'Be careful, alright?'
'Always…'
Despite everything Alexander had shown power-wise, Julia still worried for his safety… a sentiment that warmed his existence considerably.
Breaking through the Boundary of Reality had not been easy on his part. It might have looked like it took only a few seconds, but the cost of achieving it was anything but.
Moreover, a few seconds was far too much time for an existence like his. To him, it felt like he had been pushing against the boundary for years on end.
And as he anticipated, the true monstrosities of the void made their appearance. It was as though they had always been there, just a veil away from revealing themselves.
Hideous and horrific could not begin to describe those void creatures. With revolting, nightmarish forms and essence capable of driving anyone mad with despair and terror, they were the multiverse's doom.
But those horrors were the least of his troubles…
The Omnisoul's rejection of his existence was outrageously severe, more so than anything he had ever experienced. Every gesture from him felt like he was carrying an unbearable weight on his shoulders.
Luckily, his existence was more than capable of bearing that weight. He was, however, unable to perform certain feats, such as instant teleportation with his existential self.
He had to move the old-fashioned way… and that was through flight.
'Old-fashioned, huh.' The thought brought a wry smile to his face. 'Well, it's not much of a nuisance, to be honest. As for these horrors…'
Expanding his absolute senses to encompass most of the void within the domain of the Omnisoul, Alexander was able to pinpoint the movements of those creatures… and they were coming for him.
He could feel the subtle invasive and corruptive effects the creatures had on the body, mind and soul. Around him was the vile and revolting essence of corruption, thick and suffocating.
Unfortunately for those monstrosities and the surrounding essence, his existence was beyond their madness-inducing power, his essence directly neutralising it.
'...they sure are costly.'
Disposing of the first wave of monstrosities drained an unreasonable amount of essence from him, a cost he doubted anyone but the Supreme One could match.
As he cut through the restraining void at immeasurable speeds, his path created a hollow space that was temporarily devoid of void essence.
Any weak void creature that dared to come within an equivalence of twenty light-years of him was instantly erased.
The weaker ones were erased a lot farther away, too weak to bear the weight of his existential self.
A lot more of them, however, were unimaginably far from him. They could not keep up with his unreasonable speed and were left behind.
'They will be taken care of…'
Alexander had no worries. His companions would not fail him. The Veilwalkers, Primordials and Gods were also around. As for the primordials…
'It's not possible for them to sit this one out. And if they do after everything I told them…'
Naturally, there was going to be a lot of pain for it.
Ignoring the weaklings and the still madly approaching horrors, Alex focused his eyes on the long, glowing stream of clustered threads he was following to the heart of the Omnisoul's domain.
The thread… or more specifically, what looked like a ginormous bundle of glowing white-grey in the backdrop of the black void extended all the way to the multiverse.
It resembled a tree trunk that led down to the roots… to the multiverse.
The 'trunk' encompassed most of Alexander's vision, as the bundle was wider than thousands of universes put side by side.
Because Alex had chosen to keep his two meters of human height, he might as well be an invisible grain of sand facing a mighty ocean… but a grain more powerful than imaginable.
Along the rims of this bundle was an encroaching darkness, one that did not match the natural darkness of the void. More importantly, the darkness got thicker the higher he climbed.
'That bastard didn't dally at all…'
With a disgusted expression on his face, Alex pushed his speed even higher, burning more essence to cut through the growing suppression on his body.
After a few picoseconds of high-speed flight and covering inconceivable distances, the incoming wave of madness finally fell upon him.
His gaze pierced through the essence of corruption to behold their horrifying forms, almost regretting looking at them. No being could remain sane after setting eyes on their form.
They looked as if they were shaped from nightmares — twisted bodies that shifted and writhed without a fixed shape, as though reality itself refused to hold them still.
Limbs grew and vanished in the same breath, eyes blinked open in places where no eyes should exist, and their flesh rippled like a living shadow trying to escape its own skin.
