Regulus of Hogwarts: Lord of the Stars

Regulus stopped shooting. Baruch stopped, his eight eyes fixed on him, and his front legs rose and fell, rose and fell again.

Regulus looked at it and inexplicably felt it resembled a puppy.

He twitched the corner of his mouth, then asked, "You really want it?"

Baruch was silent for a moment, then opened and closed his chelicerae a few times, making a very soft clicking sound: "Yes."

"Last time... the feeling... is gone..." There was something indescribable in its voice: "Father Aragog... is stronger than me... I haven't changed at all..."

Regulus then asked, "You knew it was fake last time?"

"I know," Baruch tapped the ground again with his foreleg, "I want...really...I don't want...fake..."

Regulus stared at it.

A spider, temporarily imbued with arrogance by a light source magic, awakens a desire for self-improvement.

This logic is somewhat absurd, but it holds true.

He thought for a moment and said, "Let me see what you can do now, and to what extent."

Baruch took a few steps back, then used all eight of its legs to spring forward, leaping off the rock and shooting forward at such speed that it left a trail of afterimages in the mist.

It ran back, raised its pincers, and grabbed a rock next to it. The rock was half the size of its body. The pincers bit its edge, and with a forceful bite, it broke into several pieces.

It retracted its chelicerae, and sprayed a spider silk from its abdomen, shooting straight at the trunk of a tree forty meters away. It stuck to the trunk, tightened its grip, and propelled itself forward.

It was extremely fast, and after landing, it looked back at Regulus.

It waved its chelipeds, opening and closing them twice, without caring whether Regulus could understand them, and then ran towards the nest, disappearing at the entrance.

Regulus waited a few minutes.

Baruch dragged a deer out of the den. It wasn't big, and its front legs were still kicking; it wasn't quite dead.

It dragged the deer to the front of the rock, loosened its claws, and took a step back.

The deer struggled on the ground, pawing at the ground twice with its front legs, but couldn't stand up.

Baruch leaned in, opened his mouth, and bit the deer's hind leg.

The moment the venom was injected, the deer's body froze, and its muscles lost control in a very short time, spreading forward from its hind legs.

Its front legs were still digging, but it stopped halfway through. Its whole body went limp, its eyes were still open, but its pupils were dilated.

Regulus watched the deer die in less than a second.

He nodded slightly: "Not bad."

Speed, strength, and silk-shooting range are all strong among individuals of the same size and age; this spider's qualities are indeed quite good.

Venom is a good thing; it's quick to inject and takes effect, but the injection method is too primitive—it can only be done by biting.

That's all.

Regulus looked at it and found it somewhat amusing.

Baruch was a ready-made experimental subject, and his willingness to cooperate made him far more valuable than a subject that cooperated passively.

The next stage of light magic requires observing long-term effects and needs an object that can continuously undergo experiments and clearly provide feedback on changes in its state.

Baruch also enjoyed being experimented on.

Intelligent beings generally dislike having their brains tampered with, but this one does.

There was something else that he found even more interesting.

What would happen if Baruch became powerful enough to break through the racial limitations of the eight-eyed giant spider?

The eight-eyed giant spider has a strong sense of community and naturally obeys its leader.

If it grows strong enough, will it challenge Aragog?

A spider-like version of seizing power and usurping the throne?

But before that, you need to look at it carefully.

Regulus said, "Stand still."

Baruch made a short click, retracted his front legs, and stopped moving, his eight eyes fixed on him.

Regulus probed into the magical senses, following the path of its magical flow, disassembling and smoothing out the magical structure of the eight-eyed giant spider in his mind.

He stayed inside for a while and came to a conclusion.

The magical structure of the eight-eyed giant spider is closed, rough, primitive, and has narrow loops.

Magic originates from the core, circulates throughout the body, and returns to the core after being largely depleted, resulting in low utilization.

This is an innate limitation at the racial level; every giant spider is born with this structure.

But innate limitations do not mean that one cannot move.

Regulus withdrew his senses and fell into thought.

He thought of the Disintegration Curse.

The essence of the Disintegration Curse is to return matter to a malleable state. Its underlying logic is to loosen things that have already taken shape, allowing organizational units to be rearranged.

Can it be used in reverse?

Reopen a sealed magic system, putting it in a state where it can be reorganized, and then introduce new combinations during that window of opportunity.

However, there is a problem: he used the Disintegration Charm on organic life forms before, but that was for lethal purposes, with the aim of completely disintegrating the structure.

No need to control magic, no need to set boundaries, just attack directly.

What needs to be done now is something else entirely: partially loosen it, but not fatally, to keep it from collapsing during the period of chaos, while simultaneously guiding its reorganization.

He wasn't confident in controlling the magic involved; it would take time.

Putting that problem aside for now, he thought that even if Baruch's magical structure loosened and was allowed to recombine naturally, the result would most likely just be a return to its original state.

Because racial instincts drive magic to find the most familiar balance.

For things to truly change, the direction of restructuring must be different.

He thought of natural magic.

The Forbidden Forest itself is a place with extremely strong magic, and natural magic permeates the soil, the air, every plant and every stone.

These magical powers have no master; they belong to the environment itself.

If we can guide the natural magic of the Forbidden Forest in during the window of opportunity when Baruch's magical structure is still malleable.

We have all the fantasy novel genres you like. Welcome to visit our site.

During the reorganization of Baruch's magical structure, external magical energy is naturally incorporated, forming an open interface.

