Regulus of Hogwarts: Lord of the Stars

Chapter 397 The Naming of the Baruch Race?

Before setting off in the evening, Regulus went back to his dormitory.

Baruch lay in the fireplace, the flames enveloping him, his dark red bristles gleaming like scales in the firelight.

Hearing footsteps, it rolled over in the embers, propped itself up on its eight legs, and opened and closed its pincers twice towards the doorway, making a clicking sound and stirring up a few sparks.

Regulus sat down at his desk, took the soft leather bag from the drawer, and pulled out a piece of Swedish short-nosed dragon neck meat.

Baruch sprang from the fireplace and landed on the table. His eight legs busied themselves, his chelicerae opened, and he pounced to bite.

Dark purple shreds of flesh were torn from the fascia, and blood trickled down the wood grain of the table.

By now, their picky eating habits have become completely ingrained.

It used to eat whatever it was given, but ever since it got to pick and choose from the Malfoys' plate, it has refused to settle for anything else.

But it's not a problem. It's not like we can't afford to raise them. If we have the means, we can feed them well.

Regulus watched it tear apart its flesh, even thinking that he could take Baruch back to the Aragog den.

Let those eight-eyed giant spiders who are still gnawing on goblins see what kind of food the spiders who follow him are eating now.

Do you want it?

I've hidden the dragon meat at Hogwarts. Go find it.

He watched it eat for a while, then habitually applied his magical perception.

The fire lizard part has completely integrated into Baruch's magic system.

It's been a month and a half since the Christmas holidays.

The flame affinity that was grafted in was originally just a lonely branch, stuck in the gap between the poison gland and the spider silk gland. It was only because of the buffer of natural magic that it was not squeezed out by the rejection reaction.

Now that branch road has become integrated with Baruch's original magic circuit, representing a penetration at the level of magic.

The tendrils that grew from the ends of the flame-affinity branches circled twice along the spider silk gland branches before heading deeper.

The toxin gland system was also affected, and even the edges of the eight lines dividing the vision began to show the same patterns.

The structure of the entire magic system, in my perception, resembles a tree covered with vines.

The vines are no longer foreign; they intertwine with the tree branches, and in some places it's impossible to distinguish between the vines and the bark.

The changes in magic directly affected Baruch.

The magic of spider silk glands originally only had two attributes: spraying and solidification. Now, the solidification part has an additional layer of fire affinity attached to it.

The spider silk that Baruch spewed was no longer afraid of fire.

In the past, when exposed to open flame, it would instantly turn brittle and crumble into powder. Later, when wrapped in a fireball, it could withstand the flame without breaking, its edges burning black and curling, but its structure remained intact.

Now, spider silk shoots out from the toast maker, enveloping a ball of fire. The flames burn fiercely within the web, yet the web itself doesn't even change color.

The venom has also changed.

In the past few days, Baruch has been having to expel a little venom from his fangs every now and then. After the magic seeps into the venom glands, the nature of the venom changes. He's probably not feeling well and can't hold onto it.

The dripping venom landed on the charcoal block, but instead of drying out, it burned a small ring of scorch marks on the surface of the charcoal block and corroded several tiny pits.

Baruch lay in the fireplace, poked his head out, and pushed the piece of coal aside with his foreleg.

It didn't take it seriously, but Regulus noticed.

The fire lizard module has covered the entire magic core, from venom to spider silk, from eyes to legs, inside and out, it is covered with fire affinity, just like it grew out of itself.

Baruch cleaned the last bit of dragon meat from his chelipeds, rubbed his forelegs against his bristles, then raised his head, his eight amber eyes all staring at Regulus, and gently opened and closed his chelipeds twice.

Regulus looked at it, and a thought popped into his head.

This spider should now be considered a new species.

The appearance hasn't changed much, except for the warm-colored markings at the joints, the gradient of the bristles from dark brown to dark red, and the extra layer of fine keratin on the carapace that reflects a scale-like sheen under the light.

However, the classification of magical creatures should not be based solely on appearance.

The magic structure of the eight-eyed giant spider is closed, rough, and has narrow loops. The magic starts from the core, circles around the body, and returns to the core, by which time most of it has been lost. This is an innate limitation at the racial level.

Baruch's current magic system now includes a complete fire affinity circuit that doesn't belong to the Eight-Eyed Giant Spider, and this circuit is actively infiltrating and rewriting the original magic properties.

The venom glands no longer secrete only venom, and the process of solidifying the spider silk is no longer just a physical entanglement. Even the magical fluctuations in the visual branches have a subtle thermal radiation texture.

Based on the nature of its magic, it no longer falls into the category of the eight-eyed giant spider.

It should have a new race name, but don't rush, there are still several modifications to come, such as the spatial scaling of the bird-snake and the stealth prediction of the invisible beast, all in line.

Once everything is done, we'll give it a race name.

What we call it then depends on how it ends up. Maybe we can hold a contest to decide.

Regulus reached out and tapped on Baruch's back armor.

Baruch raised his head, his chelicerae clicked, and the dark red bristles brushed against his fingers, smoother than before. The keratinous texture bulged slightly under his fingers, like scales growing upside down.

The original modifications assigned to Baruch were based on increasing difficulty.

The fire lizard is the simplest; its magical structure is a straight line, with only one tendency from beginning to end: fire affinity.

Let's use this as our first experiment to get the process running smoothly and, incidentally, solve the survival problem.

Being unafraid of fire is of paramount importance.

