Building My Empire in the Frozen Apocalypse (Riley Carter) novel Chapter 186

Chapter 186 The Erasure

Chapter 186 The Erasure

A heavy silence filled the tree hollow.

Riley remained quiet.

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She could imagine the scene–a group of survivors setting aside their cold instincts in a lethal forest, sharing memories around a fire to build a mental utopia.

Yet, the cruelest part of the apocalypse was its tendency to tear such moments apart right when they were most beautiful.

“Until this afternoon,” BigMountain began.

His voice shifted, eyes clouding with deep–seated terror. “The wind in the woods changed; that black mist… it just rolled in without warning.

“At first, we thought it was just a regular weather shift.

“Then the guy at the back of the line started screaming… when we looked back, half of him was already gone, dragged into the fog.”

BigMountain’s frame shuddered violently, his knuckles turning white as he gripped his knees.

“We ran, but those monsters… they were different.”

Riley frowned. “Different? You mean the stat buffs? That’s just the Long Night setting–double stats are a nightmare to fight.”

“No… it wasn’t just the stats.”

BigMountain snapped his head up to stare at Riley, his eyes mapped a web of red veins. “Boss, have you ever seen a teammate get eliminated?”

“I have,” Riley nodded. “They turn into white light, drop a box, and vanish back to the frozen wastes.”

“No!”

BigMountain’s voice turned shrill. “That’s not how it works! Inside the black fog… it’s not like that!”

“We saw it with our own eyes! A straggler got tackled by three Shadow Wolves, but he didn’t turn into light! He just kept screaming for help!

“Those things were tearing his body apart… blood was spraying everywhere… real, hot blood!

“Even after he stopped screaming and his body was shredded… no light appeared! No loot box dropped!

“He just… stayed there, a pile of gore left behind in the mist!”

Riley felt like a lightning bolt had just struck her brain.

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11:15 Wed, Jun 10

Chapter 186 The Erasure

“Wait, what? That can’t be right.”

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“What are you saying?!” TartKing froze, her face turning pale as she covered her mouth with her hands.

No white light?

No drops?

Torn to pieces?

The combination of those thoughts sent a shiver through everyone present.

In an dungeon, players were supposed to have digitized bodies for protection.

But the scene BigMountain described… that was actual death.

It was death in the truest sense of the word.

“Are you… sure?” PineappleBeer asked, her voice rasping. “Maybe the fog was just too thick to see the light?

What BigMountain was saying was beginning to challenge her entire understanding of the system.

“There were over a dozen of us!”

BigMountain continued. “We ran and we died. Out of a dozen, only three are left. Dravor, Wanfeng… every single person who got caught… no light! Not one!”

“It was a slaughterhouse… a literal slaughterhouse… I watched them get ripped apart; I heard the sounds they made.”

The air in the hollow felt like it had turned to ice.

If BigMountain was telling the truth, then the Long Night wasn’t an elimination mechanic–it was erasure.

Had the protection failed under these conditions? Or had the mist itself evolved!

Riley turned to look at ToxicReaper.

The disheveled boy sat with his head bowed, clutching a blood–stained handbag–Snowy’s only legacy.

If death was permanent here, then Snowy, who had just died on his back…

Riley suddenly understood his total collapse, and why BigMountain called it a slaughter.

To Riley and Pineapple Beer, this was just a high–difficulty instance.

To ToxicReaper, he had just witnessed his classmate die with nothing left to bury.

The agony of reuniting in another world only to face such a final goodbye.

“Listen..”

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