Started with a 10,000x Multiplier in a Game World

The white marble room fell completely silent as Dante dismissed the dark jagged brand of [Voidsever] back into his wrist.

The gray dust of the Level 81 anomaly clone drifted lazily across the polished floor.

He didn’t pause to celebrate.

The massive server-wide countdown timer hovering in the top right corner of his interface was a constant aggressive reminder of the stakes.

[The Crucible of Realms]

[Current Leader: Vanguard’s Legacy (Floor 42)]

[Aegis Vanguard: Floor 5]

"He just hit floor forty-two," Nyx announced, her voice tight with genuine panic.

The top-tier analyst pushed her dark glasses up her nose and furiously swiped across her datapad.

"Dante, Silas is not playing the game."

"He is exploiting his Enforcer privileges to literally delete the systemic code of the boss rooms. He is skipping the encounter triggers completely."

"He is walking through walls?" Casanova groaned and dropped onto a nearby marble bench.

"That is it. We are getting hit with the twenty-level penalty. I am going to be Level 1 again. I am going to have to punch boars in the mud."

"We are not getting penalized," Dante stated firmly.

He didn’t look panicked. He looked incredibly and intensely focused.

"Lila, keep the gravity localized," Dante ordered. "Aria, do not stop playing the healing song. Garrick, you take the point. We are moving."

Dante didn’t wait for them.

He sprinted toward the heavy iron doors leading to Floor 6. He didn’t bother breaking them down.

He activated [Meteor Stride] to teleport straight through the solid metal. He left a massive ten-foot-wide wall of superheated plasma that melted the doors off their hinges to allow the squad to jog through.

They entered Floor 6.

It was a massive sprawling swamp filled with highly toxic localized poison gas and hundreds of mutated Level 50 Gold-tier bog-trolls.

Dante didn’t stop to fight them.

He raised his left hand and pointed his open palm toward the center of the swamp.

[Skill Executed: Singularity Collapse]

The massive perfectly spherical black hole erupted into existence.

The gravitational pull instantly and violently sucked the hundreds of bog-trolls and the toxic gas into the crushing void.

[-150,000! OVERKILL!]

[-150,000! OVERKILL!]

Dante didn’t wait for the damage numbers to finish rendering.

He was already sprinting toward the exit portal. His squad trailed closely behind and was perfectly protected by the massive passive healing aura of Aria.

They moved like a localized unstoppable natural disaster.

Floor 7 was a massive desert filled with quicksand traps and giant burrowing sandworms.

Dante used [Cyclone of Ruin] to completely blow the sand away, exposed the worms, and executed them with rapid chained strikes of [Phantom Waltz].

Floor 8 was a frozen glacier. He used [Starfall] and instantly vaporized the ice and the localized yeti bosses with a localized meteor shower.

Floor 9. Floor 10. Floor 15.

Dante was chaining Zenith-tier skills back-to-back with absolute flawless precision.

Because his [Chrono-Shift] talent removed all mana and stamina costs, he didn’t have to manage resources.

He was an automated apocalyptic clearing engine.

But it wasn’t fast enough.

They reached Floor 20.

Nyx checked her datapad. "Silas just entered Floor 49. He is one room away from the final boss. Dante, he is going to cross the finish line before we even hit the halfway mark."

Dante stopped in the center of Floor 20. It was a massive ruined cathedral filled with hundreds of high-tier undead clerics.

He didn’t activate an attack skill.

He realized that sheer unmitigated damage output couldn’t beat a player who was literally skipping the geometry of the game.

If Silas could walk through walls and delete spawn triggers, he was bypassing the mathematical requirement of time.

Dante couldn’t beat him by running faster. He had to beat him by altering the rules of the race.

"Everyone, stop," Dante commanded.

The squad halted instantly. Garrick raised his rusty shield to block a volley of dark magic from the undead clerics.

"Boss, we do not have time to stop!" Mei yelled and batted a spell away with her colossal frying pan. "We have to keep moving!"

"We are not moving," Dante said smoothly. He opened his infinite inventory.

