Regulus of Hogwarts: Lord of the Stars

Regulus thought for a moment, and thought that Star Orbit Meditation might be one option.

The imagery of star trail meditation comes from the trajectories of stars. It wasn't his invention; it's a law of the universe itself. He simply borrowed this law to construct his own spiritual and magical framework.

The movement of stars is one of the oldest and most stable things in the physical world. Using it to anchor the soul and spirit may, in some way, give his magic a more fundamental attribute.

Maybe, he said, he couldn't be sure.

But this direction might be correct.

He took another step forward in his thinking.

Basilisk venom can destroy Horcruxes, which are the product of soul fragments attached to a material container.

What does the basilisk's venom destroy?

Is it a container, or a connection between the container and the soul fragment?

If it's a container, then it's simply corrosion at the material level, only the corrosion is so strong that even a magical container can't withstand it.

But what about connections?

What if the basilisk's venom breaks the line between soul and matter?

Phoenix tears can heal the wounds caused by basilisk venom, perhaps because phoenix tears repair precisely this line: the connection between the body and life force.

The basilisk venom disconnected, but Phoenix Tears reconnected.

One destroys, the other repairs; both affect the same thing.

What about the connection between the soul and the body?

Regulus thought of Barrow the Blood Man.

A ghost is a lingering form of the soul. When a person dies, their soul should leave but doesn't, remaining stuck in the middle.

If something like Phoenix Tears existed, could it help a stuck soul complete that step?

Or conversely, if someone wants to extract the soul from a living body, which is what Voldemort is doing, is there anything that can stop that process?

The direction is vague, but when you look at the basilisk venom and the phoenix tears together, they point to the same problem.

How solid is the boundary between the soul and the material world?

Or conversely, just how fragile is it?

Regulus stopped thinking about it; they had already arrived at the castle.

Maybe next semester I can go to the secret room to see the snake, observe the basilisk's magical structure up close, and perhaps verify some of the guesses.

He descended, landed on the astronomical tower, and walked inside.

Baruch was still perched on his shoulder, and his eight eyes finally turned away from the outside, beginning to survey the corridor.

Back in his dorm room, Regulus pushed open the door and went inside.

Avery and Alex were asleep, their bed curtains drawn, breathing evenly.

Hermes' bed was empty, the blankets were pulled to one side, the bathroom door was closed, and there was the sound of running water inside.

It's 2 a.m., this guy really knows how to stay up.

Regulus walked to his desk and opened the bottom drawer.

The drawer wasn't big; inside were a few notebooks, an ink bottle, and a box of wand maintenance tools.

He pushed those things inwards to make room.

He reached up to his shoulder, and Baruch's eight little legs slipped off the fabric, crawled into his palm, and he put them into the drawer.

Baruch, with his eight legs stepping on the notebook cover, walked back and forth a few steps, his chelicerae opening and closing as he surveyed the space.

Then it looked up at Regulus, its voice like a mosquito's buzz, but with a clicking quality: "This... is... the... home of the tribe...?"

Regulus shook his head: "This isn't home, this is school."

Baruch stared at him with all eight eyes: "School... lots of... wizards...?"

"Yes, many young wizards learn magic here."

"Little wizard..." Baruch's pincers opened and closed twice. "Can...you eat...?"

"You can't eat it."

Baruch was silent for a moment, then asked, "They..."

It pointed with its front paws to the two curtained beds next to it: "Also... wizards...?"

“Yes, they come from other groups,” Regulus thought for a moment, then rephrased, “other nests, different from mine, but we live together.”

Baruch's chelicerae paused for a moment. In the world of the giant spider, there is only one possibility for spiders from different nests to live together: one of them has been conquered.

"You...leader...?" Baruch asked.

Regulus's lips curled into a slight smile: "More or less."

Baruch moved his eight legs back and forth on the notebook a few times, opening and closing his chelicerae, seemingly satisfied.

"You stay here," Regulus said. "Don't climb out."

