I Accidentally Resurrected My Dead Husband - Chapter 1

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Prologue
: No Matter What, Her Husband’s Corpse Will Not Decay
Forty-nine days since her husband died.
Judith stared down at her husband’s corpse, which seemed so alive it might wake at any moment. She had tried warming it, tried dampening it, tried everything under the sun—yet it would not rot. Not one bit.
“I hear the wailing of a soul tormented, trapped within the prison of flesh.”
The medium her husband’s friend—or whoever—had gone to great lengths to bring was somewhere between charlatan and outright fraud. Hardly trustworthy, if she was honest, but…
“Ern, I’ll pull you out of there. Can you hear me?”
Well, since the one paying the bills seemed satisfied enough, she might as well let it be.
“I shall now begin the procedure to open the flesh of Ern and guide his soul to where it must return.”
Judith listened to the medium’s explanation while her eyes traced over Ern.
Lying naked on the hastily assembled altar, Ern looked like nothing so much as a man in deep sleep.
“Please, madam, come closer.”
Judith’s brow furrowed. She had no desire to come closer. Who would want to approach a corpse that refused to decay, that wore no burial shroud? She would have preferred something covering it at least. Worse yet, the medium had assigned her a position near Ern’s lower half.
“Come now, madam. Ern is weeping within even now. Surely you hear this sorrowful sound?”
As if he heard it himself.
Judith caught a sidelong glance at her sniffling brother-in-law, then took one large step forward. She wanted to dispose of this ominous corpse as quickly as possible. Her participation in this worthless farce was driven entirely by that desire—to rid herself of the body, buried or burned, any way at all.
The cursed mansion had already seen its value halved; if rumors spread of such a grotesque cadaver, the price might well plummet through the earth itself.
How dreadful.
“What must vanish shall vanish, and nothing shall remain.”
At the medium’s signal, her husband’s friend extended his hand. The blade of a dagger, drawn taut, grazed his fingertips. Fresh blood welled from the split flesh and dripped down onto her husband’s brow in small, steady drops.
In that instant, her husband’s long lashes seemed to quiver—a faint tremor—but neither the man nor the medium reacted.
Had she imagined it? Of course she had. A corpse that didn’t breathe couldn’t possibly move its lashes.
“Madam, extend your hand. You must let the blood drops fall precisely over Ern’s Root.”
The Root was the first of three gates that existed within the body, the place where life was born. In other words, directly over Ern’s most intimate place. She hesitated, truthfully, but for the sake of the house’s value, she would wade through fire itself.
“What must leave shall leave, for this is no place of destination. To remain is only to suffer.”
The medium turned toward Judith. Bracing herself for the coming pain, Judith extended her hand. A sharp sting pierced through her finger.
If she could solve this troublesome matter with just a few drops of blood, so be it. Judith bit her lip as she brought her bleeding finger close to her husband’s groin.
The moment the blood drop fell onto his skin—
“……?”
The stallion-like thigh muscle convulsed. This time, it was no trick of perception. Her skin prickled with unease.
In the instant Judith startled backward, a hand flew through the air like wind and seized her wrist.
“……What are you doing?”
A voice, hoarse from long disuse.
“What did you do to me?”
Eyes the color of deep forest green swept across his own naked body and then across Judith. His brow furrowed slowly. His voice, frozen in confusion, shattered the icy silence.
“Surely you weren’t doing… that?”
Judith’s legs gave out beneath her, and she collapsed where she sat, his hand still locked around her wrist.
Her dead husband had come back to life. And judging by his expression, he’d drawn quite the indecent conclusion.
Episode 1
Forty-nine days earlier.
Judith Herrington, a young lady from a fallen baronial house, was dragged toward a shabby temple by her older brother Leon—or rather, by her hair.
Terrified by Leon’s rough hands, she heard only the barest explanation before finding herself standing on the wedding aisle.
The groom’s name was Ern Rainhardt, a bastard and the last surviving member of House Rainhardt. By marrying him, Judith would become a countess.
In the same breath, a veil was placed over her head and an unnecessarily ornate bouquet thrust into her hands. Dizzy and nauseated, Judith was pushed from behind. The aisle was short. The man who would be her husband sat slumped in his chair, utterly lifeless.
She wondered if he was even alive. Judith glanced at him sideways. He was beautiful enough to astonish even in these bizarre circumstances.
For a moment, Judith forgot both reality and fear, simply admiring him. It was a wedding where neither bride nor groom nor anyone else spoke—only the officiant droned on. Despite the bare-bones ceremony, it seemed formality still demanded its closing gesture, and the officiant called for the marriage kiss.
Judith, who was delicate by nature, trembled violently as she bent forward. Cold sweat drenched the small of her back, and her chest felt tight. As she, pale as paper, leaned in to kiss her new husband, his neck suddenly twisted.
“……!”
Then came a sound—whether a cry or an indrawn breath, she couldn’t tell—and Judith collapsed. It was her last memory as Judith Herrington.
