Baruk's Racial Naming?

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

Baruk 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 door, making a crackling sound and sending up a few Mars.

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

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

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

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 Malfoy family' 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'll feed them well.

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

Let those Acromantula who are still gnawing on Gnomes see what kind of food the spiders who follow him are eating now.

Do you want it?

I hid the Dragon Meat at Hogwarts; go and find it.

He watched it eat for a while, then habitually applied his Magic Perception.

The Salamander part has completely integrated into Baruk's Magic Power system.

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

The Fire 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 Power that it was not squeezed out by the rejection reaction.

Now that branch path has become integrated with Baruk's original Magic Circuit, representing a penetration at the level of Magic Power properties.

The tendrils that grew from the ends of the Fire 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 entire Magic Power system's structure, in my perception, resembles a tree covered in 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 Power power directly affected Baruk.

The Magic Power of spider silk glands originally only had two attributes: spraying and solidification. Now, the solidification aspect has an additional layer of Fire Affinity attached.

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

In the past, when exposed to open flame, it would instantly turn to char and powder. Later, it could withstand being wrapped in a fireball without breaking, its edges burning black and curling, but its structure remained intact. Now, spider silk shoots out from the toaster, wrapping around a fireball, the flames burning fiercely inside the web, yet the spider web doesn't even change color.

The venom has also changed.

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

The dripping venom landed on the charcoal, but instead of drying out, it burned a small ring of char on the surface, corroding several tiny pits. Baruk, who was lying in the fireplace, poked his head out to look, then stretched out his foreleg and pushed the charcoal aside.

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

The Salamander module has completely covered the entire Magic Core, from the venom to the spider silk, from the eyes to the legs, inside and out, it is covered with Fire Affinity, just like it grew out of itself.

Baruk cleaned the last 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 Creature should not be based solely on appearance.

The Magic Power structure of the Acromantula is closed, crude, and has narrow circuits. The Magic Power originates 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.

Baruk's current Magic Power system now includes a complete set of Fire Affinity circuits that do not belong to the Acromantula, and these circuits are actively infiltrating and rewriting the original properties of his Magic Power.

The venom glands no longer secrete only venom, and the process of solidifying spider silk is no longer just a physical entanglement. Even the Magic Fluctuation in the visual branches have taken on a subtle thermal Radiation texture.

Based on the nature of its Magic Power, it no longer falls into the category of the Acromantula.

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 Occamy and the stealth prediction of the Demiguise, all in line.

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

What we call it then will depend on how it turns out. Maybe we could hold a contest to decide?

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

Baruk 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 Baruk were based on increasing difficulty.

The Salamander is the simplest; its Magic Power structure is just a straight line, with only one tendency from head to tail: 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 notorious arsonist, Baruk is Tiantian by his side. If he were to accidentally burn his own spider, hair and shell, one day that would be truly unlucky. But starting today, that step is over.

Below that is the spatial scaling of the Occamy.

Spiders are naturally adept at squeezing into gaps. If Baruk could control his size, enlarging himself during combat to increase power and coverage, and shrinking himself during stealth to increase concealment, his entire tactical dimension would leap to a new level.

Occamy, and spiders are all Leng Xue, have overlapping ecological niches, and may have similar Magic Power tendencies.

Next is the stealth prediction of the Demiguise.

For the Acromantula, 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, Baruk's body and Magic Power system will be strong enough.

Then, use the Severing Charm to loosen its Magic Power structure, introduce the Natural Magic Power of the Forbidden Forest, and allow the entire system to widen its circuits and break racial restrictions during the reconstruction process.

The original plan was to do the plant communication for the Bowtruckle in this step.

As the Natural Magic Power flowed into his body, Baruk used the Bowtruckle module to build a bridge, allowing him to communicate directly with plants. The Forbidden Forest was full of trees. If Baruk could truly connect with the vegetation of the Forbidden Forest 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 his sensory domain. He 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 Occamy 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 Power, so you can't get a decent sample.

Demiguise are even harder to obtain. These creatures can become invisible, and with their brief precognitive abilities, encountering one in the wild is entirely a matter of luck, and they are almost never available for immediate sale. Furthermore, they are mammals, and their Magic Power operates in a way that is far different from that of arthropods, making compatibility a major challenge. Even if you manage to catch one, you can't just deal with it directly; you have to put in the effort to adjust it.

After considering all the options, the only one that can be moved right now is the Bowtruckle.

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 Ground Beetle.

Moreover, the Bowtruckle's Magic Power tendencies, its affinity for plants and its perception, are naturally derived from the same underlying logic as Natural Magic.

This communication is not at the linguistic level, but rather closer to a resonance of Magic Power and vitality, which perfectly connects to Professor Sprout's theory of feedback. Plants remember the Magic Power of the giver and will reciprocate in their own way.

Regulus's original method of verification was rather crude.

A Fiendfyre wipes out the old ecosystem of a forest, then Natural Magic Power rebuilds it from scratch, so that the newly grown plants bear his Magic Power 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 Bowtruckle to Baruk, it can not only sense the plant's emotions and state, but also, in turn, actively release goodwill outwards.

If the plants truly reciprocate, Baruk will transform from a predator crouching in the Forbidden Forest Forbidden Forest to a part of its ecosystem. This serves as empirical evidence of "getting plants to stand with you"—extending goodwill and seeing if the plants are willing to accept it.

He snapped out of his reverie, scooped Baruk up, and put him in his inner bag. Baruk chuckled, adjusted his position, curled up his eight legs, and lay there motionless. Tonight he was going to the Forbidden Forest; he could find a nest of Bowtruckle 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 extracted from Greyback's mind—empty houses, the risks of isolation strategies, and conjectures about dynamic coexistence—are still scattered and haven't been cohesively organized into a framework 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 understand? 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 Fawkes'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 you need to explain why it was triggered. Nothing happened; you just wanted to talk to me and apologize for making me think something was wrong. The old man probably won't beat him up, nor will he send him back just because he's alright, but you can't do that.

Who knows if the tail feathers are disposable or reusable?

It's true that Fawkes 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 Patronus 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 had left a message asking people to find him to know what to do; that message itself was the key.

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

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