Survival Queen of the Frozen Wastes novel Chapter 488

488 The Average Survivor

Riley spent the next hour purely traveling.

r 488 The Average Survivor

Chapter 488 The Average Survivor

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Riley remained expressionless and gave a curt nod, offering a polite “after you” gesture without saying a word.

The three survivors from Server 109 didn’t just turn and run. Gripping their weapons tightly, they stayed locked in a back–to–back formation, facing Riley as they took painfully slow, measured steps backward toward the corridor they came from.

They kept smiling at her the entire time, but it was glaringly obvious they were terrified she was going to whip out some apocalyptic weapon and wipe them off the map the second they turned their backs.

It wasn’t until they rounded the corner, completely breaking the line of sight, that they spun around and bolted into the darkness, vanishing in the blink of an eye.

Riley stood there, watching the empty corridor, feeling a drop of sweat form.

Their paranoia is off the charts. Server 109 must be an absolute meat grinder. In comparison, her server was practically a utopian retirement home.

I wonder how Tart and Pineapple are holding up.

Riley sighed, cutting off her brief moment of sentimentality. Now wasn’t the time to get emotional.

She pulled out the Floor 8 Zone Map and studied it under the glow of the wall sconce.

Looking at the scale, Floor 8 was absurdly massive–at least ten times the size of the first three floors combined. The map was jam–packed with twisting labyrinth tunnels, colossal underground caverns, and massive uncharted zones that screamed danger.

Slap–bang in the center of the map was a giant hexagonal structure circled in bright red.

That was the Central Safe Hall, the gateway to Floor 9 or Floor 7.

But what gave Riley a headache was cross–referencing her current surroundings with the map. She was spawning at the extreme outer edge of Floor 8.

The straight–line distance to the Central Hall was ridiculously far. Factoring in the maze–like detours and inevitable ambushes, it was going to be an incredibly long, dangerous trek.

It was nearly impossible to keep your bearings in the Floor 8 labyrinth. Even with a crude parchment map, the endlessly repeating, featureless stone corridors were enough to drive anyone insane.

Riley stopped in front of a tunnel overgrown with glowing purple mushrooms and pulled out her Special Landmark Exploration Card.

She had covered a lot of ground following the map and hadn’t run into anything worthwhile besides generic mobs. Might as well burn her utility items while she could.

The card dissolved, coalescing into a glowing red needle hovering in front of her. It pointed steadily to her forward right, aiming directly at a hidden fork in the road partially concealed by massive stone pillars.

Whether it led to a jackpot or a death trap was purely up to RNG. She could only hope her luck held out.

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The distance wasn’t actually that insane, but she couldn’t afford to sprint blindly; she had to stay frosty. Plus, the dungeon layout was aggressively convoluted. (

It wasn’t all bad news, though. She had originally assumed every cross–server player was a sweaty try–hard like the assassin who ambushed her, or at least on par with that 5–man guild squad.

Turns out, that was textbook survivor bias.

The top–tier killers were highly visible because they roamed the map like sharks smelling blood, actively hunting players.

The actual silent majority making up the population down here were just average players, scraping by in the cracks.

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