Hermione shoved Ron aside, pulled out her wand, and tapped the lock.
“Alohomora!” Click.
The lock sprang open.
Everyone piled through the doorway at once, slammed it shut behind them, and leaned against the door, gasping for breath.
“We’re safe…” Neville whimpered.
“I wouldn’t be so sure.” Morrin’s voice came from behind them, far too calm for the situation.
“You might want to turn around and see where we are.” Harry and the others turned.
By the moonlight spilling through the windows, they finally saw what stood before them.
They were in a gloomy chamber at the end of a corridor.
There was no Filch inside.
There was, however, a monster.
An enormous dog so huge its heads nearly brushed the ceiling filled almost the entire space.
And it had three of them.
Six mad eyes, each as large as a saucer, stared at the intruders.
Three noses twitched as three enormous mouths dripped ropes of glue like saliva between rows of sharp yellow teeth.
They were in the forbidden third-floor corridor.
“AAAH—” Ron’s mouth fell open.
“Shut up.” Morrin stepped forward and planted himself directly in front of the others.
He was not particularly tall, yet at that moment his back seemed extraordinarily dependable.
“Don’t scream.
Don’t run,” Morrin ordered quietly.
“Turning your back and fleeing from a predator triggers its hunting instinct.
Unless you’d like to become dog food.” Fluffy gave a deep growl.
The sound rolled through the chamber like thunder.
Slowly, the three headed dog raised one enormous paw, preparing to pounce on the cluster of tender little morsels before it.
Behind Morrin, both Harry and Draco had gone weak at the knees.
Hermione clapped both hands over her mouth, tears gathering in her eyes.
Morrin did not retreat.
Instead, he took another step forward.
[Half Giant Bloodline — Activated!] [Magical Creature Affinity — Full Power!] An invisible presence erupted from Morrin.
It carried the wild dominance of giant blood mingled with an almost druidic affinity for the natural world, the aura of a creature standing higher on the food chain.
Fluffy froze halfway through his advance.
All three heads simultaneously assumed expressions of confusion.
To the dog’s senses, the tiny creature before him no longer registered as food.
It felt more like…
One of his own kind?
Or perhaps something stronger than himself?
“Good dog.” Morrin extended a hand.
He removed his expensive leather glove, exposing his pale palm, and slowly approached the centre head.
“White!
Have you lost your mind?!” Draco shrieked from behind him.
Morrin ignored him.
He walked right up to Fluffy, close enough that the enormous head could have bitten half his body off with a single snap of its jaws.
But Fluffy did not bite.
He sniffed Morrin’s hand.
There was a familiar scent on it, the scent Hagrid often carried, left behind from Morrin’s contact with him.
More importantly, there was also the scent of something akin to Fluffy himself.
The centre head gave a soft whine.
Then a great wet tongue emerged and licked Morrin’s palm.
Now!
━━━━━ EXTRACT ━━━━━ [Contact successful] High-Tier Magical Creature Detected: Three Headed Hellhound ━━━ Analysing…
Evaluation in Progress…
━━━ [Extraction successful] 🟣 Purple | Multiple Mind Core (Apex) acquired!
A three headed dog possesses three independently thinking brains, granting it an innate talent for multitasking.
Your mind can now maintain three independent logical threads simultaneously without interfering with one another.
Combined with Logical Mind Palace, your computational capacity will increase by 300%.
Side Effect: Excessive thinking may cause headaches, or result in sleeping with one eye open.
━━━ [Extraction successful] 🔵 Blue | Beast Instinct acquired!
Your ability to sense danger has been greatly enhanced.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Multiple Mind Core…
This is practically a CPU upgrade designed specifically for me.
Morrin endured the sudden flood of information exploding through his mind and savoured the strange sensation of his thoughts becoming clearer, layered, and distinctly separated.
While one stream of thought considered how best to keep Fluffy calm, another calculated how long it would take Filch to reach them.
A third was already planning tomorrow’s Potions essay.
It felt incredible.
