"I-I don't know…"
Calyndra surprised herself when she swallowed nervously. Hearing the fear in Alexander's tone, she looked around cautiously.
Fear was something that had not been in their dictionary for a very long time. To see Alexander, a one-of-a-kind Veilwalker, sound fearful and unsure of himself, left the tigress perplexed.
"W-what do you mean you don't know…?" The bleakness of her surroundings suddenly felt suffocating and mysterious. "You saw something, didn't you?"
"That's the problem…" Alex looked at the tigress, the look in his eyes making the tigress frown deeply. "There's nothing to see…"
"Nothing…?" Calyndra echoed in confusion. "As in your senses cannot see through the corrupted essence?"
If that were the case, Calyndra was in the same boat. In fact, all Veilwalkers did not have the ability to interact with the corrupted essence without being a part of it.
Hearing the tigress's response, Alexander thought for a second before realisation dawned on him. "You guys haven't been back here since the corruption destroyed the universe, have you?"
"The corrupted essence is hard to fight, Lord Alexander." Calyndra replied almost as if it were obvious. "It takes an enormous amount of energy to ward off the essence. Besides, there's nothing left after… this."
Her eyes wandered the surroundings, hinting at the point she was trying to make. However, looking at the unconvinced expression on Alexander's face, the tigress knew Alexander meant something else.
'His tone wouldn't have been unsure if that were the case…' Calyndra thought, watching as Alexander turned his gaze in the direction that attracted his attention. 'Something else must have unsettled him.'
"Since you have no idea of what that is, there's only one way to tell." Alexander was determined to see what that was. Something capable of making his existence tremble with dread could not be simple.
"You aren't seriously suggesting we go deeper into the corrupted essence, are you?" The tigress snickered.
With a snarky grin on his face, Alex looked over his shoulder and muttered. "You'd best keep up if you don't want your existence invaded."
WHOOM!
As soon as the last of the syllabus left his lips, Alexander took off explosively, the speed of his take off causing the surrounding fractured space to tremble violently.
'Shit!'
The tigress gritted her teeth as she too took off with a bang, dispelling the surrounding essence in a wild explosion. In a flash, Alexander and Calyndra covered hundreds of light-years, the tigress closing in faster than Alexander expected.
'They aren't the direct servants of the Supreme One for nothing.' Alex thought amusingly, returning his focus forward.
With absolute versatility and even greater speeds than before, the two Veilwalkers flew through the corrupted universe like working a maze, skillfully evading the storms, oceans and shattered landmasses.
Due to the corruption of the universe, they could not utilise their spatial abilities, which would have meant blending with the universe's fabric. It was something they were trying to avoid.
Creating a portal to connect the two points was also not feasible due to the fractured and corrupted laws. Alexander could purify the essence, not interact with it.
'Hm?'
Alexander furrowed his brows as something caught his attention. He broke his momentum, coming to an abrupt stop, which prompted the tigress to do the same.
"What is it now?"
Calyndra begrudgingly asked as she looked at the ominous sea of blackness beneath her, the bleakness and aversion making her shudder. More than an ocean, the condensed essence resembled tar that spanned several light-years in every direction, its surface as still as a mirror.
"I was right…" Alexander numbered, his focus on the sea below. "There are 'things' lurking in the depths of the condensed essence."
"T-things…"
This was news to the Chief Enforcer. As far as she and her colleagues were concerned, everything in the universe died off when the corruption took hold.
No life was spared. Living beings could not normally interact with void energy, much less something as twisted as the black essence. The only chance of that happening was if…
'But Zauren never came back here after destroying this universe…' The tigress stared intensely at the surface of the black ocean, not seeing any signs of movement.
"Drakmor mentioned something about this Zauren colleague of yours having minions. Do you think he left a few monsters behind?" Alex glanced at the tigress and asked.
"I doubt it." Calyndra shook her head. "When the corruption first took hold of him, he was out of control. He destroyed and plunged this universe into the darkness you see—
"!!"
The still surface of the black ocean suddenly rippled, scaring the shit out of the tigress. The ears atop her head stiffened as she immediately distanced herself, her core thumping anxiously.
