Snape? Avoid His Edge?

Kane soon arrived outside Hagrid's Hut and pounded on Hagrid's door.

Creak—the door opened.

"Kane, what is it?" Hagrid asked in delighted surprise when he saw Kane.

"Hello, Hagrid. Are you free right now?"

"Uh, honestly, no. For some reason, Dumbledore wants me to go to Diagon Alley and buy a huge batch of Mandrake seeds. It was supposed to be Professor Sprout's job, but Professor Sprout has been a little busy lately, so, uh, heh..." Hagrid gave an awkward smile.

Kane nodded. Hagrid was not his personal babysitter, after all. He surely had things of his own to do, and Kane did not need Hagrid to escort him anyway. He only needed Hagrid to tell him where those big spiders in the Forbidden Forest lived.

So Kane got straight to the point without any unnecessary words. "I heard there's a nest of spiders in the Forbidden Forest? Where is it?"

The instant Kane asked that question, it struck straight into Hagrid's heart. Kane's appearance was incredibly misleading, after all. With that face, asking such a question, he looked exactly like someone going into the Forbidden Forest to make friends with the spiders.

After all these years, someone had finally discovered how adorable they were!

Hagrid briskly returned to his room, found a white ball of spider silk that had been rolled into a bundle, and handed it to Kane.

"This is a token shared by the spiders in the Forbidden Forest. As long as you carry it, they'll even lead you to their nest."

Hagrid only briefly explained how to find the big spiders and said nothing more. Children did not like being guided or lectured when making friends, after all. It was better to let Kane discover the little spiders' adorable side for himself.

Kane, meanwhile, had no idea what Hagrid was really thinking. All he knew now was that the white ball of spider silk in his hand could lead him to the spiders' nest in the Forbidden Forest.

Hiss...

Hagrid, you truly are the foremost authority at Hogwarts!

Before long, Hagrid left Hogwarts in high spirits. Kane was willing to befriend the Acromantulas—this was a wonderful beginning. As more and more people accepted his little darlings, the Acromantulas would one day live peacefully alongside humans and might even appear in pet shops on Diagon Alley.

By then, Kane had already entered the Forbidden Forest. After wandering around for quite a while, he finally found a small spider. He let it smell the ball of silk in his hand, and before long, the little spider began leading the way.

What a lovely little spider. Later, he would definitely save it for last and let it keep breeding, with descendants without end.

However, when Kane followed that little spider to the nest and truly saw Aragog, he realized that there was probably no need to spare the little spider after all. There were simply too many spiders here; barring an accident, he would not be able to kill them all anytime soon.

After Aragog, hanging at the very center of a massive web, made a sound too faint for humans to hear, a spider that seemed to be the second-in-command of the colony slowly crawled over. Its enormous mouth stopped mere centimeters from Kane's face, as if inspecting whether this little wizard posed a threat.

When Kane saw an enormous spider head suddenly dart toward him, he had just been debating what method he should use to strike. But now the spider had delivered itself right to him. Wasn't that perfect?

The next moment, his wand appeared in his hand and stabbed fiercely into the big spider's head. With Shadow Erosion, the spider changed almost instantly, and then a basic Knockback Jinx erupted inside its head.

With a bang, the massive spider turned directly into a slippery spider gland and two bundles of spider silk, which Kane swiftly scooped up and stuffed into his pocket.

In that instant, Aragog thought of many things. At last, his little brain realized one thing: the person before him was an enemy.

He looked toward the little spider in the corner that had led Kane here. Was it you?

Unfortunately, before he could say those words, the little spider's shadow suddenly twisted and turned into a grotesque giant mouth. It bit off the little spider's head in a single bite, dropping two bundles of spider silk and a gland. Worth mentioning was that although this spider was small, it also dropped a piece of Monster Meat.

With the second spider dead, the other spiders finally woke up. The little wizard before them was an enemy, not a friend. In an instant, they all lunged at him.

Kane sharply swung his wand, summoning a vast swarm of Killer Bees as if scattering beans to raise an army. They charged at the densely packed spiders in an instant.

Meanwhile, Kane picked up every bundle of spider silk scattered across the ground and stuffed them into his pocket.

"Human, where did you get that ball of spider silk?" Aragog suddenly spoke in human language, asking Kane.

"Whoa, this big guy can talk?" Kane was somewhat surprised, but only somewhat. Though the giant creature looked terrifying, it was actually ancient and feeble. The odds of it personally succeeding in ambushing him were probably lower than the odds of Kane being crushed to death by a bucket of tartar sauce falling from the sky.

By the time the limited number of Killer Bees had been slaughtered to the brink of extinction by the relatively limitless spiders, Kane had already gathered enough spider silk. With a flick of his wand, he cast a burst of Shadow Flame that drove back most of the spiders, then left without looking back.

Those who knew understood that Kane had done this to obtain spider silk and upgrade the technology of the Eternal Realm. But those who did not know... or the spiders, rather, could only feel endless terror and bewilderment at the sight.

A little wizard had used the token Hagrid gave them to find their home. The moment he arrived, he killed their second-in-command without saying a word, then seemed to go mad, using magic and those bizarre shadows to slaughter a scattered handful of their offspring.

Then, as though he had killed to his heart's content, he left without saying a word. Entering and leaving a spider colony as though no one was there—no matter how one looked at it, that was not the behavior of a normal person.

"Hagrid... were you the one who led this lunatic to me?" Aragog finally sighed. It was unclear whether he was lamenting that his good friend Hagrid outside the Forbidden Forest had been deceived by that evil little wizard who played with shadows and had turned a butcher's blade on his offspring, or whether...

Had something happened to Hagrid?

In any case, a trace of melancholy could actually be seen on a spider's face. When it next saw Hagrid, it would surely have plenty to talk about.

As Kane staggered out of the Forbidden Forest, he first placed Hagrid's ball of spider silk back on the wooden post in Hagrid's yard. Now that he knew where the spider nest was, he no longer needed it.

After returning to the dormitory, he found that Harry and Ron had already gotten up. Since they were not in the dormitory, they had most likely gone somewhere to scavenge for food.

Kane was happy to have some peace and quiet. He plopped down in a corner by the Alchemy Engine, pulled out fistful after fistful of spider silk, and after some tinkering, made a Top Hat.

A Top Hat restored SAN much more efficiently than a Garland, and more importantly, wearing one was far less embarrassing than wearing a Garland. He only needed to...

Kane set down the two Top Hats and smashed them hard a couple of times, wrinkling them slightly. Then he violently folded them into smooth curves, turning them into cowboy hats and placing one on his head.

Feeling his mind relax, he even wanted to sleep now. Speaking of sleep, he remembered something else. In two seconds, he crafted a tent by hand and stuffed his bed inside. Now he had another way to restore SAN.

With the urgent problem resolved, only the final task remained. To make the Spirit Particle Disintegrator, he still needed four rabbits...

Aragog's spiders were probably still chasing him through the Forbidden Forest right now, so... rabbits... He remembered there were several rabbits in the Potions classroom for testing potions...

Emmm...

Would Professor Snape welcome him?

Probably not.

Would he back down and not go?

Of course not. Avoid his edge?

Just then, Harry and Ron had used some unspeakable means to pack up a huge pile of food from the basement. As they were about to leave, they saw Kane marching aggressively toward the Potions classroom from another direction.

???