Every detail about their forms screamed wrongness and a violation of everything that should exist.
Their strength far surpassed the god-tier void creatures he had fought and killed — those humanoid creatures came nowhere close.
'And here I thought I had been fighting the strongest of them…'
His former self would have been instantly drained had he encountered the abominations he was encountering now. His essence back then would have failed to recover enough before he would be overwhelmed.
'Tsk, such aversion to life forms.'
With one hand outstretched towards the approaching nightmares, Alexander tapped into his infinite reserves of essence and sent a rippling pulse through the void.
Faster than his moving figure, the powerful and ruthlessly destructive pulse tore through the thickening essence of the void and corruption. But then…
'Damn suppression.'
The destructive pulse failed to reach the nightmarish creatures. He had to get closer to take them out.
Of course, closer was relative, as the distance still separating him from the abominations was tens of light-years in equivalent.
Alexander closed that distance in less than a nanosecond, unleashing another pulse that ripped through the creatures without mercy, their forms disintegrating into harmless and purified essence.
Shooting past the lingering essence, he noticed another approaching wave, no more than a few picoseconds away from him.
But more than that, Alexander noticed that his speed was decreasing, albeit at a slower pace.
The thick essence of corruption continued to thicken, already showing signs of liquefying. He had flown past a few droplets already, although barely visible.
'Things are going to get slightly challenging,' he silently thought. 'And I'm not seeing any end to this bundle.'
The Supreme One had mentioned embarking on this journey, taking four long years to get close enough to just catch a glimpse. Clearly, he had also fought through the abominations he was wiping out.
'Don't let this get to you, Alexander. You're different from the rest of us… What might take us time might only be a second when it comes to you.'
A small smile touched his face as he recalled the words the Supreme One said to him. The Supreme One had brought him to the boundary of reality.
That was his first time, and it was the place where the Supreme One revealed just how long it took him to get close to the Omnisoul.
Indeed, he had exhausted his picoseconds due to the growing resistance on his body and was now on nanoseconds, a long way from a second.
More specifically, it had been 8/1,000,000,000 of a second… 8 nanoseconds. Yes, he was keeping count.
What made him different from the Supreme One was that he was an absolute, and the speed of his movement, despite the resistance he was fighting, was incomparable.
Another wave of abominations was wiped out, this time a lot closer to him than before. The Omnisoul was not really helping its case.
Thicker and thicker, the corrupted essence grew. Anyone else would have been forced to a halt, corrupted beyond measure.
'I don't think the Supreme One had to deal with the sickening corruption as I am…'
It was an annoyance, but one he had to get through to reach his destination. A few nanoseconds more, and the traces of liquified corruption became apparent.
Soon, he would be diving into an ocean of corruption. Just the thought of it increased his annoyance severalfold.
As the number of powerful eruptions grew, so too did the nightmarish abominations he had to wipe out. Finally, Alexander saw an enormous wall of corrupted essence… liquified essence.
From time to time, revolting flashes of flesh, eyes and limbs would ripple across its surface, the macabre of the scene enough to drive a Veilwalker to self-harm and suicide.
With a grimace on his handsome face, Alexander spun and spread both his arms out, unleashing a wave of blinding white light that swallowed the region whole.
His speed was steadily declining, but his momentum was unstoppable. Alexander dove into the ocean of corruption without hesitation.
A few nanoseconds passed in a perceived silence, and then the surface of the liquified corruption burst with white radiance.
It first began as white radiant cracks in the surface of the corruption before everything turned white, drowning the region entirely. One nanosecond… two nanoseconds… three nanoseconds…
When the radiance died down, the vast ocean of corruption, along with the abominations swimming in it, was gone, thoroughly erased from reality.
Alexander himself was nowhere in sight. The moment the radiance died down, he was gone, already covering an immeasurable distance.
In the wake of his purification and extermination, vast tears were revealed in the Veil of Reality... an extensive damage caused to the Omnisoul.
'Hang in there, Reality. I'm coming...'