He scrolled furiously past the massive piles of Gold and Dark Demon gear, the raw crafting materials, and the glowing stat crystals.

He bypassed the [Primal Chaos Token] and the [Legion Summons].

He was looking for a very specific incredibly rare localized utility item he had looted during his speedrun of the beginner zones, long before he had even fought the Cerberus Void-Dragon.

He found a thin, shimmering, and almost translucent skillbook.

[Item Appraised: Skillbook - Temporal Shift]

[Tier: Novice]

[Description: A basic highly unstable utility spell. The user manipulates localized temporal code to slightly slow down the movement speed of a single target for 2 seconds. Cooldown: 5 Minutes.]

It was a notoriously buggy and mostly useless skill that players usually avoided because the localized slow effect often caused visual desynchronization and minor lag spikes.

It wasn’t a damage skill. It was a localized manipulation of the internal clock of the game engine.

"Perfect," Dante whispered.

He tapped the shimmering book and absorbed it instantly.

[Skill Learned: Temporal Shift (Novice)]

He didn’t target an undead cleric. He didn’t target a boss.

He targeted the massive glowing system timer hovering in the top right corner of his interface.

[Skill Executed: Temporal Shift.]

The anomaly in his code recognized the input.

[Talent Activated: 10,000x Multiplier.]

[Registering 10,000 flawless executions.]

The combat enlightenment was entirely different from anything Dante had experienced before.

He didn’t learn how to hit harder, move faster, or manipulate gravity.

His neural link was flooded with the absolute fundamental understanding of the localized chronological architecture of the Zenith Protocol.

He learned how to perceive the digital passage of time not as a continuous flow, but as individual manipulatable frames of localized data.

He understood exactly how to grab the underlying code of a server tick and violently stretch it to compress the localized physics engine until it simply snapped.

[Temporal Shift has reached Adept tier.]

[Temporal Shift has reached Master tier.]

[Temporal Shift has reached Grandmaster tier.]

The air around Dante didn’t just warp.

The localized colors of the ruined cathedral began to rapidly invert and flashed wildly between negative and positive spectrums.

[Temporal Shift has reached Zenith tier.]

[Skill Evolution Triggered.]

[Temporal Shift has evolved into: Chrono-Fracture.]

The system interface flashed a blinding incredibly intense white.

[Chrono-Fracture (Zenith)]

[Description: The ultimate expression of systemic temporal dominance. The user violently shatters the localized chronological code of the server.]

[For the duration of the skill, the flow of time within a 1,000-foot radius is completely and absolutely paused for all hostile entities, environmental hazards, and systemic timers. The user and designated allies may move and act freely. Duration: 5 Minutes. Cooldown: 24 Hours.]

Dante stared at the prompt.

Five minutes of absolute localized time stop. And it paused the system timers.

"Let us see Silas speedrun this," Dante said.

He triggered the Zenith-tier skill.

[Skill Executed: Chrono-Fracture]

The localized reality of Floor 20 violently hitched.

A massive incredibly loud sound like a colossal pane of glass cracking echoed across the entire instance.

The dark magic projectiles fired by the undead clerics froze mid-air and hovered completely motionless.

The clerics themselves locked up entirely, and their casting animations permanently paused. The dust motes floating in the air stopped drifting.

The entire room was perfectly and flawlessly frozen in time.

But it wasn’t just the monsters.

Dante looked up at the top right corner of his interface.

The glowing system timer for the Crucible of Realms race had completely stopped.

"He broke the clock," Nyx whispered in absolute unfiltered awe. She took off her dark glasses.

She stared at the frozen magical projectiles hovering inches from the shield of Garrick. "Dante, you literally just paused the game engine."

"We have five minutes," Dante announced and walked calmly toward the frozen horde of undead clerics.

"The system timer is paused in our instance. But Silas is in a different instance. His clock is still running."

"So if we finish the dungeon while our timer is frozen..." Sera realized, and a massive triumphant smile spread across her face.

"Our recorded completion time will be exactly what it was when I cast the spell," Dante finished. "Silas can walk through walls all he wants. He cannot beat a localized time stop."

