Regulus of Hogwarts: Lord of the Stars

Chapter 340 Instinct and Redefinition

Regulus put away his wand, a smile playing on his lips. "All done."

Baruch turned his head, and eight eyes looked at him.

Its chelipeds opened and closed twice, the sound a little louder than before, echoing in the empty room, its voice tinged with a hint of probing: "...All done?"

Regulus stood up, patted its carapace, and nodded: "All done."

Baruch also stood up.

It turned its head once, then its body, and its chelicerae opened and closed rapidly twice, clicking and clicking.

It first raised its right foreleg, and a ring around the base of its bristles changed color, from dark brown to dark red, and tinged with reddish-brown in the firelight of the fireplace.

It turned its head back again, wanting to see its carapace.

However, the spider's head can only turn to a limited angle; it can only turn halfway before it stops. All that can be seen are extremely fine lines at the joints of its forelegs, which reflect light slightly.

Baruch thought for a moment, then lifted his front leg and tentatively took two steps toward the fireplace.

Before, when it saw the fire in the fireplace, it would instinctively pull itself back, but not anymore.

It took another step forward, its bristles swaying slightly in the flames, neither curled nor charred.

It looked down at its legs, then at the fire in the fireplace, probably feeling puzzled.

The fire is still the same fire, but I am no longer the same spider.

Then it glanced at Regulus, stuck out its rear end, and sprayed another stream of spider silk into the corner of the roof.

After I finished spraying, I looked back at him.

Regulus still didn't say anything. Baruch wiggled his butt, turned his big head away from him, and continued to focus on examining himself.

It lifts its front legs to look around, then puts them down, kicks its hind legs, twists its abdomen, and turns every angle that its eight eyes can reach.

It put its legs down, stomped the ground twice, and then stood there motionless.

After all, they are magical creatures, and they can always sense that they are different from others.

A small, faint magical force had entered my body. It was subtle and weak, but it was definitely there, warm and cozy, like the fire in a fireplace.

Regulus led Baruch out of the hut.

It was completely dark.

The small lamp illuminated the open space brightly; beyond that, it was pitch black. The sea breeze came from the west, blowing the withered grass eastward.

He raised his right hand, tapped his index finger lightly, and a ball of orange-red flame shot out from his fingertip, landing on the open ground a dozen meters in front of him.

Flames leaped high, howling in the wind, the heat distorting the surrounding air, and the withered grass on the ground curled and charred at the edges of the flames.

The magical flames were much hotter than the fireplace fire, and the flames shot up more than five meters high.

The base of the flame was bluish, while the edges were white. The heat wave surged from that direction, and even from a distance of more than ten meters, you could feel your face burning.

Baruch stood behind him, his large head protruding from above his shoulder, eight eyes fixed on the fire.

Previously, the fireplace fire was only two feet away from its limit; any closer and its instincts would start to tell it to flee, its eight legs would uncontrollably retreat, and its bristles would stand on end.

Now, that magical flame is much hotter, and it should have run away long ago, given how close it is. But it stands more than ten meters away and doesn't react at all.

It peeked its head off Regulus's shoulder and turned to look at him.

He patted its front leg: "Want to try?"

Baruch turned back, looked at the fire, and then it moved forward, its eight legs taking slow but steady steps.

Walking to the edge of the flames, it raised its front legs and stepped in. The flames curled upwards along the bristles, and the dark red at the base shone even brighter under the high temperature.

It took another step, and half of its body went into the fire.

The orange-red flames danced on the dark brown bristles, the carapace was engulfed in flames, without any scorch marks, without any burning sound, and not even a single hair curled up.

The fire affinity branch activated within its body, and fresh magic spread along the joint spaces of the limbs, flowing through the appendages and joints, covering the entire body.

The white light in its eight eyes was reflected by the flames, turning it into a translucent amber color. Its pincers opened and closed twice, and the flames, carried by the airflow, circled around its pincers.

It stepped all eight of its legs into the fire and stood in the center of the flames.

Orange-red flames enveloped it from all sides, sliding from the tips of the bristles to the surface of the exoskeleton, darting through the joint gaps, and emerging from the other side.

Then its eight legs went limp, and its whole body lay in the flames. Its chelipeds opened and closed twice, stirring up a small ball of flame, and then relaxed.

Baruch's voice came from within the flames: "...Warm."

Regulus stood a dozen meters away, watching a two-meter-long, eight-eyed giant spider crawling in the flames.

The fire is burning, and the spider is in the fire, looking quite comfortable.

He smiled.

After a long while, Baruch remembered that Regulus was still standing outside, and disregarding his own comfort, he climbed out of the fire.

Even with flames still burning on its body, it ignored them, walked up to Regulus, lay down, and looked at him. Its originally bright white eyes had now turned into a translucent amber color.

With this in-and-out process, the changes in appearance become more obvious; the addition of the transformation technique will leave a mark on the physiological level.

The bristles around its belly had also changed color, transitioning from dark brown to dark red, and gleaming with a reddish-brown sheen in the firelight.

This color will gradually spread from the abdomen to the limbs, eventually giving the entire body of bristles a dark red base color.

The texture of the shell has also changed.

Regulus reached out and touched the edge of Baruch's carapace; the sensation was different from before.

It has an extra layer of fine keratinous texture, like a miniature version of a salamander's scales. It's not very visible to the naked eye, but you can feel it clearly with your fingers.

Extremely fine lines appeared on the edges of the exoskeleton at the joints, reflecting several small warm-colored spots of light under the bulb of light.

These changes are permanent.

