Birthing Legends: My Womb Creates SSS Monsters-Chapter 87: The Dead Don’t Stay Dead: Maddy and Her Children Confront a Lich! — Part 2.

Maddy stood in the center, her hands trembling as she held a manifested light spear. A zombie—a young woman who still wore a silver locket around her neck, stumbled toward her, raising a jagged dagger.

"Stop... please,"

Maddy whispered, her zoologist’s heart breaking, no her human heart... She saw the way their eyes rolled back, the way their fingers twitched in a ghostly mimicry of living reflexes.

"There has to be a way. Lucy! Can I reverse them? Can I use Photosynthetic Regeneration to jumpstart their cells?"

[Response: Negative. The biological threshold has been passed. The souls have been severed. These are merely biological puppets controlled by the Lich’s mana frequency.]

"Mother, watch out!"

Sephiran screamed, diving from the air to bash a zombie archer’s head with his war bat just as it leveled a bow at Maddy. Maddy parried a strike from the girl with the locket, her movements stiff.

"I can’t... I can’t just kill them! They were people! They had families too! Or maybe at home there are children like you waiting for them... this is—"

"MOTHER, SNAP OUT OF IT!"

Frovian’s voice cut through the chaos like a whip. He blasted a zombie back with a concentrated burst of Breath Attack, his amber eyes glowing with a cold, harsh light.

"Look at them, Mother! Really look at them!"

Frovian shouted, incinerating the arm of a zombie that tried to grab his throat.

"There is no ’life’ to save! You are grieving for empty jars while the water is already spilled! I know this is hard for you, because you treasure life but by hesitating, you are insulting the warriors they once were!"

He twisted aside, narrowly dodging a spectral bolt fired from the Lich. His palms ignited again, glowing with a fierce red hue. Frovian’s voice dropped lower, sharper with conviction.

"If you truly pity them, then grant them the only mercy left to the dead: silence. To let them linger as puppets for that bag of bones is the true cruelty!"

Maddy flinched as the zombie girl lunged again, teeth bared in a silent snarl. Her eyes caught the small locket swinging from the girl’s neck. She whispered softly, staring at it.

"Frovian was right. The locket around the girl’s neck wasn’t a sign of life... it was a mocking reminder of what the Lich had stolen..."

The Lich let out a raspy, rattling laugh from behind its mask of bone, raising its spine staff. The skull head of the staff its eye area glowed, and the zombies’ movements suddenly became twice as fast, their strength surging as they channeled the Lich’s own mana.

The zombie girl moved far faster now, driving her dagger toward Maddy in a vicious flurry. Maddy dodged each strike—sidestepping, weaving—until at last something inside her hardened.

"Fine..." 𝒻𝓇𝑒𝘦𝘸𝑒𝒷𝓃ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝒸ℴ𝘮

Her eyes shifted from sorrowful hesitation to a burning, predatory resolve. The air around her began to hum under the weight of her Divine Power.

"You want to play with the dead... play with those who were once a mother, a sister, a friend..."

Her voice dropped, cold with fury.

"Then I will make sure you suffer far more than what you did to these people."

She gripped her spear. She was no longer a grieving woman; she was a Chimera Mother protecting her nest. She met the zombie girl’s charge—but this time, she didn’t parry. She moved with the Silent Drift of a Shadow Spirit, appearing behind the zombie girl in a blur of darkness. With a single, precise thrust of her light spear, she pierced the base of the skull, the anchor point of the necro mana.

"Rest now."

As the zombie girl fell into the ground, Maddy slowly lifted her gaze toward the floating Lich. The creature tilted its skull slightly, as if sensing the change in the battlefield.

"Your turn."

The remaining nine zombies didn’t shuffle like the mindless corpses from cheap horror movies. They snapped into a high-level formation. Even in death, their bodies remembered the drills of their past lives, and with the Lich’s mana amplifying them, they became far more dangerous.

Three zombies—a heavy shielded crusader, a dual wielding berserker, and a spearman swarmed toward Arach.

Arach didn’t look intimidated by their newfound power. He simply watched them approach, calm and still.

"Pitiful... I understand now, Mother. Each of them once had a life, and to have your dead body played with like this... is beyond cruel."

His six eyes tracking the triangular pincer movement. The Crusader slammed his shield down, creating a shockwave of necrotic mana to pin Arach’s lower limbs. Instantly, the Spearman thrust upward, aiming for Arach’s throat, while the Berserker leaped high, axes mid swing.

Arach did not move at all. He simply stood there, as if waiting for the spear and axes to strike him.

"This would be a waste of such a good display of sportsmanship if I just killed you right off the bat..."

For a moment, his tone softened, almost like their mother’s when she acknowledged worthy opponents.

"Even in death, the three of you still work as a team!"

A single tear slid down from one of his eyes before he dodged the spear thrusting toward his throat, bending low as if he were playing limbo. The spearman stepped aside, making way for the Berserker who was already descending, axes poised to cleave Arach in half.

"So this is your strategy... even if the spearman misses, you take the kill. Does that mean the spearman always misses?"

The Berserker swung the axe down with brutal force, but Arach caught it effortlessly with his bare hands.

"Hmm... all those muscles, and yet your strike is just... decoration. Not as strong as you think."

The zombie snarled, struggling to lift its axe, but Arach’s other arms gripped its waist firmly.

"I pierced one with a shield to its chest, yet it still moved... then I saw Mother finish the zombie girl with her head. Let’s see how this works."

With a powerful push from his feet, Arach bent low, pulling the Berserker toward him and slamming its head into the rock floor. The impact detonated the zombie’s skull, shattering the cursed animation and ending its cursed movement.