Regulus is a master of arson, and Baruch follows him around every day. If he were to accidentally burn his own spider, hair and shell, one day that would be truly bad luck.

Starting today, we've taken that step.

Below that is the spatial scaling of the bird-snake.

Spiders are naturally adept at squeezing into gaps. If Baruch could control his size, enlarging his body during combat to increase strength and coverage, and shrinking his body during stealth to increase concealment, his entire tactical dimension would jump a level.

Birds, snakes, and spiders are all cold-blooded, have overlapping ecological niches, and may have similar magical tendencies.

Next is the ability to foresee the invisibility of invisible beasts.

For the eight-eyed giant spider, stealth is the ultimate enhancement to its ambush capabilities.

That brief premonition is like a cheat code, allowing it to anticipate the opponent's movements in battle, giving it an almost uncounterable first-strike advantage.

Once all of this is done, Baruch's body and magic system will be strong enough.

Then, use the Disintegration Spell to loosen its magical structure, introduce the natural magic of the Forbidden Forest, and allow the entire system to widen its pathways and break racial restrictions during the reconstruction process.

The original plan was to do the plant communication for the grosbeak at this step.

Just as the natural magic entered his body, he used the Bowtruckle module to build a bridge, allowing Baruch to communicate directly with the plants.

The Forbidden Forest is full of trees. If Baruch could truly connect with the vegetation of the Forbidden Forest, with tree roots penetrating every inch of the soil and spider webs covering the tree canopies and the ground, the two sets of webs would overlap, making the entire Forbidden Forest its sensory domain. It would be the first to know if there was any slight movement in the forest.

The problem is that we can't get our hands on the bird snake right now.

Hogwarts doesn't have them, but you can buy them at home. However, most of the ones that come in are juveniles with weak magic, so you can't get a decent sample.

Invisible beasts are even harder to obtain. These creatures are capable of invisibility and have a brief precognitive ability, so encountering one in the wild is entirely a matter of luck, and there are almost no readily available ones for sale.

It is still a mammal, and the way magic works is very different from that of arthropods. Compatibility is a tough nut to crack. Even if you catch it, you can't just fix it directly. You have to spend a lot of time adjusting it.

After considering all the options, the only one that can be moved right now is the tree-protecting hunchback.

They exist in the Forbidden Forest, small in size, about the size of a palm, hidden among the slender branches of the tree canopy. They only live in trees with good wand material, and you can lure them out from the branches with a mudskipper.

Moreover, the Bowtruckle's magical tendencies, its affinity for plants and its perception, are naturally derived from the underlying logic of natural magic.

This kind of communication is not at the linguistic level, but is closer to a resonance of magic and vitality, which connects perfectly with the feedback theory that Professor Sprout previously talked about.

Plants remember the magic of those who give them and will repay in their own way.

Regulus's original method of verification was rather crude.

A raging fire wipes out the old ecosystem of a forest, then the magic of nature rebuilds it from scratch, so that the newly grown plants bear his magical mark even in their seed stage.

That was a brute-force approach, destroying first and then rebuilding, betting that the plants and trees would recognize the rebuilders as the new source.

There is now a gentler approach.

By transferring the plant affinity of the grouse to Baruch, it can not only sense the plant's emotions and state, but also, in turn, actively release goodwill outwards.

If the plants truly reciprocate, Baruch will transform from a predator crouching in the Forbidden Forest eating into part of the Forbidden Forest's ecosystem.

This serves as a practical demonstration of how to get plants to stand with you: extend your goodwill and see if the plants are willing to accept it.

He snapped out of his reverie, scooped Baruch up, and put him in the inner bag. Baruch clicked, adjusted his position, curled up his eight legs, and lay there motionless.

I'm going to the Forbidden Forest tonight, and I'll find a nest of tree-guarding hunchbacks along the way.

As for having a chat with Dumbledore, that's not urgent right now.

It wasn't that he wasn't in a hurry; he genuinely wanted to have a good chat with the old man.

But the things that were pulled out of Graybuck's head—empty houses, the risks of isolation strategies, and the conjecture of dynamic coexistence—are still scattered and haven't been woven into a framework that can be used for dialogue.

I need to think about it for a few days first, and only go when I can explain the three things clearly.

What did they see? What did they figure out? What did they want Dumbledore to help them verify?

Going to the old man's door with a half-finished product is a complete waste of opportunity.

And Fox's tail feather.

When we first received it, its function was already defined: a safety net for the worst-case scenario, and a means of escape in extreme situations.

Regulus always carried it with him, as a trump card when facing Voldemort.

If the tail feathers are triggered now, Fawkes will come and bring him to Dumbledore.

Then I need to explain why it was triggered. Nothing happened. I just wanted to talk to you and apologize for making you mistakenly think something had happened to me.

The old man probably wouldn't beat him up, nor would he send him back just because he was alright, but that's not how things should be done.

Who knows if the tail feathers are disposable or can be reused?

It's true that Fox gave it the feather, but its posture at the time wasn't exactly forced, but it definitely wasn't voluntary.

That time, he summoned his guardian spirit and let the phoenix see clearly. In a way, he obtained it by displaying his soul. It would be a waste to use it to arrange an academic dialogue.

Moreover, Dumbledore left a message, asking him to tell you what to do; that message itself is the key.

Perhaps the tail feather is a medium that allows him to sense Dumbledore's location through Fawkes, rather than having to trigger a summoning.

But there's no rush to verify this conjecture. Right now, we need to get the forest ban sorted out, find the tree-protecting bower, and let that confusing idea in my head settle down for a few more days.

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