Baruch closed its pincers, tucked in its eight legs, and curled up in the innermost corner of the drawer, shrinking into a fluffy little ball, looking very obedient.

"Wait a few more days," Regulus said, looking at it. "I'll take you to my lair and make you powerful."

Baruch's eight legs sprang open in unison in the corner of the drawer, its chelicerae spread to their maximum extent, and its front legs tapped the notebook several times, making a "tap tap tap tap" sound.

"Amazing...amazing..."

Regulus closed the drawer, leaving a small gap for ventilation.

He turned and walked toward the washroom.

Hermes just came out from inside, wearing a bathrobe, his hair still wet, water droplets dripping down his hair.

The two passed each other at the doorway.

Hermes stopped, neither going in nor moving aside, and frowned slightly: "I heard you talking to something."

Regulus nodded: "A small animal."

Hermes frowned even more deeply.

He has no interest in small animals, and no one in his dorm keeps pets.

But something about Regulus talking to a small animal made him feel uneasy.

A picture flashed through his mind.

Regulus squatted on the ground, looking at the furry little thing with a gentle expression and a soft voice, like a little witch talking to her pet cat and saying something like "Baby, be good."

The image had barely appeared in his mind for a second when goosebumps rose on his back.

No, this is really wrong. It's even more unsettling than black magic.

He shuddered.

Regulus looked at the expression on his face and wondered what the guy was thinking, but whatever it was, it certainly wasn't anything serious.

"The little animals that can kill you," Regulus added.

Hermes' expression became more animated.

At first, he didn't believe it—what small animal could kill him?

If he unleashes his dark magic, every single cat and dog in Hogwarts will die.

Then he thought about it. There were quite a few magical creatures that could kill him, but the ones he could keep in his dorm room were at most pets with some magical creature blood.

Upon further reflection, it was Regulus who said those words.

Then he has to believe.

Hermes frowned even more deeply: "What is it?"

"I'll introduce you to him tomorrow morning," Regulus said, taking a step into the bathroom. "I put it in the drawer. Don't go through it; it's dangerous."

Hermes glanced at Regulus's desk for a moment, then looked back and nodded.

He stepped aside from the door, walked back to his bed, and lay down.

I obediently didn't look into it.

Regulus went into the washroom, and his mind was still racing even while he was washing up.

Baruch was curled up in the drawer, behaving very obediently, but he needed to figure out what to do next.

The initial plan was to use the Disintegration Spell to loosen Baruch's magical structure, introduce the natural magic of the Forbidden Forest, and allow its magical system to expand its circuits and break racial restrictions during the reconstruction process.

This plan is still retained as the foundation.

After reading "Transfiguration: Beyond Forms", he had a new idea.

Cross-species ability transfer: things that wizards can use, can be modified so that magical creatures can also use them.

In some ways, magical creatures may even have an advantage over wizards.

A wizard's magic is chaotic, capable of transforming into a hundred different things, but this also means that its direction is uncertain. When external magical properties are introduced, there are too many conflicts between them and the wizard's own magic.

Fantastic creatures possess singular magic, a definite direction, and pure thoughts; they don't have many other ideas.

As long as you control the injection and direction of the magic, the success rate should be even higher than that of a wizard.

Now that we have this idea and it's technically feasible, why not do it right away for Baruch, or take it slowly but more thoroughly?

Regulus began to consider which magical creatures' abilities would suit Baruch.

The racial talents of the eight-eyed giant spider are venom, spider silk, strength, and speed, but these are more physical, with little involvement of magic.

What he wanted to add was something more magical.

Bird-snake.

Birds can change their body size according to the size of the space.

Spiders are naturally adept at squeezing into crevices and ambushing from the shadows. If Baruch could control his size, enlarging himself during battle to increase his strength and coverage, and shrinking himself when sneaking around to increase his stealth, he could achieve the same effect.

