Chapter 2343: Nux Leander, you seem to be in a tough position.

"Mother..."

Azarion called out in a low voice as he walked towards Allura with a hesitant look on his face. Allura looked at him and gently placed her hand over his cheek.

"What is it?"

She asked with a gentle smile on her face.

"What’s happening?"

The boy asked directly, not holding back one bit.

"What do you mean?"

Allura tilted her head, confused. She then held Azarion’s hand, pulled him close to her and made him sit beside her. Azarion did, then Allura gently placed his head on her lap and started patting his head in a short, calming rhythm.

"Don’t try to hide it."

Azarion, however, didn’t fall for the trick. He kept his eyes open so he wouldn’t fall asleep and stared at his mother till he got an answer.

"I have no need to hide anything from you, you little thing."

"Lies do not suit you, Mother."

Azarion spoke directly, his purple eyes still staring at his mother, as if they refused to give up. He needed an answer, and he needed it today.

Allura looked at him for a moment, then she just smiled.

"Rion, what are you talking about?"

She asked gently, still trying to feign ignorance.

"Father called us to a gathering, we all gathered, shared a table with each other, then the next moment, all children woke up in their beds with their mothers by their side.

You think we won’t find it suspicious?"

"Your Father and Mothers wanted to talk regarding a personal matter, so we put you all to sleep."

"What was that personal matter?"

Azarion asked but Allura just chuckled.

"It won’t be personal if I tell you, now would it?"

She spoke as she ruffled his hair.

"What was so personal that you needed to put us asleep for years?"

Azarion questioned and the moment he did, Allura froze.

She...

From what she knew, they had erased the memories of every being in their Universe. For the rest of the Universe, it should have been like the children were never frozen in time. Only Nux, his wives, and the Progenitors knew the truth, and every single one of them was told not to speak to the children about this.

Then how did he...

"Nihyron came to me."

Azarion answered, knowing exactly what his mother was thinking. Allura narrowed her eyes at those words and Azarion continued—

"He sensed the shift in time, he also noticed that he can no longer sense where any of you are, almost as if someone is purposefully restricting him from doing that."

Allura looked at Azarion, Azarion looked back.

"You know only one person can do that."

Allura remained silent, what could she even say?

Azarion, however, did not understand that.

"What’s happening, Mother?"

He asked again.

"You froze us in time, now we can no longer come to you until you want us to, Kaelith’s the same too, he noticed the Chaos Energy in the Universe has grown, which only happens when a long time passes."

"It is good that you are getting along with your brothers."

Allura praised.

Both Kaelith and Nihyron didn’t usually talk to others, so knowing that Azarion talked to them regularly made her nod in approval.

Azarion, however, just stared at her with a deadpan look on his face and Allura—

She just sighed. 𝘧𝓇ℯ𝑒𝓌𝑒𝑏𝓃𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭.𝒸ℴ𝓂

"There are things I cannot tell you, Rion."

"What things?"

"I can’t tell you that."

"Where’s Father?"

He asked another question, but again, Allura shook her head. Allura then placed her hand on Azarion’s cheek again and—

"But I want you to do one thing for me."

"What is it?"

Azarion asked bitterly. He didn’t like how his mother didn’t tell him anything but was now asking something from him.

"You need to keep your siblings in check. They will have the same questions too, you need to handle them."

"How am I supposed to handle them when I don’t even know what’s happening myself?"

"By telling them what I am about to tell you right now."

Allura answered as she looked into her child’s eyes.

"Everything’s fine. Father is just busy dealing with a tricky opponent. Once he wins, he will return."

"Father’s... fighting?"

Azarion blinked.

The thought of his father fighting felt too overwhelming for him.

All his life, every time he had seen his father spar with anyone he could think of, it was never a battle, it was just a show where people wagered how quickly the opponent would be on the ground.

And that was when his Father was significantly holding back. All the battles he ever fought, he was in full control of when to begin them, when to end them.

And now he was being told his father was fighting and no one knew when he would return...?

Just... who was this ’tricky’ enemy Mother mentioned?

Azarion wondered in his head, then an even more nervous question came into his head.

"Will he... win?"

He asked.

This wasn’t a child doubting his father’s strength, Azarion knew how strong his father was. What this was, was a child who was afraid of losing his father.

Allura saw that and out of instinct, she tightly held Azarion’s hand and—

"Of course he will."

She answered.

"Have you ever seen him lose?"

She asked with a chuckle.

"I have not."

Azarion answered with a smile and Allura nodded. The mother and son stayed in that position for a while, Azarion closed his eyes, wanting to sleep on his mother’s lap.

Then, after about a minute—

"I won’t tell them about Father’s fight."

Azarion spoke, keeping his eyes closed.

"They will worry unnecessarily. They are all children, after all."

"Alright, you do as you see fit."

Allura answered with a light chuckle as she continued lightly patting his head as Azarion drifted into dreamland.

