GLOBAL AWAKENING: My 10,000x Exp Multiplier-Chapter 27: []EXP Siphon, The Collapse of the Fortress

The room right before the 13th floor boss was completely quiet. Vahn and his team had bypassed the heavily guarded Bridge of Sighs completely. They stepped off the invisible Ghost Path and landed safely on the black tiles outside the massive iron doors.

Behind them across the wide gap, they could hear the loud shouts of the Sky-Sunder Guild.

The hundred players of the raid team were frantically trying to gather. They finally realized a rogue group had somehow slipped past their perfect blockade.

"They are coming," Sia reported with her silver-grey eyes fixed on the distant platform. She brought out her massive obsidian kite shield. "Commander, I estimate we have exactly four minutes before their vanguard breaches the bridge and attempts to engage us."

"Let them come," Vahn replied casually without even turning around. "They are irrelevant. By the time they reach this door, there won’t be anything left for them to fight."

He placed both hands against the towering iron doors and pushed. The metal shrieked and the heavy hinges groaned in protest as the massive gates swung open.

The boss arena was an absolutely massive circular stadium crafted from pale glowing quartz. And standing in the direct center of the room was a nightmare.

[Labyrinth Boss]

↳ Name: The Living Fortress Golem

↳ Level: 50 (Raid Tier)

↳ HP: 10,000,000 / 10,000,000

The Golem was not just a monster. It was a walking castle. It stood over eighty feet tall and its body was composed entirely of dense runic stone. Bright blue magical energy pulsed beneath its rocky skin. It possessed no face, only a single glowing crystalline core embedded deep within its heavy chest.

This was a boss designed to require a hundred coordinated players to slowly chip away at its health pool.

"Ten million hit points," Aria breathed. Her knuckles turned white as she gripped her wooden staff. "Vahn, even with your damage output, we cannot burst that down quickly. Its armor mitigation is absolute. Physical attacks will bounce right off!"

"You are looking at the wrong metric, Priestess," Vahn said as his voice dropped into a clinical calm. "You see a monster with ten million hit points. I see a localized power grid." 𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆𝙬𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝒎

Vahn’s Chronos-Sight flared violently. He looked past the heavy stone armor and analyzed the flow of the bright blue energy. It was not standard mana. It was pure system data. The Golem was an EXP Battery designed by the system to physically sustain the rendering engine of the 13th floor.

"I do not need to break its armor," Vahn smiled and drew his pitch-black dagger from his hip. "I just need to pull the plug. Sia. I need you to hold its attention. Give me ten seconds of absolute aggro."

Sia did not hesitate or question the insanity of taunting an eighty-foot-tall moving mountain. She simply slammed her sword against her obsidian shield. The metallic crack echoed like a gunshot across the massive arena.

"Target acquired!" Sia roared. She activated her Provoke skill and sent a wave of red hostile energy directly into the Golem’s crystalline core.

The Living Fortress turned with a heavy tectonic grind. It completely ignored Vahn, Aria, and Hana. It locked entirely onto the tiny silver-haired knight standing in its domain. The Golem raised a massive fist of solid stone and brought it crashing down toward Sia.

"Sia!" Hana screamed in sheer panic.

Sia did not run. She planted her boots into the quartz floor and braced for impact.

BOOM!

The kinetic force of the blow shattered the quartz floor beneath Sia’s feet. But Sia held the line. The unique kinetic redirection matrix Vahn had forged into her shield activated instantly. The raw physical power of the Golem’s strike was violently absorbed, compressed, and fired back up its arm in a blinding surge of pure fire.

The Golem staggered backward. Its stone arm glowed red-hot from the reflected damage.

It was the perfect opening.

Vahn did not run across the floor. He engaged Phase Step. He stepped onto the invisible grids hovering in the air and treated the empty space like a staircase. In three rapid bounds, he launched himself fifty feet into the air and landed perfectly on the Golem’s massive shoulder.

He did not aim for the heavily armored chest. He aimed for the glowing blue joint connecting the creature’s neck to its torso.

Vahn reversed his grip on the dagger and drove the blade straight down into the glowing blue seam.

He engaged a completely unauthorized system command.

"System. Target: Localized EXP Battery," Vahn commanded. His voice echoed with the terrifying authority of a god. "Initiate EXP Siphoning. Drain the core."

The effect was instantaneous and catastrophic.

The blade acted like a localized black hole. It violently latched onto the Golem’s internal data stream. A blinding geyser of pure blue experience points erupted from the wound and flowed directly up the blade into Vahn’s arm.

[Siphoning Initiated]

↳ Base Drain: 1,000 EXP per second.

But Vahn was not a standard player. The golden text flared across his vision.

[System Modifier]

↳ Hidden Modifier Applied: The 10,000x Factor.

↳ Total Drain: 10,000,000 EXP per second.

The Living Fortress Golem did not roar in pain. It let out a horrific deafening sound like a corrupted hard drive crashing. The creature literally froze in place as its internal power grid was violently ripped out.

The physical environment of the arena immediately reacted. Without the Golem acting as the floor’s battery, the 13th level began to rapidly destabilize. The walls of the stadium flickered and turned into harsh green wireframes. The sky above shattered into falling cascades of red binary code.

"Commander! The structural integrity of the room is failing!" Sia shouted as she held her shield up to block the falling debris.

"Hold your ground!" Vahn yelled back.

He held the blade in place for exactly three seconds. Thirty million experience points flooded his internal reservoir.

The Golem’s HP bar did not slowly tick down. It completely glitched out. The massive crystal core in its chest flickered violently, turned gray, and abruptly shattered into a million useless fragments.

Vahn ripped the blade free and backflipped off the creature’s shoulder, landing gracefully next to his team.

Behind him, the eighty-foot-tall Living Fortress Golem crumbled. It instantly turned into a mountain of fine gray pixelated ash completely deleted from the game’s registry.

[System Notification]

↳ Labyrinth Boss Defeated. Floor 13 Cleared.

At that exact second, the massive iron doors of the antechamber were violently blown off their hinges.

The Sky-Sunder Guild’s raid team poured into the arena screaming battle cries. Their weapons were drawn and their Platinum-tier armor glowed with primed buffs. The arrogant Guild Leader charged to the front and raised his massive broadsword to engage the boss.

He stopped dead in his tracks and his jaw dropped in absolute shock.

The arena was completely empty. The invincible ten million HP boss was a pile of dust. And standing casually in the center of the room entirely unbothered was a man in a cheap brown jacket and a small team of girls.

Vahn slowly turned to look at the paralyzed raid team. His deep purple eyes flared with a highly amused azure light. He calmly sheathed his dagger and brushed a speck of ash from his shoulder.

"You are late," Vahn stated flatly. His voice carried effortlessly across the silent room.

He turned his back on the hundred elite players and gestured to his team.

"Come, Aria. Sia. We are moving to the 14th floor. The air here is getting stagnant."