Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig nic.mc. NS
Answer
nic.mc. 5 NS ns2.nic.mc.
nic.mc. 5 NS ns1.nic.mc.
nic.mc. 5 NS mc.cctld.authdns.ripe.net.
nic.mc. 5 NS ns3.nic.mc.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0