After the reorganization is complete, its magic reserves remain the same, but the loops are wider, the efficiency is improved, and there is an additional channel to continuously draw magic from the Forbidden Forest, so the upper limit is different from now on.

This direction is feasible, but we can't take action tonight.

He needs to figure out how to control the force of the Disintegration Spell and how to define the loosening boundaries when it acts in the magical structure of living beings.

Before figuring out how long the window of opportunity is, and how to introduce the natural magic during that window, we can't start. Starting now would just mean killing Baruch.

Come when you're ready.

Baruch remained standing still, with eight eyes fixed on him.

Regulus looked at it too: "I have an idea, but I need to go back and prepare. I can't move now."

Baruch stretched his front leg forward slightly, then pulled it back: "When...did...that...?"

"Quickly," Regulus patted its forelegs, "don't tell the other spiders."

Baruch's chelicerae opened and closed slightly: "I won't tell."

It remained silent for a moment, then its chelipeds twitched slightly: "Father Aragog...should we tell him?"

Regulus said, "You decide for yourself."

Baruch didn't ask any more questions, and made a short click.

Regulus nodded: "Let's go."

Baruch escorted him to the edge of the depression, stopping at the bottom of the steep slope with a series of clicks, slow in rhythm, the sound fading downwards.

Regulus walked up the steep slope, glanced back at it from the top, waved his hand, and then Apparated and disappeared.

Inside the nest, Mossag had returned to its depths. Spider silk sealed off the passage behind it, layer upon layer, from the ground to the ceiling, completely isolating the space inside.

Aragog lay in the center of the nest, its largest pair of eyes closed, leaving only a narrow slit through which a pale white light shone.

Baruch climbed back down the steep slope into the depression, through the fog, into the nest, past the crawling spiders, and finally reached Aragog.

Its forequarters were lowered, its eight legs were tucked in, its chelicerae were closed, and it shrank into a crouching posture, pausing for a moment in front of Aragog.

Completely different from the arrogance shown when demonstrating its skills, it is now submitting, a spider's instinctive posture towards its leader.

Aragog's eye twitched slightly, but he made no other movement.

Baruch maintained his low profile, slowly crawling past it without increasing his speed, until he turned into the passage deep inside the nest and disappeared into the shadows.

Aragok closed his eyes again.

Regulus landed in the pumpkin patch next to Hagrid's hut. The lights in the direction of the headmaster's office were already off, and only a few windows on the top of the tower in the entire castle were still reflecting the moonlight.

He cast a flight spell, and his body floated up, drifting towards the tower.

The moon had already shifted to the west, hanging above the Forbidden Forest, lower and paler than when it arrived, and the clouds had thickened, obscuring most of the last bit of its silvery light.

When he flew over the Black Lake, the water was black, only flashing briefly when the wind blew, and then quickly darkening again.

Back in my dorm room, I quickly washed up, drew the curtains, and lay down.

Even with my eyes closed, I could still think about what I had just experienced.

Helping Baruch become stronger was a spur-of-the-moment idea, but now that I think about it, if it could actually be done, the significance wouldn't lie in a spider.

The key is the method: using the Disintegration Spell in reverse, loosening a sealed magical structure, allowing it to incorporate external forces during the reorganization process, and growing back into something new.

If this works, it won't just be effective on spiders or other magical creatures.

Would a wizard work?

Fantastic creatures possess magic, but their magic is singular.

A fire dragon breathes fire, and that's it; it doesn't do anything else.

The bird-snake can shrink and expand; shrinking and expanding are its entirety.

Thunderbirds can summon storms, but the storms are not something the thunderbirds create themselves; they are inherent in the feathers on their bodies.

The Invisible Beast is powerful; it can become invisible and has a bit of precognitive ability, which is quite complex among magical creatures. But invisibility is invisibility, and precognition is precognition; there is no third way to use it.

Most magical creatures are like this: powerful as they are, their magic manifests in a single and pure form.

This is their racial talent; they are born with it, and it becomes fixed as they grow up, never changing throughout their lives.

Wizards are different; they don't have racial talents, or rather, magic itself is their talent.

When a wizard is born, magic is a chaotic, unformed mass.

It was just there, waiting for the wizard to shape it into something.

Therefore, wizards can learn transfiguration, spells, black magic, alchemy, and can transform magic into a hundred or a thousand different things.

The price is that wizards have to spend their whole lives practicing. Some people are born with certain skills, but they are a very small minority.

If he wanted to do the same thing to wizards, loosening the magical structure, letting in external forces, and allowing it to grow into something new during the reorganization process, it would be more than just a technical problem to solve.

The magic of magical creatures is singular; take it apart, put it back together, and it's still in the same direction, just with some other things added.

A wizard's magic is chaotic; if you break it down, what will it become?

Who decides the direction?

How can we guarantee that there won't be any problems after the restructuring?

He couldn't answer any of these questions.

Therefore, we should try Baruch first to accumulate enough experience and figure out the pattern of the magic structure in the process of reorganization before considering others.

What if it works out?

If we could do the same for wizards, rebuilding their magical framework from the ground up, making their previously slow magic flow faster, and enabling them to cast spells they couldn't previously use.

To give him talents that he didn't have at birth.

Perhaps by then, one's background and bloodline will no longer matter; knowing him will be the most important thing.

Regulus twitched his lips and went to sleep.

Cola Novels, a professional online novel platform, offers the most comfortable reading experience.