...

On the other side of Nux’s Universe, Nux stood in a void with a grim look on his face.

"What happened?"

Vyriana walked up to him and questioned as she sensed the change in his expression.

"They... sent the Supreme Borns..."

Nux answered in a low voice and Vyriana’s face turned grim as well.

After their conversation, Nux took the lead in Amaya’s ’experiments’ and they stopped hiding anything altogether. Nux did not wait for a week to launch another attack just because he feared the Infinities would understand what he was trying to do.

The Infinities were no fools, at this point, they must have understood everything as well, so Nux dropped all pretense and launched multiple waves of attacks meant to dig information.

They already knew the Infinities were using the power of Fate to predict their attacks. What they needed to understand was the limits of their defense. They wanted to know when exactly it activated in order to try and find ways to move past it.

The result?

It was a failure.

They got the answer, yes, in just a few years, they understood the limits of their defense system and when exactly it activated. The problem, however, was that there was no way around it.

Nux and others tried everything. They first sent a hunting party into a particular world with no intent, intending to keep them there for weeks, hoping to one day just command the party to attack. They hoped that since the intent was shown at the last second, the defense system wouldn’t work, or even if it did, by the time the Infinities got there, it would be too late but—

The Infinities were already there. The party didn’t even get the time to settle in.

Nux and others tried countless such methods, to somehow fool the defense system, but it was absolute. Nothing they did worked.

The Infinities reacted every single time their hunting party was about to devour a world.

It was... frustrating, crushing even, especially for Nux, who could feel the time slipping through his hands.

Then one day, from his desperation, he thought of a plan.

Since their defense system was impenetrable, he decided to use a different approach.

Overwhelming the opponent.

The enemies didn’t know whether it was him or his party that attacked a certain world, so no matter where his party attacked, it was the Infinities who came for defense.

And since there were only four Infinities...

He decided to overwhelm them by sending a hundred hunting parties, targeting a hundred different worlds.

The first wave was a failure. The Infinities were absurdly fast. One by one, they destroyed all the parties before significant damage could be done.

But Nux didn’t give up.

If a hundred didn’t work, he went with a thousand.

Then ten thousand.

Then a hundred thousand.

A million.

And finally, after ten million parties were sent to target ten million worlds, even the Infinities failed.

They weren’t fast enough to stop ten million worlds from being devoured in less than a second.

So that was what Nux used.

He sent millions of men targeting different worlds. This method was costly, indeed. He was losing quite a few men, but he had been devouring worlds for decades now. He had billions of men he could send and if it was for his children, he wouldn’t feel a thing.

And it worked.

Once again—

The Anomaly started devouring again.

However—

It didn’t last long.

Because Nux wasn’t the only one experimenting and noticing the pattern. The Infinities were no different.

They noticed that ever since the first hunting party, the Anomaly had tried to attack millions of times and never once—

Did he come himself.

That was when the Infinities knew.

The Anomaly feared them.

He would never appear unless he was absolutely sure the Infinities wouldn’t be there to stop him.

And since the Anomaly himself wouldn’t move—

The Infinities decided to send their armies to defend against the attacks from the Anomaly Army.

So now,

It was the Anomaly Army versus the Infinity Army.

And when it came to that, the Infinities, who controlled the entire Universe, simply could not lose.

They had numbers and strength.

Nux was helpless.

There was nothing he could do here.

Worst part?

Even now, the Infinities hadn’t stopped moving. They took on multiple Hunting Parties on their own, so even if he wanted to take the risk and appear in one of the worlds, just to throw the Infinities off—

He couldn’t since the likelihood of him encountering them was quite high.

It was not the level of risk his wives would allow him to take.

So Nux could only watch helplessly as the Infinities cut his limbs and took away the only way of devouring worlds he had managed to find after years of continuous trial and error.

"What do we do...?"

Vyriana asked and Nux...

He remained silent.

He...

He had no answer.

And his heart—

It couldn’t stop shaking in desperation and... fear.

Yes, he was afraid.

Of losing everything he had gained, of seeing his children dying right in front of his eyes, his wives crying over their bodies—

He feared it all.

As they say, if you aren’t a coward, you become one when you have a lot to lose.

Nux was in that exact position.

Ba-dump Ba-dump Ba-dump

His heartbeat became louder, almost as if his heart might explode any time now. His mind had already imagined everything he just thought.

His worst fears were given a picture.

Nightmares.

Ba-dump Ba-dump Ba-dump

Nux felt sick, it was... crippling.

It was as if his mind was breaking down.

That was when it happened—

"Nux."

Shadow called him.

"Look at this."

She pointed at a particular screen.

A screen that showed the POV of one of the Hunting Parties he had sent out and on that screen was someone every being in the Universe wanted to see for one reason or another—

The Seer.

"Nux Leander, you seem to be in a tough position."