It was as if the storm itself compelled Charles to leap atop the dragon. Lightning twisted around his arms and legs, flickering over his armor with snakelike movements.
Shoulders blazing with violet flames, Charles pressed forward. Each measured step on the dragon's scaled spine resounded loudly, but he maintained perfect balance.
"Hold the line!" he shouted behind him.
The beast shrieked, twisting violently like a living cyclone. Its tail lashed out, smashing stones upward. The peak quaked, yet the Binding Storm Array contracted, forcing the winds under Charles's control.
Snarling, Charles plunged the talisman toward the dragon with a swift, decisive motion.
"YIELD!"
Charles struck the dragon's neck with the Soulbinding Talisman from the Tempest Sovereign's scroll. Instantly, it unfurled—less like paper tearing, more like an explosion of storm energy. Silver and indigo runes blazed to life, racing across the dragon's body like holy fire.
The runes seized rather than crawled. The dragon roared, energy screaming skyward as thunder cracked and clouds split above.
The entire mountain shook beneath their feet as the soul-binding ritual began.
Charles's eyes snapped wide.
Reality twisted.
Suddenly, he stood—not on stone—but in an endless sky of lightning and storm.
The mental plane.
The battlefield of will.
In this inner realm, there was no team. No arrays. No, Wendy is flipping through the air with witty banter. No SIGMA to whisper sarcastic diagnostics in his ear.
Just Charles.
And the storm.
All around, reality shimmered with pressure: endless spirals of sky, coiling thunderclouds resembling dragons, arcing lightning slicing the wind. No ground existed—only swirling clouds, buffeting wind, and a near-solid weight that made each breath a struggle.
And then it appeared.
The soul of the Azure Tempest Dragon coalesced before him. It was a titanic, serpentine specter of crackling lightning and primal wind. It rose like a celestial typhoon, each movement birthing cyclones in the air around it. Its wings were made of cloudstuff and stormlight. Its eyes blazed—two radiant stars of pure, sovereign hate.
Then came the voice.
Not spoken. Not heard. But felt.
"WHO DARES…"
The words cut through his bones like a bell ringing in a war god's church.
The pressure of a presence that had scared armies and burned the sky pressed on him. Every breath felt like it might break.
But Charles… smiled.
He straightened his storm-dusted coat, adjusted the cuff of one sleeve like he was about to stroll into a company merger, not a storm-born apocalypse.
"I dare."
"YOU ARE BUT A MORTAL ANT. A FLECK OF FLESH AND DUST. I HAVE REIGNED FOR CENTURIES. I HAVE BROUGHT LOW SKYSHIPS AND SILENCED THE TITANBELLS OF VELMORA—"
Charles cut in with the timing of a man who'd heard too many investor presentations.
"Sky god complex, huh? That's fresh. Let me guess—'mighty, immortal, unbeatable?'"
The dragon's form surged—wind screaming in every direction, bolts of lightning snapping into being across the void. The beast charged, a spiraling mass of pride and primal fury, its maw open wide to consume his very soul.
Charles didn't move.
He didn't flinch.
He raised his hand.
And he opened his core.
From within him erupted a blinding inferno—not wild, not reckless, but ordered, precise. Twin elemental forces burst into the storm-realm. Violet flame pulsed with grief and vengeance. Storm-forged lightning coiled with clarity and defiance. The energies didn't fight—they danced. In harmony. In dominance.
The storm paused.
The Azure Tempest Dragon froze mid-lunge, its massive form hovering in disbelief, caught in a cyclone it no longer controlled.
"…IMPOSSIBLE…"
"YOU BEAR THE MARK… THE WILL… OF THE TEMPEST SOVEREIGN."
Charles hovered above the stormy void, arcs of violet and silver flame outlining him. His eyes were clear—sharpened by betrayal, loss, and grit.
He stepped forward, each motion sending ripples through the soulstorm.
"That's right."
"THE TEMPEST SOVEREIGN IS DEAD. HIS FLAME EXTINGUISHED. HIS DOMAIN—BROKEN."
