My attributes are increasing infinitely Chapter 484: Unfathomable potential

The black light failed to endure.

It quivered once, twice, then a third time, before a profound transformation took place.

Viewers from the higher levels sensed it prior to laying eyes on it. An intangible force without origin bore down on their perceptions, challenging the core of the spatial treasure sheltering them. The fortress, steadfast for countless centuries, emitted a deep, vibrating hum that echoed through rock and flesh.

On the sixth floor, the silver-haired woman who had spoken before, her eyes bearing the burden of many years, staggered back. Her palm stayed clamped over her lips, yet her gaze stretched wide past all restraint.

"The color," she murmured. "It’s"

Her words trailed off unfinished.

The black light collapsed inward.

And from its heart arose a phenomenon unseen in Elysium for eras beyond recorded history.

Dark Gold.

A pillar of light ascended from the disk, unyielding and supreme. Unlike prior hues, it lacked brilliance. Instead, it carried density. Weight. As though the radiance bore substance, compressing the surrounding atmosphere.

Dominic’s knees buckled.

He hadn’t chosen to bow. His frame simply rejected standing. Palms slammed into the stone, head drooped low, and breath escaped him for an endless instant.

Heroes, the term bubbled up from his subconscious depths. The supreme beings.

Stories of them circulated widely. All knew them. Not as myths open to skepticism. Heroes stood apart. Pillars of Elysium’s founding. Titles invoked with near-worship even by mightiest bloodlines.

There had been seven.

Seven heroes who forged order amid turmoil, who forged the rules shaping potential’s bounds, who had

The Dark Gold pillar swelled outward.

Then it advanced.

Not expanding. Not ascending.

Piercing through.

The radiance lanced upward through layers above. First floor. Second. Third. It sliced past the castle’s dimensional barriers like illusions, stretching to the seventh level, the eighth, the loftiest sanctums where clan elders lay dormant for ages.

On the seventh floor, an ancient with hide resembling parched soil snapped open his eyes after ten long years.

No words escaped him. He merely lifted from meditation and descended.

On the eighth floor, a portal sealed for a hundred years ignited with inner glow.

---

In the training grounds, those sprinting to the hall froze mid-step.

The dog-headed warrior had covered half the span when Dark Gold erupted. His momentum halted sharply, talons gouging tracks into the ground below.

Ears pressed flat.

His tail, once raised in intrigue, dropped submissively.

Every ingrained instinct, every battle-forged survival urge from years of strife and growth, urged flight.

Yet motion eluded him.

All were immobilized.

The light bound them not by coercion, but by sheer aura. Like facing an entity unbound by your presence, yet capable of erasure without glance.

"What is that," a voice cracked from behind. Hesitant. Fractured.

The dog-headed man stayed silent.

No response existed.

---

Within the hall, the Dark Gold pillar started to morph.

Initially faint. Subtle ripples at its borders, as if the hue strained to form anew. Room pressure doubled, tripled, soared past Dominic’s graspable limits.

Still kneeling, his brow grazed the stone.

Ethan occupied the epicenter.

His palm lingered on the disk.

His face betrayed no alteration.

Yet under his flesh, changes stirred. Those crowding the hall’s entry, arriving at Dark Gold’s birth, beheld it plainly. Thin luminous trails snaked over arm, throat, cheek. Diverging from the pillar’s tone. Utterly distinct.

A hue beyond naming.

The disk commenced fracturing.

From Ethan’s palm’s touchpoint. One slender fissure, thread-thin, cleaving the ashen face.

Followed by a second.

Then a third.

Fissures radiated in deliberate design. Tracing the disk’s ancient engravings, the veins present since the castle’s forging. Now those channels broadened, ruptured, diverged.

The Dark Gold pillar wavered.

In that stutter, novelty bloomed.

A tint skirting vision’s grasp. A spectrum evading ocular hold, mental filing. Neither black nor white. Nor any shade chronicled in lore, scrolls, ancestral tales.

The essence of the undefined.

The disk exploded into fragments.

No eruption. No shockwave, expulsion, din befitting ruin. It dissolved seamlessly. Shattered along each groove, channel, concealed flaw, crumbling to powder dusting the dais.

The pillar evaporated.

The pressure lifted.

Silence descended.

---

Not mere hush in a space.

The quiet of fracture.

Dominic knelt frozen, psyche balking at the spectacle. The testing disk transcended mere instrument. A cornerstone relic, among the clan’s primordial treasures, enduring conflicts, cataclysms, time’s erosion.

And it had crumbled.

Owing to uncontainable potential.

Slowly, mechanically, he raised his gaze.

Ethan poised atop the platform, arm outstretched to void. Subdermal glows dimmed traceless. Demeanor serene. Remote.

His gaze, though, transformed.

A new depth dwelled there. Beyond mere cognition. A gravity absent upon entry.

The entrance brimmed with figures.

From training fields, from upper tiers, from unfathomable stations Dominic couldn’t fathom. They clustered at the portal, the brink, shunning the disk’s former domain.

Speech absented.

Movement ceased.

Suddenly, the throng divided.

Three forms advanced.

First, the seventh-floor elder, flesh like fissured dirt, gaze ashen-pale. He progressed with ponderous intent, as if haste forgotten.

Second, a female of indeterminate years. Tresses snow-white, visage unlined. Orbs abyssal, unblinking.

Third, a silhouette cloaked in stagnant gloom. Features obscured. Contour elusive. It loomed, warping nearby space subtly, reluctant to contain it.

The elder neared the platform’s rim.

He eyed the disk’s powdered remains.

He regarded Ethan.

For the first time in five decades, the seventh-floor elder uttered sound.

"History," he rasped, tone like boulders clashing, "has changed."

The declaration lingered.

None contested.

None dared.

The white-haired woman drew nearer, her profound stare dissecting Ethan layer by layer. Lips compressed.

"The disk did not fail," she murmured softly. "It was not designed to contain what it encountered."

The shadow form remained mute. Stationary. Yet its vicinity warped more, prompting nearest observers to recoil instinctively.

Dominic reclaimed speech.

"Elder," he croaked, throat parched, "his potential"

"Has no rank," the elder cut in. Ashen eyes fixed unwavering on Ethan. "The disk hit Ultimate. Then surpassed Ultimate. Attempting to label the beyond, it faltered."

He glanced at the strewn dust.

"That disk gauged potential across eternities. Cataloged all known tiers. All manifest shades." Volume softened. "It met an alien hue. An unclassifiable potential."

His stare returned to Ethan.

"Thus, it shattered."

The ensuing quiet shifted. Comprehension solidified. Ramifications tallied.

The white-haired woman voiced again, her timbre compressing Dominic’s ribs.

"There are records," she intoned deliberately, "of something like this. From before the heroes. From the time when Elysium was still a bigger mystery."

She halted.

"They speak of potentials that existed outside the established hierarchy. Colors that were never meant to be tested because they were never meant to exist within a structure at all."