"This is the most unfair and completely broken party on the entire server," Casanova laughed and casually strolled past a frozen heavily armored undead knight.

He tapped the knight on its frozen helmet. "I love it."

"We still have thirty floors to clear," Dante reminded them. "Do not get lazy."

He didn’t draw the [Dawn-Breaker Blade]. He didn’t need to parry or dodge. The enemies couldn’t fight back.

He raised his right hand. The black brand flared, and [Voidsever] materialized in his grip.

He walked up to the first frozen undead cleric and casually swung the massive black greatsword.

Because the target was frozen, it couldn’t evade, and its localized defense stats were entirely bypassed by the passive of Voidsever.

The 100% armor-piercing strike sheared cleanly through the cleric.

[-45,000! OVERKILL!]

The cleric didn’t explode into pixels.

Because the localized time was stopped, the death animation couldn’t process.

The cleric simply remained frozen with a massive jagged black line appearing across its chest.

Dante didn’t stop.

He triggered [Phantom Waltz].

He became a purple blur and rapidly teleported through the frozen room. He delivered hundreds of instantaneous unblockable strikes to the paralyzed mob.

Mei joined in. She enlarged her frying pan with [Colossal Manifestation] and casually batted massive clusters of frozen clerics across the room.

Lila dropped [Gravity Wells] to pin them, and Casanova punched the frozen knights into localized digital dust.

They cleared Floor 20 in thirty seconds.

Because the system was paused, the exit doors didn’t automatically open.

Dante just used Voidsever to slice through the heavy iron hinges and completely bypassed the localized lock mechanics.

They sprinted into Floor 21.

Frozen lava elementals.

Dante used [Cyclone of Ruin] to sweep them into a corner, then executed them all with a single [Abyssal Cleave].

Floor 22. Frozen harpies.

Floor 23. Frozen stone golems.

They moved through the Crucible of Realms like a localized natural disaster.

They didn’t have to strategize. They didn’t have to heal or manage aggro.

They just walked into a room, systematically destroyed every single frozen entity inside, broke the door down, and moved to the next.

Dante continuously monitored the five-minute duration of [Chrono-Fracture].

They were clearing floors in less than twenty seconds. The sheer overwhelming efficiency of an unopposed anomaly squad was staggering.

They reached Floor 49.

The five-minute timer for the time stop was sitting at forty-five seconds remaining.

Dante sliced through the final iron door and kicked it open.

The squad stepped into the final chamber of the Crucible of Realms.

The room was a massive sprawling highly advanced technological arena.

It was completely unlike the fantasy-themed dungeons they had fought through before.

The walls were lined with glowing pulsing green servers and massive thick cables running across the polished metal floor.

Standing in the absolute dead center of the arena was the final boss.

It wasn’t a dragon or a demon.

It was a towering heavily armored mechanical construct.

It looked like a massive highly militarized spider forged from sleek white metal and glowing green code.

It possessed heavily armored mechanical legs and a massive rotating energy cannon mounted on its back.

[True Boss Spawn: The Crucible Warden]

[Tier: System Construct]

[Level: 85]

[HP: 20,000,000 / 20,000,000]

The boss was currently perfectly frozen mid-stride. Its massive mechanical legs were locked in place by the [Chrono-Fracture] skill.

The rotating energy cannon on its back was paused mid-spin.

"Level 85," Nyx whispered and quickly checked her datapad.

"Dante, the localized data on this boss is heavily encrypted. But I can see the baseline mechanics."

"It is designed to be unkillable without completing a highly complex 30-minute puzzle phase involving the server nodes on the walls."

"Its base physical mitigation is mathematically infinite until the puzzle is solved."

"Infinite mitigation," Dante repeated and gripped the dark bone hilt of Voidsever.

He didn’t care about infinite mitigation. Voidsever explicitly ignored 100% of armor.

"We have forty seconds before time resumes," Dante told the squad. "And Silas is likely stepping into his own final boss room right now."

He pointed the massive black greatsword at the frozen mechanical spider.

"Let us show the Arch-Administrator how fast we can solve a puzzle," Dante said.

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