Elastic optical networks enter as a promising technology for the future of high-capacity networks. Its features provide flexibility and superior scalability in spectrum allocation following the growing demands of Internet traffic. In this letter, we propose a novel approach to address the routing, modulation level, and spectrum allocation (RMLSA) problem through the use of a distance-adaptive modulation scheme that enables the routing of traffic through multiple hops in virtual topology, enabling smoothing out the spectrum continuity and transmission distance constraints. The results showed that the use of the proposed scheme provide a gain of up to 82% in the bandwidth blocking rate using 7% less spectral resources in the network compared with the literature. This proposal opens a new avenue for future research, allowing new solutions for RMLSA problem.