Alexander, on the other hand, remained floating in place, keenly staring at the ocean. Unlike what brought his flight to an abrupt halt, this ripple was far larger and took its time propagating outward.
While not all condensed essences had still surfaces, as different regions had varying degrees of misaligned laws and spatial instability, the one before him was different.
'It's not just this one…' Alex was quick to notice the strangeness. 'The closer we get to what I didn't detect, the more condensed essence there is. Moreover, there are a lot more of those emptiness ahead.'
The closer he got to the anomaly he 'detected', the more room his senses had, allowing him to expand it to areas he couldn't reach before. It almost felt like they were approaching the core area of the universe.
Like even greater degrees of dark spots in the bleakness of the ruined universe, the anomalies stood out like dry patches scattered all over a vast field of grass. In this case, the grassfield was the condensed, mirror-like essence.
"W-What the hell was that?" The tigress's shaky voice pulled Alexander out of his thoughts.
"That's what I'd like to know."
Alexander waited for several seconds, but the ripple did not return. He did, however, detect other ripples in other regions with condensed oceans of corrupted essence. 'Are they simply strange ripples?'
None of the other ripples his senses picked up revealed anything more than the ripples they caused. The ripples had nothing special in their emergence, as they haphazardly originated from different points.
'The same could also be said about whatever those patches are…' Alexander focused his gaze in the initial direction, his brows furrowed thoughtfully. 'And my core won't stop thumping anxiously… It's like it's feeling fear in my place.'
"Do you feel it?" Alexander looked over his shoulder.
"If you mean the anxiety creeping into my existence from who knows where, then yes." The tigress nodded with a dreadful expression, her gaze roaming everywhere. She was very much on edge, the discomfort getting worse by the second.
"We should get out of here…" She proposed, trying very hard to keep the edge out of her tone but failing miserably. "There's nothing to learn here. Our target is on the loose somewhere out there. Wasting time like this would only endanger more universes."
"You can leave if you want." Alexander replied. "I still have that thing to check out, whatever those 'things' are."
He took off once more, his forceful take off doing nothing to disturb the dark ocean. He did not miss this little detail, the observation making him realise the ripples had nothing to do with external influence.
The tigress hesitated for a moment, debating whether to turn around or follow behind Alexander. Exiting would have been very easy, as Veil Tears were everywhere.
But Calyndra was not a Chief Enforcer in name only. If she abandoned the boy here, it would only make him look down on them even more.
'Fuck…'
She cursed her luck and chased after Alexander, once again proving that she was a lot faster than Alexander was — allegedly. Within nanoseconds, she closed the hundreds of light-years gap Alexander created.
After several seconds of flight, which was akin to several years for beings with their perception, Alexander and Calyndra came to a stop. The tigress's expression widened in abject horror.
"W-What the hell is that?!"
Calyndra exclaimed as her core and existence continuously shook from dread. Every instinct in her body warned her to stay away, and she did. The tigress began backing away from the darker-than-black area, which looked too frightening to be anything but abnormal.
"That's the mystery."
Alexander echoed with a gloomy expression, the beating of his core going harder than ever. "My senses can't detect anything past its boundaries. I can detect everything around except this… abyss. It's like everything stops existing once it passes those boundaries."
Spanning more than a few million kilometres in every direction, the darker-than-black patch lacked dimensions and the fundamentals of everything they knew and understood. There was no space, no time, no flow of existential energies.
There was… nothing.
The abyss almost seemed like a giant hole in the middle of a grand ocean, because that was exactly what it was. The surrounding black oceans seemed to be receding as the abyss grew.
"W-What are you doing?"
Calyndra's trembling gaze snapped back to Alexander when she noticed him getting closer to the abyss.
"Checking out something…"
Alex replied as he conjured a ball of light in his right hand. He ignored the thumping of his core and the roaring of his instincts, suppressing everything within himself to get closer to the abyss.
With a flick of his finger, he sent it hurtling into the abyss. And the moment the condensed light crossed the boundary separating ocean from abyss, it disappeared completely, like it never existed.