After returning to the common room, Rhys was immediately surrounded by Slytherin students. News that he possessed Salazar Slytherin's wand had already spread.
This was the wand of Slytherin himself, the founder of their House!
Almost no Slytherin student could resist the temptation to see it up close.
Faced with the students' enthusiasm, Rhys was not stingy. He simply took out the wand and allowed them to examine it at close range.
"As expected of Lord Slytherin's wand. I can tell just by looking at it that this wand is extraordinarily powerful."
"I feel as though Salazar Slytherin himself is standing right in front of me. The weight of history!"
"Ridiculous. Those barbarians from Ilvermorny think they're worthy of possessing a sacred artefact belonging to Hogwarts?"
The students carefully admired the founder's wand while talking amongst themselves.
Rhys stood quietly to the side, watching their expressions and movements with mixed emotions.
He had never received this sort of treatment while he was alive. Instead, he was enjoying it a thousand years after his "death."
His students back then had certainly respected him, but they had never gone so far as to crowd around and admire his wand.
Thinking of this, he could not help shaking his head helplessly.
The era belonging to him and his three old friends had passed far too long ago, so long that they had already become legendary figures.
In other words, most of the people surrounding the wand now were approaching it with the mindset of viewing an ancient historical artefact.
Still, if they wanted to look, Rhys had no reason to stop them. He simply let the Slytherin students admire it to their hearts' content.
After his classmates finally dispersed, Rhys noticed Daphne and Astoria tucked away in a corner of the common room.
Their two pairs of eyes, however, had never left him.
Clearly, they simply had not wanted to squeeze into the crowd.
Rhys walked straight over, sat down in the seat opposite them, and placed the snake wand in front of the two girls.
Daphne and Astoria immediately leaned closer, holding their breath as they carefully studied the legendary wand.
The two of them were actually extremely interested in the wand of Slytherin House's founder as well and had already been waiting impatiently for their turn.
Watching how cautious they were, barely even daring to breathe, Rhys found it amusing.
"Pick it up and have a look. Honestly, aren't you tired of acting like that?"
At his words, Daphne and Astoria both blushed, then immediately brightened with delight.
Earlier, so many people had gathered around to admire the wand, yet Rhys had not allowed a single one of them to touch it.
They had assumed the same rule would apply to them.
They had not expected to receive different treatment.
"R-Really? We can?" Astoria was delighted by Rhys's permission, but she still could not resist confirming it.
"Of course."
Rhys gave a slight nod.
One day, this wand might even be passed down to one of them.
What did it matter if they touched it now?
Daphne and Astoria had no idea what Rhys was thinking.
If they had known, both of their jaws would probably have dropped.
After receiving his permission, they eagerly picked up the legendary snake wand and carefully felt it in their hands.
Perhaps it was merely psychological suggestion, or perhaps the snake wand itself was genuinely extraordinary, but both girls felt that it was completely different from any wand they had touched before.
It felt cool and smooth in their hands, as though they were holding not a wand, but a snake.
They could even faintly hear the sound of hissing.
"As expected of a wand used by a legendary wizard!" Daphne praised it repeatedly, practically praising the wand.
Rhys found Daphne's words extremely pleasing to hear and took the opportunity to tell her the story behind the wand.
After hearing the story, Astoria began asking about something she was more concerned with.
"Rhys, what exactly happened to that Jack?"
Jack's transformation on the duelling platform had left a considerable impression on Astoria.
Someone who had originally been utterly ordinary had gained such immense power merely by drinking a single potion.
That made Astoria eager to understand the principle behind it.
"A transformation of that degree cannot be achieved with a single potion," Rhys said with absolute certainty. "That Jack must have had his own 'fortuitous encounter' inside the alchemical world."
Rhys phrased it very tactfully, but his meaning was clear.
During the first stage of the tournament, Jack had already abandoned his identity as a wizard.
By the time he emerged from that world, even though he still retained a human appearance, internally he had already become an outright aberration.
"What do you two think of this method?" Rhys deliberately asked the question, intending to test them.
"It's ridiculously weak. I wonder how many punches those scales could take from me?" Daphne's confidence was practically overflowing from her voice. In her opinion, Jack only looked intimidating. Could he actually take a beating as well as a real dragon?
Her magma-coated fists could even tear the heart out of a real dragon!
Astoria, however, remained silent beside her.
"Astoria, what do you think?" Rhys asked her directly.
Both of you have to answer this question!
"It really would be easy to defeat him, but we also have to admit that the dragon transformation magic greatly increased his combat ability." Astoria felt that among the Hogwarts students, only Rhys, herself, her sister, Hermione, and Cedric could reliably defeat Jack after his transformation.
As for the other students, there was no guarantee they could beat him.
That layer of scales had been very easy for Rhys to strip away and could not withstand her sister's fists, but it would still have no problem blocking the spells of most other students.
They were dragon scales, after all, naturally possessing strong magical resistance.
Astoria was not naïve enough to believe that Jack's scales merely looked like dragon scales.
That raised another question.
When faced with the temptation of power, how many people would choose to walk down this path?
The advantages and disadvantages of dragon transformation magic were both extremely obvious.
Its advantage was that it could greatly increase someone's combat strength in a very short period of time, allowing them to instantly become one of the strongest students in the school.
The disadvantage was that they would turn into something neither human nor beast and become despised by others.
As for Astoria herself, even if Rhys had never taught her any profound magical knowledge, she still would not have chosen dragon transformation magic.
The transformed appearance was simply far too ugly.
"Some people might not be able to resist the temptation and choose this path. I just don't know whether Jack can return to human form after transforming," Astoria said, giving her opinion.
"That's exactly the point."
Rhys gave Astoria an approving look.
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12 Chaps ahead at Patreon.com/HornyFBI