GLOBAL AWAKENING: My 10,000x Exp Multiplier-Chapter 26: []Phase Step, The Bridge of SighsPath

The 13th floor of the Chronos Spire was a giant underground cavern without a solid floor. Thousands of jagged stone islands floated over a bottomless abyss.

The only way to reach the next area was to cross a massive stone archway known as the Bridge of Sighs.

Right now, the bridge was completely blocked.

Vahn Ryker stood at the edge of the starting island with his hands in the pockets of his cheap academy jacket. Beside him, Sia Vance held her new obsidian kite shield tightly.

Aria stood close to Vahn’s left side as the strong wind from the abyss blew past her Crimson-Lotus Vestments. Hana bounced on her toes with the endless energy of her newly repaired physical body.

"They really built a fortress," Aria muttered and her emerald eyes narrowed in disgust.

At the entrance to the Bridge of Sighs, the Sky-Sunder Guild had set up a highly illegal and heavily guarded checkpoint. Fifty armored vanguards stood in a perfect shield wall. Behind them, dozens of high-tier casters had their staves glowing with prepared spells.

A large banner depicting a shattered cloud hung above the barricade.

A large and arrogant man in bright Platinum-tier armor was currently shouting at a group of terrified independent players.

"The toll is fifty thousand credits per head! Pay the fee, or get thrown into the abyss! Sky-Sunder owns this transit route!"

"Capitalism at its finest," Vahn observed dryly. "A highly inefficient use of manpower. They are expending resources to extort loose change from low-level players instead of progressing up the Spire."

"Commander, I can break their line," Sia stated as her voice dropped into a deadly military tone.

She stepped forward and her obsidian shield radiated a terrifying heat.

"With the kinetic redirection matrix you installed, I can reflect their initial magical volley and shatter their vanguard in four seconds."

"Stand down, Sia," Vahn replied. His tone was relaxed and entirely unbothered.

"Engaging in a frontal assault validates their existence. We are simply going to ignore them."

"Ignore them?" Aria asked as she looked down at the bottomless gap separating them from the rest of the floor. "Vahn, it is a hundred-meter drop to the next platform. Unless you secretly grew wings, we cannot just bypass the bridge."

"I do not need wings. I just need to read the code," Vahn smiled.

He did not look at the heavily guarded bridge. He turned his gaze entirely away from the intended path and looked out into the empty void to the far right of the platform.

His Chronos-Sight flared online.

The world around him instantly broke down into its base geometric wireframes. To a normal player, there was nothing there but empty air and certain death.

But Vahn was not a normal player. He was an EXP Architect. He could see the structural seams in the universe and the invisible collision boxes left behind by lazy developers.

There was a Ghost Path. It was a solid string of unrendered geometry stretching across the void that completely bypassed the Bridge of Sighs.

"System," Vahn commanded softly. "Open the Skill Mutation Interface."

[Skill Mutation Interface]

↳ Target: Base Movement Skill Leap

↳ EXP Consumed: 2,000,000

[System Prompt]

↳ Skill Leap (Common) has violently mutated into Phase Step (Rare)!

[Phase Step]

↳ Ability: Allows the user to temporarily interact with unrendered or dormant spatial geometry. The user may walk on invisible environmental data for short durations.

Vahn cracked his knuckles as he felt the new movement paths burning into his leg muscles.

"Follow my exact footsteps. Do not deviate by a single inch. If you step outside my designated path, the physics engine will reassert itself, and you will fall forever."

He did not wait for a response and casually stepped off the edge of the cliff.

Aria shrieked and lunged forward to grab him. "Vahn!"

But he did not fall.

Vahn’s boot hit the empty air. A faint hexagonal grid of blue light rippled under his shoe. He stood perfectly suspended over the bottomless pit with a completely relaxed posture. The violent wind simply ruffled his dark hair.

He turned back to look at his team and gave a confident smile.

"The water is fine, Priestess. Come along."

Hana did not hesitate. She laughed and skipped right off the ledge, landing perfectly in Vahn’s footprint. 𝐟𝕣𝗲𝕖𝕨𝗲𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝗲𝚕.𝗰𝚘𝐦

"Oh, this is incredibly optimal! It feels like walking on glass!"

Sia swallowed hard. Her military discipline fought against her basic human survival instincts. She took a deep breath and rigidly stepped off the stone, locking her boots into the invisible path.

Aria was the last to move. She clutched her wooden staff tightly to her chest and her heart hammered wildly. She closed her eyes and stepped into the void.

Her foot hit solid invisible ground. She opened her eyes and saw Vahn standing right in front of her with his hand extended to steady her.

"I have got you," Vahn said softly.

Aria looked at his hand and then up into his deep purple eyes. The sheer scale of what he was doing finally clicked in her mind. He was not just highly leveled. He was manipulating the very fabric of reality.

"You really are a monster, aren’t you?" Aria whispered. Her face flushed slightly as she gripped his hand.

"I prefer the term Architect," Vahn corrected smoothly and gently pulled her forward.

They walked across the void. To anyone watching from the main platforms, they looked like gods casually strolling through the sky. They completely bypassed the massive Sky-Sunder blockade and walked entirely out of the aggro range of the guards.

However, they were not entirely unseen.

Hidden on a high rock above the Bridge of Sighs, a lone scout from the Sky-Sunder Guild peered through a sniper scope. The scout’s jaw dropped in absolute horror as he watched the four players casually walking on thin air.

"Command, this is Viper-Actual," the scout stammered into his guild communication channel. His hands trembled violently. "We have a Code Red anomaly. I have eyes on four targets bypassing the blockade. They are literally walking on the sky!"

"Repeat that, Viper?" the harsh voice of the checkpoint commander crackled back. "Are they hacking?"

"They have to be!" the scout frantically recorded the visual data. "The leader is a guy in a cheap brown jacket. But his movement speed is completely unregistered. Wait. He is stopping."

Out in the void, Vahn abruptly halted. He looked straight up. His Chronos-Sight easily picked out the thermal signature of the scout hidden in the rocks hundreds of meters away.

Vahn raised his right hand and pointed his index finger directly at the scout’s hidden location. He offered a small mocking wave.

The scout panicked and violently threw himself backward. "He sees me! The hacker sees me!"

"Let him run," Vahn murmured to himself and dropped his hand.

Vahn looked down at the invisible path beneath his feet. "We have reached an intersection."

"An intersection?" Hana asked as she peered over the edge. "Brother, there is literally nothing out here."

"Not visually. But structurally, there is a dormant cache located inside this specific geometric fold," Vahn explained. He crouched down and pressed his palm flat against the empty air.

He channeled a fraction of his EXP directly into the invisible floor. A violent pulse of azure light expanded from his hand. With a heavy metallic groan, a massive rusted iron chest materialized out of thin air.

It was a Devourer’s Cache. It was a legendary loot box hidden by the system developers meant to be mathematically impossible to find.

Sia stepped forward and expertly broke the rusted lock with her sword. The chest popped open.

A blinding majestic golden light flooded the dark space.

"By the Founders," Aria gasped as her hands flew to her mouth.

The chest was filled to the brim with perfectly minted gold coins. Fifty thousand of them. In the current economy of Aetheria, it was enough wealth to outright purchase a minor city.

"Funding secured," Vahn stated cleanly. He swiped his hand over the chest and instantly transferred the gold into his storage ring.

He stood up and looked toward the massive iron doors on the far side of the chasm.

"The elite guilds think they control the economy," Vahn smiled with his purple eyes burning. "It is time to remind them who actually owns the bank. Let us go kill a Golem."