The Heroine is My Stepsister, and I'm her Final Boss
Chapter 191 - 192: Back Up

Chapter 191: Chapter 192: Back Up

He held his blade like death itself.

No—he was death now.

His sword hummed, soaked in enchantments and blood, and with a single step forward, he closed the distance. His breath was ragged. Smoke curled around him, lacing through the cuts in his armor. His eyes, dull with exhaustion, burned with one last flash of intention.

The barbarian, wounded and wheezing, raised what remained of his iron slab in reflex.

Clang!

But instead of a clash, it sang.

"True sharpness," Denish whispered. And he meant it—not as a boast, but a prayer.

His sword, fractured and near shattering, cut through—not deflected, not parried, but through the barbarian’s greatsword like it was cloth. A scream of metal, a hiss of burning air, and then it carved deeper—through armor, through flesh, until it tasted bone and passed to the spine.

The barbarian’s mouth opened. Not in pain. In awe.

He fell, not backward but inward, collapsing like a monument cracked from within. A giant undone by precision.

"You would have been a great... even greater warrior than me," Denish said, turning his back. His voice broke with regret, but his steps never faltered. "You were just... unlucky. The gods didn’t touch you with their faith."

Behind him, the barbarian collapsed. A final exhale—like a titan laid to rest.

Denish didn’t look back.

He couldn’t. He wouldn’t survive it if he did.

’Forgive me,’ he thought, not to the gods, but to the man who could’ve been his brother.

A scream snapped him back to now.

Blue fire hissed behind him like serpents unleashed. Explosions erupted across the torn fields. Through smoke and ruin, Denish cleaved through six Imperial soldiers in swift, fluid strikes. His sword moved with the weight of sorrow. His hands bled, each grip sending white-hot pain down his wrists, but he did not stop.

He dodged a blast—a spiraling explosion of azure magic that singed the side of his cape. The dragon. Still alive. Still fighting.

The blue dragon, was now their shield—barreling through Imperial formations, crushing men under its wingspan. Berkimhum’s mages had turned the beast’s fire into their own weapon, augmenting its destruction with wind magic, turning every flame into a storm. The flames consumed banners, horses, screams.

It lasted. Until—

Denish saw him.

Far beyond the battlefield, a single mage floated in the sky. Silent. Still. Like death waiting to be acknowledged.

His mana bled into the air, radiant and suffocating. It was not light—it was pressure. Pure, merciless pressure.

The older man didn’t move, didn’t speak, and yet Denish’s instincts screamed. He wasn’t just a mage.

He was a monster.

"Don’t engage," Denish muttered under his breath, jaw clenched. His body—half broken—wanted to sprint the other way.

Then—he saw it.

With a gentle gesture, the old mage stopped the windstorm. Then hijacked it.

Every Berkimhum mage in the radius stiffened. Their flames snuffed out. Their bodies shivered under his unseen grip. Their spells shattered like glass under a boot.

The old man’s eyes opened.

They were lightless.

"...Monster," Denish breathed.

And monster he was.

"Merlin," someone whispered across the field.

And as if that name had weight enough to burn away the sky, the battle itself paused.

Even the dragon flinched. But rage overcame fear.

The blue beast let out a guttural roar and ascended. Its horn ignited, wild mana streaming around it as it bolted toward the floating mage.

A sonic boom cracked across the battlefield.

But Merlin didn’t move.

The dragon’s horn slammed into a golden barrier—solid and absolute. A divine wall.

Merlin tilted his head and smiled.

"I was searching for you," he said, voice calm, almost bored. "Thanks for all the trouble."

And then—

Shhhhhh.

Magic began to concentrate above his palm. A spiral of white mana turned gold, then gold turned into flame, and flame into sunlight.

No. Not light.

A sun.

The heat from it scorched the sky itself. Clouds burned away. The dragon’s wings paused mid-beat. Its courage cracked.

Its soul cracked.

The dragon paled. Its instincts howled in terror.

"This is going to hurt," Merlin said, without cruelty. "Dragon."

And he released it.

The sun surged forward—not fast, not slow. Just inevitable.

It didn’t touch.

It didn’t need to.

At ten meters, the dragon began to dissolve.

At five, it was dust.

At one, it had never existed.

Ash fell.

Silence.

The battlefield stood still. And above it all, Merlin hovered, the miniature sun still burning above his palm like a halo made of judgment.

His voice was neither loud nor soft. It simply existed.

"Surrender," he said.

His gaze swept the remnants of Berkimhum’s army. "Or die."

And they heard. Not with ears—but bones. The mages near Denish stepped back. Some dropped their wands. Knights lowered their weapons. The very ground beneath them cooled as if in reverence.

Even Denish faltered. His sword shook in his hand. Not from fear—but from awe.

And yet—

A laugh.

Soft at first. Then deeper.

Then blazing.

The sky, still cracked from Merlin’s fire, roared with red heat.

As the whole of the Berkimhum army flinched, time itself seemed to hesitate.

For a breathless second, silence reigned—unnatural and brittle. Ten thousand soldiers, some with swords halfway drawn, others still gripping the reins of trembling horses, paused mid-motion. Even the dragons circling above the eastern ridges let out uneasy screeches, their wings suddenly unsure of the wind.

Every heart beat once. Then again.

But the sky had already begun to change.

It started with a hum—not heard, but felt—vibrating up from the marrow of the earth. The clouds twisted, groaning as if some ancient beast rolled behind the firmament. A sickle of bright light sliced across the heavens, cleaving through the stars. It wasn’t lightning. It wasn’t fire. It was something else. Something living.

Then, without warning—

The sky roared.

White light surged from beyond the horizon like a tidal wave made of flame and will. The heavens churned with furious color, turning the black night into light-stained afternoon. Shadows fled. The stars drowned in crimson. A second sun—bleeding, pulsing—flared high above, uncaring of the war below.

Men screamed. Some dropped their weapons. Others knelt, thinking the gods had finally returned to judge their kingdoms.

But from within that apocalyptic storm of light... came laughter.

A single figure emerged, hovering amidst the chaos like a punctuation mark scrawled across creation.

"Nahhh... we good..." Loki voiced.