My Taming System Makes Me Overpowered

The deck of the primary obsidian dreadnought buckled and groaned under the crushing weight of Vince's Inward Absolute Domain. Black cosmic iron cracked like brittle ice beneath his boots, sending spiderwebs of violet-gold fractures tearing across the warship's heavy armor plating.

Monarch Malakor clawed desperately at the hand clamped around his throat. The warlord's towering, seven-foot frame, encased in spiked astral steel that had weathered a thousand celestial skirmishes, felt fragile and weightless within Vince's grasp. Every drop of high divine aura Malakor attempted to summon was instantly extinguished the moment it touched Vince's skin—neutralized and erased by an absolute authority that superseded the ancient laws of the Primordial Firmament.

"How... how can an unranked ascendant possess such spatial dominance?" Malakor choked out, his voice rattling behind his faceless, dark-iron visor. "My divine origin is bound directly to the Shadow Seat of the Obsidian Seat! You cannot sever—"

"I already did," Vince interrupted smoothly, his voice a low, velvet purr that carried no effort at all. "Your Shadow Seat holds no weight inside my boundary."

Vince tightened his grip slightly.

CRACK.

The spiked collar of Malakor's armor shattered into fine dark dust, exposing his throat—a swirling, unstable core of dark cosmic fire and condensed astral dust. Vince flicked his gaze toward the sky, where Barnaby floated down gently from the citadel balcony. Her translucent, lotus-embroidery dress drifted around her like liquid silver, her golden-translucent Lotus Core pulsing with a deep, liquid heat over her chest.

Behind her, Vetra and Lyrielle landed on the warship's upper deck with practiced grace. Vetra rested her dark-iron broadsword across her shoulders, her dragon-kin scales still radiating waves of white-hot Ignis heat, while Lyrielle kept her elder-bow notched with a single, glowing spirit-arrow, her violet eyes scanning the remaining, paralyzed astral crew.

"He was going to use a cosmic-tier sacrifice ritual," Elena's voice chimed through Vince's spiritual link as her administrative grid analyzed the ship's internal matrix. "The dreadnought's core contains a self-destruct mechanism designed to detonate the stolen divine origins of the Waypoint, wiping out this entire sector and dragging our citadel into a void rift."

"A sore loser," Vetra snorted, spitting a small ember of golden dragon-fire onto the deck. "Typical high-tier trash. They talk big about divine order until someone snaps their neck, then they try to blow up the house."

"He won't get the chance," Barnaby said softly. She glided past Vince, her delicate, bare feet hovering an inch above the cracked hull. Her soft golden eyes locked onto the dark, pulsing origin inside Malakor's chest. "Vince... his divine core is so dense, but it's completely unrefined. It's filled with stolen, chaotic noise."

"Clean it out, then," Vince said smoothly, tossing Malakor onto his back onto the shattered deck with casual disregard.

Malakor hit the metal floor hard, coughing up drops of dark, glowing astral blood. Realizing his physical defeat was absolute, the warlord's faceless visor flared with a desperate, manic purple light. He slammed his gauntlets onto the deck, initiating the forbidden sacrifice array carved into his soul.

"If I fall, this entire waypoint falls with me!" Malakor roared, his body expanding as dark, jagged void runes burned through his skin. "Behold the final judgment of the Shadow Seat! Astral Core Collapse—"

"Quiet," Barnaby whispered softly.

She stepped directly over the warlord's chest and knelt down, gently resting her small, pale hand over the burning void runes on Malakor's sternum.

The moment her palm made contact, the violent, destructive expansion of dark energy stopped dead in its tracks.

The hundred-percent bloomed Lotus Core over Barnaby's heart flared with a brilliant, silver-gold radiance. A massive, spectral lotus flower with silver-translucent petals blossomed across the entire sky above the dreadnought, its divine scent instantly washing away the copper tang of blood and dark corruption from the air.

SLURP—

A sound like rushing liquid echoed through the quiet sky.

Malakor's eyes widened behind his visor as he felt his entire divine origin—thousands of years of accumulated Firmament mana, stolen celestial ley-lines, and high-order cosmic authority—being pulled violently from his soul. It was not a violent tearing, but an absolute, unyielding siphon. Barnaby's lotus petals acted as a divine filter, devouring the raw, corrupted dark energy, stripping away its dark malice, and converting it into pure, crystal-clear cosmic vitality.

"No... no! My origin! My seat!" Malakor screamed, his voice growing fainter and weaker by the second as his spiked armor withered, rusted, and flaked away into gray ash. "The Star-Emperors will... will destroy you all..."

Within seconds, the grand warlord of the Obsidian Astral Pantheon was reduced to a withered, empty husk. His dark dreadnought beneath them groaned as its black cosmic metal lost its energy matrix, turning into brittle, ordinary slate stone.

Barnaby closed her eyes, letting out a soft, breathless sigh of pure satisfaction as the purified Firmament origin flowed through her Lotus Core and traveled straight up the soul-tether into Vince's spiritual sea. Her skin flushed with a radiant, pearlescent glow, and the lotus mark over her chest burned with a deeper, more profound gold than ever before.

She stood up, her hips swaying gently as she turned back to Vince, her eyes wide and glittering with deep, hungry affection.

"It's so sweet, Vince," Barnaby purred, wrapping her slender arms around his waist and burying her face against his chest. "A Firmament-tier origin core... it expanded our domain's boundary by three full sectors. My core feels so full... but I still want more."

Vince reached down, wrapping his arm around her waist and pulling her body flush against his, his fingers tangling into her silver-white hair. He could feel the surging tide of pure, high-tier cosmic vitality integrating into his Inward Absolute Domain, elevating his passive authority to an entirely new threshold.

"You'll get plenty more," Vince murmured, his dark eyes looking out across the Aetherial Waypoint.

Below them, the dark purple sky cleared instantly, replaced once again by the warm, serene starlight of the Firmament. The surviving deities of the Waypoint—merchant lords, high-sect elders, and local guardians—looked up at the shattered obsidian dreadnought and the man standing atop its ruins in absolute, stunned silence.

The threat that had threatened to erase their entire city had been dismantled in minutes, its leader devoured and integrated as a mere power source.

Elena stepped up to Vince's side, her slate flashing with rapid updates. "The Obsidian Astral fleet in the outer orbit has completely broken formation and fled back into deep space. Furthermore, the local Waypoint Governance Council has just sent a unanimous surrender transmission. They are yielding full administrative control of the Aetherial Waypoint to your domain."

"A solid foothold," Lyrielle noted, stepping up beside Vince and offering a rare, gorgeous smile. "The first celestial core of the Firmament belongs to us now."

"Take the city," Vince commanded smoothly, his voice echoing across the silent skyways of the newly conquered Waypoint. "Let's return to the citadel and celebrate."