Baruch transformed from a pure eight-eyed giant spider into an eight-eyed giant spider bearing the magical imprint of a fire lizard.

The race hasn't changed, but the body isn't exactly the same as the factory settings.

He stood in the open space, the flames still burning, and Baruch lay at his feet, his back armor reflecting the firelight.

He looked at the spider, but his mind was elsewhere.

The giant eight-eyed spider is not a natural species.

Half a century ago, a wizard named Komodo Lil first bred this breed on the island of Borneo.

Later, Lil took them to England and released them near Hogwarts. The branch in the Forbidden Forest was bred from Aragog, which Hagrid took from Lil.

From its birth until 1974, the Octopoda species existed for only about fifty years. Baruch's grandfathers were among the earliest products forcibly created by magic.

What can you do in fifty years?

Enough for three generations to reproduce, enough for the species to take root in the forbidden forest, enough for every young spider to know the fear of fire from the moment it hatches.

The fear of fire was something Lil introduced when he was raising them.

He combined the magic and flesh of various spider species. The original spiders were afraid of fire, and the product of the combination was also afraid of fire.

This fear does not come from natural selection; it is an underlying condition brought in by the Creator.

But the effect is the same.

Whether it's etched into the magic over millions of years of evolution or brought in by a wizard's breeding experiment fifty years ago, what's written in the magic structure is instinct.

Instinct doesn't ask about its origin; it just does what it's supposed to do.

Every giant eight-eyed spider is afraid of fire. They don't need to learn, experience, or be burned even once; they will retreat the first time they see an open flame.

This fear worked in the Forbidden Forest, but Baruch was no longer in the Forbidden Forest.

It followed a wizard who used Fiendfire as a weapon, lived in a house with a fireplace, and was almost always seen with firelight around it.

Its instincts tell it that fire is deadly, but its life tells it that fire is something that happens every day.

What Regulus did was simple: to get Baruch's body in line with the life he had chosen.

It chose to follow him, so its instincts should follow as well.

He didn't get rid of Baruch's fear; he made fear lose its reason for existence.

Fear is a reaction; something is going to hurt you, and your body makes the decision for you before you even encounter it: run.

But now, the premise is gone, and the reaction is just going nowhere.

Baruch's body could no longer be injured by fire, so his reaction of running away from fire was no longer a fundamental one.

If the foundation is demolished, the building on top will collapse on its own.

He continued to think about it more deeply.

The giant spider's fear of fire is ingrained, but what about its other instincts?

Spiders spin webs by instinct, fish stay in water by instinct, and birds fly in the sky by instinct.

Some evolved, some were created, but no matter how they came about, once they are written into an organism, they become unchangeable facts.

But is it really unchangeable?

He just spent the whole night revising one.

What was once an unchangeable fact has become a changed fact.

What about the others?

If you can change your fear of fire, can you change your fear of water? What about your fear of light? What about your fear of darkness?

Once again.

Fear is a protective mechanism on an evolutionary scale, but a limitation on an individual scale.

If fear has changed, can restrictions be changed as well?

Spiders cannot fly, fish cannot go ashore, and people cannot breathe underwater.

These limitations were set from the very beginning of the species.

Magic has broken through some of these barriers: the Bubble Head Charm allows people to breathe underwater, the Flying Broomstick makes people fly, and the Transfiguration spell turns beetles into buttons.

But those are cheat codes; once the incantation stops, a person still can't breathe underwater.

What he just did for Baruch was an embedded feature, not an add-on.

The fire affinity attribute is ingrained in Baruch's magical structure, becoming a permanent, inseparable part of him.

Baruch wasn't a spider cursed with fire immunity; he was a spider that wasn't afraid of fire.

The former is a temporary state maintained by external forces, while the latter is something that is inherently like this.

A spider that is not afraid of fire.

Its creator, Lil, did not grant it this ability, but another wizard did.

The Creator defined what it is; magic redefines what it can be.

He glanced down at Baruch.

Baruch lay at his feet, his eight round, amber eyes staring at him, his chelipeds opening and closing occasionally, looking very relaxed.

It probably doesn't think about these things; spiders don't need philosophy.

But what happened to it is more real than most philosophical questions.

A species that was defined at the time of its creation was partially redefined by another person fifty years later.

A portion of it is enough for it to lie in the fire and say "warmth."

Regulus turned his gaze away from Baruch and looked at the flames still burning in the distance.

The process is running smoothly.

Extracting the magical tendencies of the target organism, replicating and rewriting the operating path to adapt to the host's body shape, implanting it with shapeshifting magic, and using natural magic as a binder.

To implement spatial scaling for the Bird-Snake, plant perception for the Tree-Protecting Bowtruckle, and stealth prediction for the Invisible Beast, we will simply repeat this process.

He waved his hand to extinguish the distant flames and patted Baruch on the shoulder: "Let's go back."

Baruch stood up, shook the dust off his bristles, and followed him toward the hut.

As it passed the doorway, it lowered its head and slipped inside.

Once inside, it circled around, chose a spot directly in front of the fireplace, lay down, and spread its eight legs out.

The fireplace warmed its body, and the firelight seeped through the gaps in the bristles, casting dancing orange spots of light on the surface of its carapace.

The safe distance used to be two feet, but now it lies close to the stone edge of the fireplace, its head directly into the fire.

Its chelipeds opened and closed slightly: "...Warm."

Regulus sat down on the edge of the bed and looked at the spider lying in a puddle.

Its dark red bristles, amber eyes, and the warm-colored stripes newly grown at its joints shimmered in the firelight.

A new Baruch.