The Heroine is My Stepsister, and I'm her Final Boss-Chapter 157 - 158: An Asset

Number Seven’s boots sank into the mud, her breath a jagged blade in her throat. The air stank of moss, copper, and ozone. Her eyes, furious and red-rimmed, burned toward the signal—a faint pulse of light beyond the dark trees, mocking her brother’s death. Her twin, her shadow, her half-soul, snuffed out like a candle in a storm.

She lunged forward, muscles screaming with grief and adrenaline, only to be yanked back by Number Ten’s iron grip.

"Wait, you fucking idiot," Ten hissed, his voice low, sharp enough to cut through her haze. "Number Nine died. Someone powerful is out there. Think for a bloody second."

"Let me go, you fiend!" Seven roared, her voice cracking like a bone. She turned on him, her fists slamming into his chestplate, each hit a plea, a prayer, a curse. Her eyes, wet and raw, spilled tears that clung to her lashes, refusing to fall. "My... my brother..." Her voice broke, a sob cutting off her words, raw and gasping.

Ten didn’t flinch. He held her, arms a cage of duty and restraint, letting her rage burn itself raw.

Each heartbeat felt like fire under her skin.

She remembered a flicker: Nine’s laughter, sharp and cocky, echoing in the training yard when they were only children. He’d always teased her for being too serious, too quick to fight. "One day," he’d said, grinning, "you’ll burn too hot and forget what you’re fighting for."

He was wrong. She remembered.

She remembered ’him’.

Then, a sound like frost cracking on iron. A voice, cold as the void between stars.

"Are you done?"

The words dropped like blades into the clearing. The forest stilled. Even the wind dared not breathe.

They turned and dropped to one knee, as if compelled by gravity itself. The pressure that followed was enormous, like a mountain had shifted over their skulls.

Number Five stepped into the clearing, the air shimmering faintly around his black armor. Golden hair, tied in a single thread-bound braid, caught the sunlight like gilded silk. His eyes—deep, piercing blue—glinted with something ancient and exact. They weren’t just eyes. They were measures. Calculations.

"I greet Number Five," Seven said, her voice trembling but loud, the words ritual, the air slicing her throat as she spoke.

"I greet Number Five," Ten followed, bowing so low his forehead nearly touched the dirt.

The Primes were not equals. Not in rank. Not in worth. Each number etched onto their chests was a sentence. A brand. A promise of destruction or obedience. The top five were holy. A single breath from them could reroute the fate of cities.

The top five were a whole new category—no, a different species altogether. They weren’t knights. They were living war machines, demi-gods in flesh forged through obsession, blood, and ruin. It was often whispered in the noble courts and military war rooms alike: to create even one Prime within the top five required enough wealth to sustain an entire marquise fiefdom for a decade.

Not merely gold—but relics, royal contracts, forgotten bloodlines, failed clones, and armies of failed experiments. Countless died in the laboratories beneath the empire’s crust, their screams never reaching the sun, just so a single body might hold that much power without collapsing into ash.

But money alone was never enough. There had to be talent. Raw, blinding talent—so rare it could not be taught or stolen. It had to be found, unearthed like a cursed jewel, and even then, refined through pain until it gleamed in slaughter.

Number Five was that jewel. The fifth of the empire’s apex predators.

His hair shimmered gold, the kind that didn’t catch light—it devoured it. Polished like a blade’s edge under the sun. And his eyes... deep blue, matching Number Seven’s own, but utterly devoid of human warmth. Not cold like ice, but like vacuum—depthless, oxygenless, a void that didn’t just look at you, but crushed you with the fact of your insignificance.

"...One of you weaklings is dead, it seems," he said. His voice wasn’t raised, but it struck like a hammer—precise, brutal, hollow of mourning. As if death was a footnote.

The sound of his tone alone made both Number Seven and Ten stiffen involuntarily. It wasn’t fear in the common sense. It was instinct. The same way an animal freezes when it sees a predator outside its understanding of the food chain.

But Number Seven gritted her teeth. Her nails bit into her palms. Rage boiled in her lungs, but what could she do? Rage meant nothing before him. Words were feathers in a storm. He could kill her before she blinked, and they both knew it.