Charles tilted his head slightly, a half-smirk curving his lips.
"Yeah. But he left something behind."
Another step. Stormlight bent around him.
"Me."
A pause.
The silence was heavier than thunder.
Then the sky bowed.
The dragon's colossal body rippled with resistance. It twitched—once, twice. Then, slowly, as though breaking through an ocean of ancestral pride, it lowered its massive head. The celestial winds calmed. Its wings furled inward, folding like the petals of a star-forged flower. A growl—deep, reverent, pained—rumbled from its chest.
"…Then I am yours."
It wasn't surrender.
It was fealty.
The storm bowed to the stormborn.
The dragon's soul erupted with new sigils—a contract blazing across the mental sky. Divine lightning chains, wrapped in sovereign flame, linked their souls.
The Soulbinding was complete.
Charles exhaled, slow and shaky. Sweat dripped from his brow, vision blurred by the effort of taming a beast that once devoured warbands for breakfast.
He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, muttering under his breath.
"Good boy."
[Core Realm Rank 8: Soulbound Mount Acquired: Azure Tempest Dragon]
Name status: Not claimed. Title: Waiting for a name.
Level of loyalty: probationary.
Be careful: Apex-class creatures might still bite.
Congratulations. You now have a legal right to an engine of divine destruction. Don't let it crash.]
Charles laughed softly as the world around him faded away.
"Understood." But I can't promise anything.
And with that, his soul shot back into the real world. His heart was beating steadily, lightning was dancing at his fingertips, and the storm was no longer above him.
It followed him now.
Reality snapped back like a thundercrack.
Charles stood once more atop the dragon's skull, its vast body still trembling beneath him. The silver-indigo runes pulsed across its form—no longer fighting, but sealing.
Around them, the shattered remnants of the arrays dimmed. Stone chains crumbled. The Seal of the Abyss dissipated like mist. And silence fell—deafening after the chaos of war.
The Azure Tempest Dragon lowered its massive head before him, wings furling with reverence.
Charles stood there, coat billowing in the wind, Emberfang still glowing faintly in his right hand. His left rested on the dragon's horn like a crown on a king's brow.
He turned to the others.
Kael, Karel, Wendy, Borris, Andy, Donald—all frozen mid-battle stance.
Mouths hung open. Chests heaved. Eyes wide.
"...Well," Charles muttered, wiping a streak of blood from his cheek, "that went better than expected."
It sounded like Wendy had been holding her breath for ten minutes. "You're crazy."
Kael fell next to her, laughing so hard he couldn't breathe. "He's our crazy."
Donald stumbled forward, limping a little and with crazy eyes. "Did he just—? Did you really—?"
"Control a dragon?" "No," Charles said with a smile. "I tamed it."
SIGMA rang softly in his head, almost like it was a song.
[The soulbinding is done. The Azure Tempest Dragon has been registered. Well done, Master.
Charles cocked his head. "You didn't think I'd pull it off, did you?"
[To quote your probability report: "Charles Ziglar's success likelihood in subduing a Core Realm 8 Azure Dragon: 0.06%. Confidence interval: humorously delusional."]
"Shows what you know."
[Correction: shows what you just did.]
[System Interface – SIGMA Operational Layer: Sovereign Dragon Protocol Initialized ]
The storm clouds had not yet dispersed when the skies shimmered with arcane flickers—digital, divine, undeniable.
A cool pulse of violet light swept across Charles's retina.
[Mission Completed: Subdue and Soulbind a High-Tier Magibeast – Azure Tempest Dragon (Core Realm Rank 8)]
[Performance Review: Legendary Tier—Triple Affinity Synchronization Achieved]
Charles let out a slow breath. The wind wrapped around him, respectful and charged. It felt as if nature itself was bowing in recognition of what had just happened. The dragon, now quiet and tied up, lay beneath him like a storm that had been defeated. It sounded like divine circuitry coming through a king's throne when SIGMA spoke.
"Initializing credit protocol..."
