Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig nodecluster.net. NS
Answer
nodecluster.net. 5 NS algin.ns.cloudflare.com.
nodecluster.net. 5 NS nia.ns.cloudflare.com.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
nia.ns.cloudflare.com. 2 A 108.162.192.210
nia.ns.cloudflare.com. 2 A 172.64.32.210
nia.ns.cloudflare.com. 2 A 173.245.58.210
algin.ns.cloudflare.com. 2 A 108.162.193.61
algin.ns.cloudflare.com. 2 A 172.64.33.61
algin.ns.cloudflare.com. 2 A 173.245.59.61
nia.ns.cloudflare.com. 2 AAAA 2606:4700:50:0:0:0:adf5:3ad2
nia.ns.cloudflare.com. 2 AAAA 2803:f800:50:0:0:0:6ca2:c0d2
nia.ns.cloudflare.com. 2 AAAA 2a06:98c1:50:0:0:0:ac40:20d2
algin.ns.cloudflare.com. 2 AAAA 2606:4700:58:0:0:0:adf5:3b3d
algin.ns.cloudflare.com. 2 AAAA 2803:f800:50:0:0:0:6ca2:c13d
algin.ns.cloudflare.com. 2 AAAA 2a06:98c1:50:0:0:0:ac40:213d
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0