Because he wasn’t like them.

He was the one who wiped out five thousand berkimhum soldiers in a single explosion spell, turning the whole faction into a red smear on the maps. That was the legend. No mage assistance, no artillery—just him. One body. One will. One breath. And a battlefield that never spoke again.

He was born with perfect physical enhancement—every nerve, bone, tendon, and muscle singing in harmony, refined to the upper limit of human warfare. Yet he wasn’t just brawn.

His mana nerves were rare—not just responsive, but intelligent. He could channel like a top-tier archmage, while moving like a primal beast. A walking contradiction: the brain of a tactician, the instincts of a hunter, and the power of a siege engine.

Such a lethal combination made him not just an elite. He was an asset, a keystone of the empire’s dominance. Every move he made had layers of strategy hidden beneath savage precision. His breath alone was calculated, conserved, and lethal.

And that’s what made it worse—his composure. Not once had he knelt beside Number Nine’s corpse. Not once had he asked how. Not even a glance of surprise. Just that single statement:

....One of you weaklings is dead....

Not even a name. Not even a number. Just a body removed from the equation. It was enough to make Seven feel like she would choke on her own teeth.

She wanted to scream. To throw her spear through Five’s arrogant skull. To make him feel the same helpless, feral grief that was rotting her from the inside out.

But her instincts screamed no.

Even fury, even madness knew its place in the hierarchy.

"You losers can get up," he said, eyes flicking toward the glow in the distance. They rose stiffly, blood pounding in their skulls. Five walked without looking at them, steps light but final.

"Here’s what we’re gonna do," Five continued. "Contain the fairy core dust, retrieve Number Nine’s body if there’s anything left of it, and fall back."

Seven’s heart lurched, her fists clenching at her sides.

"Fall back?" she barked, her voice too loud. "What about the enemy? The one who killed him?" Her chest heaved. Grief had curdled into fury.

Five’s head snapped toward her. His gaze was pure pressure, suffocating. The world dimmed around her.

"Tools should behave like tools," he said.

With a gesture, mana radiated from him like a wave of winter. Seven dropped to her knees, gasping, her body screaming under the weight of his presence. Her lungs were iron bags. Her bones cracked. Her vision blurred with cold tears.

"Do you think the empire poured its resources into you to love, to care, to act on your pathetic emotions and jeopardize more assets?" Five took a step closer. His shadow fell across her face, blotting out the moon. "Am I clear?"

Her tongue tasted blood. She wanted to say no. Wanted to scream. Wanted to rip his face open.

But her body betrayed her.

"Yes," she whispered.

Ten didn’t speak. His eyes were on the dirt. Always the obedient one.

A silence followed. Only the signal pulsed now, a slow blink through the trees, steady and remorseless.

Five turned.

"Move," he commanded, and began walking. His footsteps didn’t disturb the leaves.

Seven stood, her legs shaking. Her armor felt heavier now, like it was made of stone. Each step forward was a betrayal.

Within minutes, they reached the spot, using the aircraft. Jumping down the area, where everything looked like a bloody mess, tress heaved, ground crushed. They walked in silence. Fairy core dust shimmered in the air ahead, motes of gold and green, beautiful in the cruelest way. It looked like light dancing on water, but it was death. A virus. The remnant of a species that had once cursed the world.

And her brother had died for it.

Each step toward that glow made her want to scream. But she didn’t. Because tools don’t scream. Tools follow.

The signal pulsed again, brighter now.

She saw it: his body.

Or what was left of it. It had no face. No chest. Only a half-torn uniform and the blackened shape of a number: Nine.

She dropped to her knees again.

Her breath came in shallow gasps. Her stomach twisted. Her hand reached out, trembling, to touch the tattered fabric—

to say goodbye.

But she stopped.

Five stood beside her.

"You have ten seconds," he said.

Ten seconds.

She didn’t cry. She just sat there, knees in mud, fists tight.

She whispered his name. The name they used before numbers. Before the empire.

A word never meant to be heard again.

Then she stood.

And walked.

The signal faded. The fairy dust thickened. The virus stirred.

But inside her, something colder than grief began to grow.

A vow.

This content is taken from (f)reewe(b)novel.𝗰𝗼𝐦