A swirl of numbers lit up in his mind's eye, falling like gold rain behind his eyelids.
Credited with 50,000 gold coins.
[Deposited to Stellar Bank – Vault Tier II]
[Transaction Reference: SIGMA_PULSE_DRAGON_TAMING_PROTOCOL]
"Not bad," Charles said under his breath, still sitting on the beast's horn, the violet flames on the hem of his coat slowly fading.
But SIGMA was far from finished.
Loot sequence complete. Registering artifacts and integration eligibility.
First came a shimmer—an echo of lightning and will, crystallizing into a translucent crown suspended midair. It descended slowly, pulsing with sky-blue resonance.
The Crown of the Stormheir.
Forged from condensed lightning and a shard of the dragon's mind-core, the crown hovered for a moment, as if measuring his worth, before settling lightly on Charles's head. It burned cold with the memory of storms, a headpiece fit not for a prince—but a conqueror of the skies.
A second pulse swept across the mountain peak. The remains of the storm condensed into a small, rotating orb the color of dusk and dawn, light and dark. Charles reached for it instinctively, palm closing around cool magic.
The Echo Pearl of the Sovereign Sky.
It whispered to him. Faint words. Ancient syllables from the Tempest Sovereign himself, long buried in history.
"You, who command lightning and beast alike... will rewrite the heavens."
Charles raised a brow. "I like where this is going."
But SIGMA wasn't done.
Something crackled deep in his dantian, like a flare or a violent coming together of elements. A piece of glass, glowing purple and white-hot, came out of the side of the dragon and floated toward him. He didn't move when it went through his chest, burning for a heartbeat, and then it was gone.
A piece of the Violet Flame Core.
His qi shook. His spirit moved. Violet flames swirled at the edge of his vision, dancing next to the shadows that were deep inside. A new kind of instability took hold. It wasn't hostile, but it was unstable.
Warning: Qi mutation found. Within 12 hours, it was suggested that you meditate in a stabilized elemental chamber.
Charles smiled. "How boring would life be if there were no risks?"
Then came the last update. It hit him out of the blue, like a commandment carved into reality itself:
New Skill Unlocked: Soulbinding Tier Advanced [Thronebrand: Sovereign Chain of Shadows]
And just like that, a lot of information came in.
He saw it: a living flame and darkness that wrapped around the beast like a leash made of divine energy. Not only in his mind, but also in the very marrow of his bones, he felt it click into place. A connection that goes beyond obeying. A deal that brought together qi, will, and instinct.
His aura surged. The dragon's eyes glowed with synchronized light.
He stepped off the creature's back, landing lightly beside Wendy, who was still recovering her breath.
"You good?" he asked casually.
Wendy stared at him like he'd just married death and made it purr. "What the hell are you?"
"A gentleman," Charles replied solemnly. "With expensive taste in pets."
Kael landed nearby, whistling low. "You actually did it. You bound a Core Realm 8 dragon."
"Technically, I flirted with death, slapped it, and gave it a business card," Charles said, brushing dragon blood from his coat.
The Azure Tempest Dragon lowered its massive head, wings folding in regal submission. Its breath no longer crackled with defiance, but anticipation.
[Soulbinding Complete. Azure Tempest Dragon Registered.]
[Master Control Channel: Stable.]
[Beastflight: Tempest Cruise Mode Unlocked.]
[Flight Authorization: Granted. Mount Skill Tree: Updated.]
SIGMA's voice rang once more—softer now. Proud.
"Congratulations, Lord Charlemagne. You have not only defied probability… You have earned dominion."
Charles placed a hand on the dragon's horn. It trembled beneath his touch—not with fear, but respect.
"I should name you," he mused aloud. "Something grand. Something terrifying."
The dragon tilted its head slightly, as if awaiting judgment.
"How about…" Charles smirked. "Nimbus. Because you're full of hot air and lightning."
Wendy groaned. "Why are you like this?"
Kael snorted with laughter. "He names a divine beast like it's a stray dog."
The dragon huffed. Steam rolled from its nostrils—either approval or mild disdain.