The magical structure of avian snakes and spiders should be quite compatible. Both species are cold-blooded, rely on ambush strategies, have overlapping ecological niches, and their underlying magical tendencies may be similar.

Invisible Beast.

The core abilities of the Invisible Beast are invisibility and brief precognition.

For the Octopod, stealth is the ultimate enhancement to its ambush capabilities, and brief precognition is an almost cheat-like ability.

However, the magic structure of the Invisible Beast is quite different from that of the Spider. The Invisible Beast is a mammal, and its magic works in a way that is very different from that of arthropods. Compatibility is an issue, and more adjustments may be needed.

Tree protector hunchback.

The tree-protecting bower can communicate with trees and sense the state and emotions of plants.

The Forbidden Forest is full of trees. If Baruch could establish some kind of connection with the plants of the Forbidden Forest, he would be a creature on another level within it.

The roots of the trees spread throughout every inch of the Forbidden Forest soil, and the spider webs cover the tree canopy and the ground. The two webs are superimposed, so it can know immediately what happens in the Forbidden Forest.

Moreover, this ability has a natural synergy with the subsequent steps of introducing the natural magic of the Forbidden Forest.

If Baruch could communicate with plants, it would be much more efficient at drawing natural magic from the Forbidden Forest.

The Bowtruckle is small in size and not very powerful, but its magical properties are highly related to natural magic and are a natural fit for the Forbidden Forest environment.

Salamander.

The fire salamander's core ability is fire resistance—simple, singular, but practical.

He uses Fiendfire himself, so if Baruch follows him in the future, it's a basic requirement that he won't be accidentally injured within the range of Fiendfire.

The giant eight-eyed spider is afraid of fire. Its webs are flammable, and its exoskeleton has limited heat resistance. Flames are a natural enemy of spiders.

The fire salamander's magic structure is extremely simple, and it has the least conflict with the spider's magic, making it probably the easiest of these magic types to fuse with.

Four abilities, four directions.

The bird-snake solves the size problem, the cloaked beast solves the concealment and combat problems, the tree-guarding bower solves the environmental connection problem, and the fire salamander solves the survival problem.

However, the book states that two or more foreign spells will conflict with each other if they exist in the same body.

While the magic of magical creatures is more singular than that of wizards, and the conflicts might be less, it's definitely not feasible to cram four types into one at once.

So we'll do it one by one, combining one at a time, and adding the next one once it's stable.

The fire salamander is the simplest, so you can start with this as your first experiment.

If successful, then proceed with the contraction and expansion of the bird-snake.

Next is the plant communication with the Bowtruckle, which will be done together when we return to the Forbidden Forest to introduce natural magic. We'll combine the two steps into one, establishing a connection with the environment simultaneously.

The Invisible Beast is the most difficult, so I'll save it for last.

As for the step of loosening the magical structure by breaking the spell, we can wait.

Today, I used the middle level of the Disintegration Curse on the goblin, and he turned to ash instantly. Baruch is much stronger than the goblin, but he's not sure if he can withstand this force.

Perhaps we could try a different approach: first, we could fuse several abilities into Baruch to strengthen its foundation. Once it has become powerful enough, we could then use the Disintegration Spell to modify its magic circuitry.

At that time, its resilience will be much higher, and its success rate will be much higher.

Even further, if we could understand the principles behind the basilisk's incubation ritual, we might be able to make even more thorough modifications to Baruch.

That's a different level of stuff. No rush, let's focus on doing what we have right now.

Regulus dried his hair and left the washroom.

Hermes was already lying down, the curtains drawn, and he was sleeping soundly as if he were dead.

He walked to the desk, gently pulled open the drawer, and glanced inside.

Baruch curled up in the corner, his eight legs tucked in, shrinking into a smaller ball of fur than before.

As Regulus's face approached, it opened and closed its chelipeds, making a very soft and subtle clicking sound.

greet.

Regulus closed the drawer, leaving a gap, and lay down on the bed.

Waiting for the holidays, they'll come little by little.

go to bed.