“……So that’s how it happened.”
Eugene, now inhabiting Judith’s body, muttered as she pressed her palms against her temples, wincing at the dull ache radiating from her scalp.
The moment consciousness returned, a deluge of Judith’s memories flooded in, and after processing them, her head had begun to throb. Based on what she saw through Judith’s recollection, it was the aftereffect of being grabbed by her brother’s hair. Her forearm, seized in that rough grip, still ached, and the ankle that had twisted while being dragged throbbed with a sharp pain.
‘Goddamn it, what a rotten fate.’
In her last life, she’d been struck by a truck, and now she’d been reborn into this wretched existence. Eugene recalled what she’d left behind in her previous life.
Everything she had built through hard work—a small apartment registered in her name, savings, installment accounts. When she thought of the premium beef she’d splurged on for the first time in her life but never eaten, tears pricked her eyes.
She’d thought that once she escaped the mountain of debt, nothing but flower-strewn paths lay ahead. No one could have foreseen she’d walk the road to the afterlife instead.
“My husband’s name is Ern Rainhardt, they said.”
The officiant had said so clearly. The name sounded familiar—and now Eugene realized that the world she’d possessed was the novel “As Above, So Below.”
She had only ever bought one novel in her entire life: “As Above, So Below.” It wasn’t hard to guess. Of all the countless characters in that world, she had entered the body of a poor woman from a fallen house who didn’t even appear in the original story. It felt like punishment.
“No, it must be coincidence.”
She wanted to believe it was coincidence. She’d never lived a perfectly virtuous life, but then again, who manages to go through their entire existence without a single mistake? Besides, Eugene had paid for all the sins of her past life by being struck down by a truck and dying. Surely that settled the debt.
“Madam, did you cough?”
A deep voice called from beyond the door. Eugene—or rather, the Countess Judith Rainhardt, as she now was—pulled herself from her thoughts and answered in a hoarse voice.
“Yes, that’s right.”
The door opened, and a middle-aged man with graying hair stepped inside.
“It’s time for the funeral service, madam.”
He set down the mourning clothes he’d been holding so carefully, offered no explanation whatsoever, and left. Judith changed into the dark robes slowly. Her mind remained turbulent, but she couldn’t stay trapped in this narrow room forever.
And so she found herself invited to a funeral service so sparse it seemed to have no mourners at all.
* * *
It seemed odd that the Countess should be “invited” to the funeral of the Count, but there was no other word that fit the situation.
The funeral had already been prepared in its entirety. All that remained for Judith was to lay flowers upon the coffin as it descended into the earth.
‘This is strange.’
It was as if they’d prepared the funeral in advance. There was no other way it could have been arranged so quickly.
Ern had died yesterday in the late afternoon; it was now dawn. The ground, they said, had been dug as soon as first light broke. But the gravestone? This world had no laser engraving technology, yet somehow they’d produced a stone with the family crest and his name and birth date carved beautifully into it—all in the span of a few hours? Impossible.
‘They must have prepared everything beforehand—the family crest, the name, the birth date—and just added the date of death at the end. Hmm. Suspicious.’
Ern, who had become Judith’s husband, was quite a significant character—unlike the Judith who didn’t appear in the original work at all.
He was a distinguished knight and decorated war hero who had sided with the villains but later switched to the protagonist’s faction, and in the end, survived all the way to the finale.
‘Which means this must be after the ending.’
But wait—when had Ern become a Count? His background was that he was a bastard son of the Count.
“Madam, I briefly introduced myself yesterday—do you remember? I am Cliff Ackermann.”
Right on cue, someone appeared who could answer Judith’s questions. Cliff Ackermann. The lawyer for House Rainhardt.
“I shall escort you to your new residence. And while we travel, I can explain the matter of your inheritance.”
“My inheritance?”
“Yes. Didn’t Leon explain this to you?”
He had explained, though it was more threats than explanation—things like, do as I say or I’ll kill you, or I’ll shave your head bare, and so on. Judith had actually been beaten by Leon badly enough to break her leg. So she’d been terrified, compliant, and had gone through with that suspicious marriage ceremony without a word of protest.
“The Count’s entire family line has passed away with Ern. You are now the only person bearing the Rainhardt name.”
“I beg your pardon?”
Cliff continued his explanation, seeing Judith’s bewilderment.
“Though Ern was born outside of wedlock to the Count, when the entire family line perished, he became the primary heir. However…”
He trailed off—but he too had died.
“Therefore, you are now the primary heir, and you shall inherit everything that belongs to House Rainhardt. You will become the head of the family and regent Count.”
The estate, the title, all other properties, rights and obligations—everything now belonged to Judith.
What? Wealth falling from the sky? A house meant property, and she was getting free real estate?
Judith felt less joy than bewilderment. In her experience, the world offered no such thing as a free lunch, and this marriage had been suspicious from the start.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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