The Heroine is My Stepsister, and I'm her Final Boss-Chapter 155 - 156: The Genius.

Step. Step. Step.

The stone stairs spiraled into the dungeon’s maw, each tread grinding under Eli’s bare feet, cold as a grave’s embrace. The torch in her hand sputtered, casting jagged shadows that crawled across the damp stone walls like wounded insects. The deeper she went, the more the air thickened—first musty with old earth, then sour with mold, and finally something sharper, acidic, a copper tang that clung to the back of her throat. Blood. Or its ghost.

Her nightgown stuck to her skin, soaked in sweat and humid , the fabric so thin it may as well have been her own flesh. It whispered around her thighs with every step, a slow slither like a snake curling around a lover’s leg. But she barely noticed. Her breathing was measured, steady, but her eyes burned—not with tears, but with rage held on a leash. A rage sharpened by memory, honed by loss. Every step felt like a countdown.

Every time she returned here, something in her fractured a little more.

She descended deeper. The dungeon wasn’t just dark—it was sentient. It inhaled and exhaled around her with numerous traps, in the groan of old stone, in the hiss of torches coughing smoke into the stagnant air. Water dripped somewhere beyond reach, each plop echoing like a tolling bell. The dungeon whispered, not in words, but in instincts. It smelled of despair. And in that, Eli found home.

At the bottom, the door loomed like a tombstone—iron, pitted, stained with age and something worse. Rust or blood. Or both. She raised her fist.

Knock. Knock.

The sound echoed like gunfire through the stillness.

"Who is it?" A voice, rough and trembling, crawled through the cracks. Not just fear. Reverence.

"...It’s your fucking Empress."

Low. Cold. A blade sheathed in silk. The words weren’t shouted, but they struck like a war drum. From within came chaos—scattered metal, frantic footsteps, the scrape of bolts undone with trembling hands. Then the locks turned, one by one, a slow chorus of submission.

The door opened.

He stood there—the mage.

The architect of her empire’s atrocities. The visionary who’d turned nightmare into strategy. His hair was a storm cloud of tangles, goggles strapped to his forehead like twin moons catching her firelight. His robes were stained with ink, blood, and something that shimmered like stardust. His eyes, wide with worship, drank her in.

He bowed so low his forehead nearly grazed the floor. "Your Imperial Highness," he gasped. "Please... please, enter."

She stepped past him, not sparing him a glance.

The room beyond was no laboratory. It was a cathedral of sins.

Crystal jars lined the walls, glowing with sickly green light, like fireflies suspended in amber. Each jar held liquid that pulsed—no, breathed—with something alive and wrong. Suspended in them were fairy cores: tiny orbs, luminous and beautiful, etched with fine veins of light that crawled across their surfaces like frost.

The air trembled with magic—or perhaps a curse. It pressed against Eli’s skin, buzzed against her bones. She stopped a moment to let it crawl over her, to feel it rise like a tide. Her skin prickled.

At the room’s center, five bodies hung on hooks.

Two men. Three women.

Naked. Pale as moonlight. Their chests rose and fell in shallow rhythm, but their eyes were voids—not just blank, but empty. Like the soul had been scrubbed out.

Dead? Alive?

Neither. Something worse.

She didn’t care.

They were tools.

"How’s the fairy project going?" Her voice was casual, slicing through the tension like a scalpel.

The mage twitched. His fingers curled and uncurled at his sides.

"I-I... I’ve tapped into the Virus, Your Highness," he stammered, each syllable like broken glass. "It’s remarkable. Like you said. If we take even 0.1% of its capacity and bind it to the new Prime models—they’ll grow strong. Mighty strong. Stronger than anything we’ve made."

He paused, breathless. Pride flared in his eyes.

Eli tilted her head, letting her gaze slide across the room. Past the jars. Past the bodies. To a table in the corner where limbs rested—spare parts soaked in preservative oils, twitching once in a while like they dreamed of reconnection.

"Good," she said. "We already lost one. I hope you’re preparing another."

The mage flinched. "Y-yes. Yes, Your Highness. The dreaming’s stopped. That’s... helped. Their minds were locked, but now, with the dreaming no more—it’s opening. Days. Just days, and they’ll be ready."

His voice held something close to awe. As if he were discussing gods being born, not victims.

Eli’s footsteps echoed as she circled the hanging bodies.

One woman’s eye twitched.

Was it memory?

Pain?

Curiosity?

It didn’t matter.

"Will they be anything like the top five Primes? Like Prime 1?" Her voice didn’t waver, but the name sat on her tongue like ash and wine.

The mage inhaled sharply. "That... that man is still a miracle. Prime 1 is my masterpiece. The best soldier, the best weapon—aa... the best thing I’ve ever created."

His voice softened. Not reverent. Nostalgic.

Like a father speaking of a prodigal son.

Eli clenched her jaw. Her memories turning to Atlas

She remembered the way he had fought beside her. A force. A wind that tore armies apart. They had survived the Dark Continent together, bled beside monsters, laughed at death. There had been moments between battles—glances, touches, breaths held too long. She’d wanted him. Not just his power. Him.

But even prime 1 wouldn’t be enough.

Not for this war. Not for the shadow rising beneath her empire’s foundations.

She needed more.

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A weapon that didn’t break.

"I hope you find a way," she said. Her voice was low now, barely above a whisper. A serpent under silk. "Fast. Faster. I want him on his knees."

The mage’s goggles slipped. He adjusted them with shaking hands.

The fairy cores pulsed, one flaring brighter—as if hearing her hunger.

One of the hanging men let out a breath that wasn’t quite human.

Eli turned to leave.

"Don’t fail me," she said, her back to him.

But she paused, her head turning, "Do you still miss your home country, your Berkimhum country..."

The mage stepped forward, hurriedly, bowing to her once more, "No...Never. I will serve the empire and you, it’s empress until my bone cracks from old age and nerves bleed from overwork, as it was you, who found my brilliance and my ideas." He voiced, without any doubt or hesitation. His speech clean to the core.

Eli smiled as she walked away, satisfied.

The door slammed shut with a final, echoing boom.

The dungeon exhaled.

The mage was left in the silence, hands trembling.

But Eli felt it as she ascended—each step carrying the hum of power, the scent of rot and rebirth curling into her lungs.

They were hers. The cores. The Virus. The Primes.

And when the time came—Berkimhum would kneel.

Or burn.

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