Nina's face crumpled the moment Evan spoke, and something inside her broke. She opened her mouth to argue, but her voice faltered into a whisper and then died. Tears started without warning, streaming hot and silent down her cheeks as the truth of the choice settled over her like a shroud. She had chosen those three people herself. She had brought them here and taught them and trusted them.

The idea of leaving them to die felt like a blade through her heart.

"But—" she began, the word barely audible and already useless, and Evan cut her off with a voice that brooked no further protest. "Young Miss, there is no but," he said firmly, his tone hard as stone. "This is your life we are talking about. If they were conscious, they would choose the same. They would sacrifice themselves to keep you alive." His words were blunt and final. He believed them. He believed his promise more than he feared his own conscience.

Nina sank to her knees and let the sobs come. She never wanted this. She had never wanted to arrange someone else's death so that she could live especially someone like her who only had a few years to live. The thought of walking away while her friends lay helpless in that violet dust made her want to claw the world apart.

She bowed her head and tried to imagine any other path, any other miracle, but none came. Each second spent searching for an answer only tightened the noose of reality.

Evan's face did not soften. He stepped forward and spoke with the resolution of a man who had already decided the cost of his duty. "Do it," he said to Max. "Release the three of them and take the two of us. Move fast toward where the Fate Compass points." His voice contained no triumph. Only that hard, necessary calm that must carry a man through impossible choices.

Max looked at Nina, then at Evan. He nodded once, slow and deliberate. The Omni Guard shimmered and the green hexagonal field opened. The three collapsed geniuses drifted free and lay helpless on the barren ground. Max's hands moved without hesitation as he folded a new field around Nina and Evan and lifted them into it.

Then he ran. His strides were long and brutal, and he carried them away from the place where the centipedes might attack any moment or so they thought.

In truth, there were no centipedes approaching them at all. The ground had not stirred, and the faint tremors they thought they felt were nothing but the echo of their own exhaustion.

Max had created the illusion with nothing more than his words. He had spoken of centipedes because he could not see any other way out of the wasteland without Nina and her Fate Compass.

Every path he had tried had thought led to nothing but endless violet ground. Every direction he had searched returned no sign of the trial site. The only steady guide was the compass clutched in Nina's trembling hands. Without her, he had no way of knowing where to go. Without the compass, he might wander until the pressure crushed him just as it had crushed her team.

So he had done what needed to be done. He told them a lie. He said that a centipede was coming, and that they needed to flee before it reached them. The urgency of his words forced a choice onto them, a choice they could not delay. They had to decide whether to stay with the helpless three and risk all their lives or abandon them and live.

Max had read Evan's character well. He had seen the way the man placed himself in front of Nina during every attack, the way his eyes always flicked back to her even while fighting. Max knew that Evan would never allow her to die, not even at the cost of others. So he used that instinct. He placed the decision before Evan, confident of the outcome.

The plan was ruthless. It left three people behind in a barren, deadly land. Yet Max felt no regret. As he carried Nina and Evan away, his face stayed calm and his eyes steady. Some things had to be done, whether he liked them or not. Survival in the Heavenly Lord Secret Domain was not won by mercy or hesitation. It was won by action, and he had acted.

As Max carried Nina and Evan within the shimmering hexagonal forcefield, Nina's trembling voice guided him. She kept her eyes fixed on the glowing needle of the Fate Compass, whispering directions toward where it pointed. Max did not waste a breath. His strides were heavy but unyielding as he pressed on, following her guidance through the endless violet wasteland.

Step by step, they advanced once more. The wasteland stretched in every direction without end, but Nina's compass gave them a path, and Max's strength bore them forward. Hours slipped past in silence, broken only by the sound of his boots striking the hard ground and the faint hum of the protective barrier.

Then, at last, Max slowed. His body lurched slightly, and he stopped. His chest heaved as sweat streamed down his face and neck, soaking his clothes until they clung to him. His legs trembled violently under the strain, each muscle fiber screaming against the pressure. He had carried them for hours, and now even his monstrous endurance had reached its breaking point.

The pressure on his body had grown far worse than before. It no longer felt like a weight pressing down but like the world itself had chosen to crush him into the soil. Even in his Dragon Scales Transformation, with all one thousand Draconic Essences burning at full force, he found himself faltering. His steps wavered, and the earth beneath him seemed to drag him down with every attempt to move forward.

A grim realization pierced his mind. This pressure was beyond anything he should be enduring. His current form was strong enough to resist the force of a Divine Rank opponent, yet here, he could not even keep his footing. He could not understand where this strength was coming from, or why it bore down on him so relentlessly.

The weight pressed into his bones, suffocated his lungs, and blurred his vision. His knees threatened to buckle, and for the first time since entering the secret domain, his consciousness began to slip. His mind wavered on the edge of darkness, his body begging him to give in.

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