[Big brother Nuriel… I'll be in your care from now on.]

Nuriel spun around, accepting Xex's intent with glee. But more than that, it was the name given to it that had made its birthday memorable.

"Wonderful…" Alexander nodded. "You two are in charge of the universe. Do not interfere with the actions of the life forms in any way, shape or form. Got it?"

[Understood.]

Xex replied verbally while Nuriel did so through intent. Of course, there was a level of bias here, since Alexander could exert his will and instruct them to do what he desired.

A moment later, Xex dissolved and disappeared, its essence transforming into motes of light. Alex then turned to Nuriel and smiled.

He could feel Nuriel's reluctance to see him go.

"I'm always around, buddy. You have nothing to fear." Alexander assured the restless and nascent personality of the core, feeling a pulsating equivalent to a nod of understanding.

"Good boy."

Extending his hand forward, Nuriel floated out of his palm, returning to its dormant state. Newborn it may be, but the core was the very heart of the universe… it was the beginning of all and the end of all.

With his little wish fulfilled, his body dissolved into streams of essence that melded with the surrounding void.

***

In the first couple of days, Alexander received no updates from his vassals. The true void was incredibly vast, after all.

He did, however, sense some of them engage in battle with void creatures they would have been no match for before.

Of course, they had no difficulty dealing with the creatures. The issues that resulted from such battles were instead the attention they drew from the native Veilwalkers in those regions.

Unfortunately for said Veilwalkers and the chiefs they answered to, they could find no trace of his vassals. They left no traces of their essence that the Veilwalkers could track.

Even accessing the fleeting records of the true void brought back no results. It was like there had never been a disturbance in the region.

The vassals kept to the shadows, streaming through the chaos of the true void with expert movements that would leave most Veilwalkers in the dust.

Alexander knew the chiefs would sooner or later figure out what was happening once they made a head count of their numbers.

But then that was not needed when a few of his vassals were chanced upon while they battled some god-tier void creatures.

Before long, they were surrounded. Alexander watched all this through their senses but kept quiet, wanting to see what would transpire.

And as one would expect, the chiefs demanded their surrender for questioning. Whether they had made the connection between his vassals and himself, Alex could not tell.

When his vassals refused to comply with their demands, stating that they had missions they needed to undertake, the chiefs resorted to force.

Two against six chiefs was not a fair matchup.

Unfortunately for the chiefs, the vassals were not interested in fighting, as they focused on escaping the locked region, soon breaking through and disappearing into the streams of chaos.

Of course, not without some minor injuries… injuries that were soon healed with the essence they utilised.

On the fifth day of their mission, a few of the teams arrived at their destination. And just like Alexander informed them, it took a lot out of them to resist the abhorrent essence.

It just felt… wrong.

The very act of getting anywhere near it invoked extreme feelings of rejection from the depths of their existence. Had it not been for the protection they had for their souls and psyche, they would have aborted the task.

Not surprising to Alexander was the fact that the Tears in the Chaosveil were found in the lower regions of the multiverse.

These abysses of nothingness stretched across the void like horrible scars. Along with the lingering corruptions at the edges and in the surroundings, the regions became a death zone for any life form.

Per his instructions, the vassals reported their findings, adding the feed of what they saw to him. But more than that were the harrowing observations some of the teams made.

Many were the universes that were drawn into the chaos of the abyss, devoured and destroyed without mercy.

Witnessing the level of destruction and the number of lives lost now that they understood the scale of what a universe was, nearly drove some of the vassals to despair.

Just imagining that that could have been the fate of their universe horrified them to the extreme. They had thought they understood the kind of burden their young lord carried.

Ah, how wrong they were.

Their young lord had been watching and protecting their universe from such forces, and the inhabitants were carefreely fighting over territories?!

The vassals that had come to this realisation could not believe their hubris and arrogance! They had thought they had it difficult, but clearly… clearly, they were delusional.

A few days later, the other teams arrived at their destinations, reporting their findings and, for the most part, coming to the same realisation as their companions.

But their job was not done. While they had found many of the regions Zauren and his colleagues plagued with their corruption, there were more out there.

With instructions to mark regions that had already been reported, the vassals journeyed to the other locations. A few of these locations were in the mid and high regions of the multiverse.

And as the vassals continued making their moves and marking the found regions, Alexander, through the senses of his vassals, noticed the movements of the Veilwalkers.

'Took them long enough.' He silently thought. 'After the few confrontations they had with them, their suspicions were bound to become certainty.'

His vassals had to now move with more prudence, as the Veilwalkers were on the search for the foreigners roaming their space.

After two weeks of careful movements and a couple more confrontations, the vassals were more than 90 per cent done with their task.

However, the last 10 per cent had to be done with absolute caution, as they had to journey to the boundary that separated the universes from the home regions of the Omnisoul and void creatures.

With the findings already reported to him, Alexander found no meaning to them, as they simply resembled regions of chaos and death by nothingness.

There was nothing to the wanton destruction brought by the corruption and destruction of the numerous universes.

And as much as it looked like destruction brought on the multiverse to spread corruption and death, Alexander refused to believe that was all there was to it.

From the reports he had received, the Tears in the Chaosveil of Reality shared no connection to a greater effect… they were simply long stretches of scars in the Veil of Reality.

'No… that's not it.'

Focusing more on the major portions with the most amount of corruption and Tears in the Veil of Reality, Alexander realised something he had not considered.

The way he saw Reality was different from everyone, even from the most powerful Veilwalkers… well, maybe not for the Supreme One.

'Maybe I should take a look.'

Creating another version of himself with the strength of a peak god with no trace of the power of nothingness, Alex stepped out of his own existence.

With a thought, multiple versions of himself materialised in the void, numbering twenty-six in total. Each version of himself was for one of the major regions of corruption that had been marked by his vassals.

A split second later, all versions of himself melded with the void and disappeared, instantly crossing unimaginable distances to arrive at the marked locations.

Retaining his invisibility to avoid being spotted and the troubles that came with it, all versions of himself across the vastness of the multiverse studied the core of the Tears in the Veil of Reality.

'Of course, their actions weren't grounded in wanton destruction.' Alexander scoffed as he confirmed his suspicions. 'They focused the corruption on the major threads of the Omnisoul.'

Before his unique eyes were the threads that connected everything in the multiverse, shimmering with greyish-white light — a beautiful sight to behold if one was capable of seeing it.

However, the major ones that connected universes were slowly being turned black and spreading.

The corruption did not have to begin on a universe node; just on a major thread was enough. Zauren and his colleagues added the universes simply because they could.

From these major threads, the corruption ate into the smaller ones, spreading in all directions. The few low universes in the region were already compromised, tainted with visible corruption only he could see.

The corruption was like a cancer, silently spreading to the ignorance of every Veilwalker out there.

As for the Tears in the Veil of Reality, those were the spots with the highest concentration of corruption, eating through the threads like concentrated acid.

'It's everywhere…'

Most of the lower regions, as well as some parts of the middle and high regions of the multiverse, had been taken over and were still spreading. The alarming part of everything was the fact that not all regions showed signs of being tainted.

'This is worse than I thought…'

While he was reprimanding himself on how he could have missed the obvious, his attention was drawn to the vassals who had finally arrived at the boundary.

And what they found was nothing like he had anticipated…