“All right, everyone.” Morrin withdrew his hand, gave Fluffy’s coarse fur a couple of friendly pats, then turned towards the group of first-years who had apparently been Petrified without the use of magic.
Behind him, Fluffy obediently lowered himself to the floor.
One of his heads even yawned.
“I think that concludes our tour of one of Hogwarts’ more distinctive local attractions.” Morrin took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the saliva from his palm.
His tone remained perfectly casual.
“Adorable as this dog is, his breath leaves something to be desired.
If nobody objects, perhaps we should head back?” Harry: “…” Hermione: “…” Draco: “…” Adorable?
You call that adorable?
“How did you do that?” Hermione finally managed, her voice trembling.
“Why…
why didn’t it bite you?” “Because I’m a Slytherin.” Morrin adjusted his collar, maintaining his elegant facade despite the lingering fear still coursing through him.
“Parseltongues can speak to snakes.
As an accomplished negotiator, communicating with dogs is simply another basic skill.” “Come along.
We should leave before Filch notices this door is unlocked.” Morrin pushed open the door and stepped out first.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ That very night, rumours that ‘Morrin White had tamed one of the monsters’ living inside Hogwarts spread unchecked among the first-years of all four Houses.
Some claimed it had been a hellhound from the underworld.
Others insisted it was Morrin’s pet from home.
For Morrin, however, it had simply been another successful ‘asset restructuring.’ Not only had he acquired the parallel processing ability he wanted, he had also planted a seed in the minds of both the Boy Who Lived and young Master Malfoy.
A seed called— Invincible.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 31 October.
Halloween.
Autumn had come to an end at Hogwarts, and cold damp had begun seeping through the castle’s thick stone walls.
A layer of frost covered the pumpkin patch outside, where Hagrid was busy thawing his enormous pumpkins.
In a secluded corner of the Restricted Section of the library, Morrin White sat behind a mountain of ancient books.
He was not reading.
His eyes were closed, and his fingers tapped rhythmically against the handle of his Black Ironwood cane as he conducted a very serious ‘business negotiation’ with the system inside his head.
System, bring up the Probability Adjustment Module.
[Loading module…] ━━━━━ MODULE ━━━━━ Supplementary Protocol: Forced Extraction of High-Tier Items Base Probability: For Gold-tier (Legendary-Grade) items, the success rate of a single extraction is fixed at 0.01%.
Stacking Mechanism (Newly Unlocked): When the Host continuously invests extraction attempts into the same target, each failed attempt increases the success rate of the next extraction.
10 attempts invested in the same target: Success rate increases to 1% 50 attempts invested in the same target: Success rate increases to 20% 100 attempts invested in the same target: Pity Mechanism triggered.
Success rate locked at 100%.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Morrin opened his eyes.
A calculating gleam, cold and precise as an accountant’s, flashed through his deep black pupils.
“One hundred attempts…” He glanced at the balance displayed in the lower right corner of the system interface.
[Remaining Extractions: 45] For the past month and a half, Morrin had lived like an ascetic.
He had given up the simple pleasure of casually extracting interesting Traits from random people.
Every single day without fail, he had checked in at the various High Magic Nexuses around Hogwarts, the Great Hall, the Astronomy Tower, the dungeons.
He had even resisted the temptation to try extracting something from an interesting spirit like Peeves.
All of it was for one ultimate objective.
The Philosopher’s Stone.
It represented the pinnacle of alchemy.
A Gold-tier legend capable of breaking the boundary between life and death.
The last time Morrin had encountered it at Gringotts, he had only managed the briefest touch, yet the [Origin of Alchemy] he gained from that moment had already benefited him enormously.
If he could completely analyse the Stone…
“Fifty five more.” Morrin closed the book in front of him and rose.
“At one Daily Check-In per day, plus the occasional mission reward, I’ll need roughly another two months.
That should be just enough time to save up a hundred before the end of year obstacle course.” This was primitive accumulation of capital.
Dull.
Tedious.
But for the sake of the obscene returns waiting at the end, every moment spent waiting would be worth it.