shifted from observation to alert. The forest breathed; leaves hardened into spears, roots writhed like serpents.

One ancient treant towered above the rest, its crown like the pillar of a temple. It moved a commanding bough and sent out a long, old rumble like thunder held close.

“Who enters my domain and grows this curse?” its vibration asked.

It was not a language of words, yet Sylvia’s soul translated it: insult, warning, demand.

The little treant stood tall before its army, its wooden lungs expanding. It raised its twig like a banner. There was something in its eyes no longer mere unease but purpose. This time it did not want to be a decoration atop the queen’s head. It wanted to prove itself, to defend, to carve its name into the memory of the forest.

“This is my turn,” the small voice returned, firmer now. And as if boosted by a hidden power, hundreds of death threats sighed together. The sound was like a thousand twigs snapping at once: KRRAKK KRRAKK KRASSHH!

Battle erupted.

First came the clatter trunks and branches meeting. Death treants struck fast, whip-like, their boughs slashing. Ancient treants replied like heavy hammers, each blow making the ground tremble. Black leaves sliced into older green canopies; the greens were battered but would not yield: ancient roots anchored deep, drawing on primeval nutrients, secreting sap that hardened into shields.

CRASSH!! CRUNCH!! PLINK PLINK PLINK!!

The sounds of snapping twigs and clashing wood thundered toward the horizon. Great roots crawled, slammed, lifted stones and entangled death treants to break them physically. Death treants countered by winding themselves, keeping distance, sacrificing small branches to release black fungal toxins that charred leaves and bark. Where ancient treants touched the poison, their surface darkened degeneration took root quickly yet old-age vibrations answered: the fungus was stripped by ancient microbes, digested, then reborn into organic napalm shards flung back into the fray.

Sylvia watched from the sideline, chains coiled loosely in her hands. She did not forbid it. She did not command. She let a phenomenon born of her child happen. Sofia stood beside her, eyes wet both from the destruction and a strange pride.

Alicia sharpened distortions, yanking several death treants aside to prevent encirclement. “Don’t let them reach the mother-root!” she shouted. “If they touch it, the forest will react far more extremely!” Stacia opened small temporal gates at several points to slow ancient treants’ movements and avoid an uncontrolled conflagration.

But a forest is not an arena to be fully governed. The forest chooses. The forest sings. And its song now was a war chant.

At the center, the little treant led formations that moved like swarming insects: tight ranks, flank maneuvers, guerrilla strikes. They hit at trunk junctions, executed u-turns, slipped behind elder trunks to sever root comms, burning lines of arboreal communication. Ancient treants answered with protuberances: long thorns, protruding root pillars, even spurting sap that burst into steaming jets.

BRRRAAK!! The blast of sap exploded, steam cloaking vision for a heartbeat. When the vapor thinned, death treants severed several crucial root links. Some ancients staggered wobbly but not felled, compensating to stay upright despite lost balance.

At that point Sylvia could no longer stay passive. She stepped forward not to stop the fight, but to restore balance. Her chains spun, drawing in some of the soot and poison, forming a triage that stripped toxins from savable wood fibers. With a single movement she pulled one overreaching death treant close and cradled it like a struck child. Black, blistered leaves were brushed by gusts born of her Death Flame not to burn, but to purify.

The ancient treant leader approached, its trunk trembling in slower, weighty judgment. When its voice came, it had a compressed resonance.

“You have raised creatures that write endings into my skin,” it rumbled. “Why teach death to life?”

The little treant bowed not in submission, but as an answer spoken from root to root. Its voice was small, yet Sylvia understood: “Because we do not want to be mere head ornaments. Because we want to guard our queen. Because I want to prove: death can also protect.”

A long pause followed, filled with the creak of branches and root sighs. The ancient leader weighed them and emitted a warm sap, a gesture in tree-speech that bore respect and acknowledgment of bravery.

The battle did not end there and then. Conflict continued around them. But its tone shifted: no longer outright annihilation but a duel of honor. Death treants displayed quick-hit tactics, strike and withdraw without stripping everything. Ancient treants delivered heavy blows but avoided burning whole swathes, damping the opponent’s movement.

Alicia, seeing the change, exhaled. “They’re not just fighting to win. They’re arguing about roles in the forest.”

Stacia added, “This is primitive negotiation. They are re-drawing boundaries: what may burn, what must be preserved, who guards whom.”

Beneath the torrent of battle were small, piercing moments: a death treant helping a fallen bird; an ancient stooping to mend a broken branch; a root hole patched with black twigs that later sprouted new moss. The war was oddly also a process of renewal and negotiation.

After hours passing like days, the fighting ebbed not because one side yielded, but because the forest decided. The green mist sank thicker, cloaking the field. Roots snapped communication lines, sealing the gaps newly opened. Many death treants, wounded, withdrew neatly into shadow, disappearing back into the little treant’s hollow. Hundreds of small bodies folded themselves and merged into the trunk; they did not vanish but became seeds of power, ready to be called again if needed.

Ancient treants walked slowly, sap instruments patching rents; they mended the cracked walls. Their leader approached the little treant and stooped nearly to its branch-height. A silent ritual unfolded: bark rubbing, warm sap exchanged an unspoken root-pact.

Sylvia stood and watched it all. She neither commanded nor forbade. She allowed the creatures she had raised to talk with the world that must now accept them. A strange pride swelled in her chest not from victory, but because a dialogue took place instead of aimless slaughter: a negotiation of living space.

Sofia took Sylvia’s hand and said softly, “You gave it room.”

Sylvia looked at the little treant, its bark now faintly blinking, leaves black but not panicked. She lifted the tiny crown atop it and set it back again a living crown, but no longer mere ornament. It was a recognized guardian.

From the forest’s edge, something moved. Syvalith the forest’s shadow sent a whisper that made the leaves tremble: recognition. The woods exhaled, accepting the change, and left a narrow path slightly easier to tread, easing their march toward the next temple.

Night would fall. They gathered, treated wounds, fixed what could be mended. Sylvia’s weariness was real, but there was calm: today’s battle had not been only about dominance, but about forming a new relationship between the death Sylvia bore and life which would not be easily subdued.

The little treant, now wrapped in Sylvia’s embrace, made a quiet sound.

Plop.

(Sorry… I was too bold before.)

Sylvia smiled thinly and laid a hand upon its trunk. “You age fast. But you have courage. That’s enough.”

Black leaves dimmed into pale green, a sign that the worst had passed.

They moved out again; Syvalith’s temple still awaited not as a fortress of war now, but as a bridge.