"We were... fortunate..."

Felberta spoke with a solemn look on her face when she saw the recording on the screen hovering in front of her. The rest of the people around her nodded.

The gathering was over and everything changed in an instant. Nux’s Universe was now completely sealed.

In these past ten years, Nux had created hunting parties, these parties, however, were different from the normal ’puppets’ Nux used.

Nux didn’t erase their memories and turn them into loyal subordinates, at least not now. The first few hunting parties were indeed formed using such puppets, but later, Nux noticed another thing.

Leaving the Universe, attacking another world and devouring it...

It was... fun.

It was something people who had been suppressed by Supreme Rules craved.

So he did something else.

A new system was created, a guild system, a system that gave ’missions’ to people, it was like Mercenary Worlds, and one of these Missions was to take Nux’s clone, leave the Universe and devour the outside world.

Of course, such missions were only assigned to the best of the mercenaries, these were like S rank missions where failure wasn’t an option and very quickly, the system was a success.

More and more ’mercenaries’ joined, and the exceptional ones were allowed to go outside and devour the worlds, of their own free will.

But now...

That changed.

Some of these hunting parties had... failed.

Which in itself was strange considering every time they attacked, they went with way extra firepower, sometimes, literal Eternals would go target Middle Level Worlds, or a High Level World would be attacked by hundreds of Eternals.

So when the first hunting party had failed, Nux was informed the next instant, but at that moment—

Four other Parties had already left the Universe for their hunts and...

They had all failed as well.

This was the reason Nux called the gathering so urgently and now, no being could leave the Universe, to do, not just devouring, but any mission in general.

Now, Nux had taken the control back, he was the one who decided who would leave and who would not.

His puppets, that had been put into a half-asleep state since they were no longer being used, were now awake again.

"We were indeed."

Amaya nodded, she had a solemn look on her face as well.

"You wouldn’t have survived that."

Aeliana nodded.

"We don’t know that."

Nux answered, seemingly confident but then—

[Don’t be foolish.]

A strict voice was heard.

It was Azriel.

Yes, the gathering was over, the children were put to sleep, the Progenitors were sent away since Nux only wanted it to remain between him and his wives, but later during the conversation, Azriel contacted them and since then, he had been a part of their discussion.

[You wouldn’t be able to defeat them.]

Azriel shook his head and spoke with this odd sense of confidence.

What they were currently watching was the recording of the first time the Infinities attacked the party and from the recording, from the look in the Infinities’ eyes as they pounced on Nux’s clone, how quickly they all used their domains to stop him from leaving, the shine in their eyes when they reached Nux—

It made one thing very clear.

They didn’t know it was merely a hunting party, according to them, it was the Anomaly.

Nux didn’t know what their reaction was when they later found out since the recording didn’t last that long, but he could guess they were highly disappointed, and that was confirmed when they saw the second recording.

The time when they attacked the second party, this time, although they made the move just as quickly as before, as if Nux was actually there, this time—

Their eyes were... less excited.

As if somewhere in their mind, they knew they might fail.

As for the last two attacks?

There weren’t even all four Infinities who attacked their party, it was just... one Infinity, almost as if they knew this time would be a fail as well.

Their disappointment was clear.

So what the girls were saying was that Nux was lucky he wasn’t the one devouring when they first attacked because if it was him—

He would have to face all four Infinities at the same time and...

It wouldn’t be a battle he could have won.

"I am stronger than you think."

Nux countered, looking at Azriel, the Vampire Progenitor, however, shook his head.

[You are stronger than what I believe, I know that.

But the Infinities are... much stronger than you believe.

Your mind cannot comprehend what existence an Infinity truly is.]

"And you think you can comprehend what an entirely different Universe is?"

Nux tilted his head.

This wasn’t arrogance.

Nux wasn’t planning on going and challenging the Four Infinities, what he was saying was a simple statement.

Yes, he didn’t understand an Infinity’s existence, that was true, none of the memories he had seen from all the worlds he had devoured showed it—

But at the same time—

Azriel didn’t exactly know what sort of existence he was either.

Nux was... strong.

He was genuinely strong.

But—

[A new Universe.]

Azriel corrected.

[It hasn’t been a long time since you have become... whatever it is you have become.

You are young.

I am not saying you don’t have the potential to defeat them but...

These are beings that have existed for eons.

Do not take that lightly.]

Azriel warned.

Nux wanted to say something, anything to take his stand but in the end, he too, knew it was a pointless discussion.

There would never be a concrete answer to this discussion, not until he and the Four Infinities actually faced each other—

Which, he had no intention of doing unless he was absolutely sure of his victory.

After all, as much as Nux craved a genuine battle, now it wasn’t just his wives he had to live for—

Now he had his children too.

Nux couldn’t possibly leave this cruel world without a father to protect them—

His children would always grow safely, no matter what it took.

"I won’t take them lightly."

So in the end, Nux just nodded and didn’t continue further.

This wasn’t why they had gathered here in the first place, they had better, far more important things to do.

They had already begun their ’experiments’ like Amaya had told them to and... they had quite a few... interesting observations.

"Anyways, let’s see what we have so far, shall we?"

Nux asked as he looked around, Azriel dropped the matter too. He had seen Nux grow, he knew he wouldn’t put his and his family’s lives at stake just to prove a point.

He was not that foolish.

So the Vampire Progenitor too, turned towards the rest of the women, to take part in the conversation.

"Till now, we have sent ten more ’hunting parties’ to devour more worlds."

And Amaya began, taking control over the conversation, the rest of the people nodded, they already knew that.

"A few things we are sure of, is that there is no traitor in our Universe, every being in our Universe knew about the hunting parties, the Infinities did not, that alone breaks that possibility." 𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖

Again, the people nodded, that was logical too.

"Now the question is how did the Infinities know we were coming.

We do not know.

We have no answer for this question, neither are we able to find an answer to this question, not with what information we have so far.

So...

Let’s change the question to something we can answer or... find the answer to—

The Infinities have the ability to stop our hunting parties, so now...

We need to understand how... strong their ability actually is.

What are the things they can predict, what they cannot. We need to understand the limits and boundaries of their powers and see if we can come up with something to take advantage of that, hence, the ten parties we sent."

Again, the people nodded, waiting for Amaya to continue—

"The first two weren’t different.

They were just sent to make sure whether the Infinities would be able to stop them or not, these parties didn’t target Light or Darkness Worlds that our normal hunting parties usually target these days.

These were sent to Eternity and Balance Worlds, worlds that the ’Anomaly’ wouldn’t usually attack, so there was no way for the Infinities to be prepared for the attack.

But...

The same thing happened again.

One of the Infinities was there to stop them, both times.

So we can be sure that this isn’t the Infinities guessing our possible targets, they haven’t predicted a ’pattern’ we unconsciously leave—

No, they indeed have a way to predict where we are going to attack and they move beforehand to protect that world and hopefully capture Nux."

The air in the room turned grim, they all knew that at some level, this was somewhat obvious, somewhere in their hearts, they knew that the enemy did have a way to stop them but...

Now that it was confirmed, this seemed... much heavier.

"After the first two parties—

We sent the third, this time, the third party returned with positive news."

Amaya smiled lightly.