The first experiment didn't involve any new Rituals but just involved replacing the offering for his Air Ritual temporarily from sparrow meat to a feather stolen from a living harpy.
The effects were as immediate as they were temporary, disappointingly the feeling of unprecedented clarity and the feeling of domain over the Air itself were incredibly temporary, lasting a mere 3 seconds.
Not even enough to do anything but cast intent-based Wind Element spells, which upon testing were almost as powerful as his previous Common Spells, allowing him total control over the air in the range of 300 meters around him.
The only reason Nick could think of for such discrepancy in length of time powering the Ritual was that, in the case of the sparrow, he was sacrificing not only the feather but the entire sparrows being.
He was sacrificing its actual essence to power the Ritual, in the case of the harpy however it was only the dropped feather that was sacrificed.
While the essence of the harpy was safe and sound being reborn in Tartarus, not to mention that Harpies were one of the weakest monsters in myth.
However, if he were to sacrifice a harpy alive it would have both positive and negative outcomes possible. The positive effects were quite self-explanatory, the harpy's immortal essence might be enough to power the Rituals enhanced effects for his entire mortal lifetime or even forever.
The negative effects though would be horrifying. Such that it was quite possible that sacrificing their essence would cause them to truly die, which could cause issues to say the least.
Given that all monsters in myth were connected one way or another to higher beings and could be viewed as their extensions. Thus, doing such a Ritual could be seen as actively stealing their domains not to mention murdering their progeny, while also opening him up to the possibility of having his consciousness be influenced by them.
In Greek Myth though most monsters who were the progeny of Tartarus were also infected with anger and madness, curtesy of their ancestor' domain.
So, sacrificing them would not only anger Typhon the sealed son of Tartarus who could in his prime go against the entire Greek Pantheon but also had the distinct possibility of making him go insane.
This path was slated as a dead end; however he did use a Harpies feather to do a divination Ritual in order to find Circe's location, it unfortunately failed.
Not truly all that surprising as it was quite expected for the most famous sorceress in Greek Myth to have set up at least some anti-divination protection.
But it did allow him to get an approximate location, that being in the sea between England and France. He was surprised as she was depicted in the book to live at the Sea of Monsters in the Bermudas triangle.
Though now as he thought about it, it seemed quite obvious that she as a being of Greek Myth would follow the location of Olympus, which obviously meant that it was still in England or France given that the Second World war still hasn't taken place and Olympus hadn't yet moved to America.
But even if the permanence of the Air Ritual powered by mythical creatures was impossible, he came up with the idea of creating a staff with an Air Element Affinity Boosting Ritual engraved on the staff itself.
Whenever he needed his Air Spells to be more powerful during combat, he could just sacrifice them and raise the power of his Air Spells by more than one level, he could even make the staff have an internal mechanism that upon pressing a button on the staff would immediately launch a feather inside of the internally built Ritual flame.
He also thought that before he started going to find Circe, he should first find some inducements to make her more willing to help him.
Nicholas couldn't just go there and threaten to beat her up unless she complied. She was immortal, it was quite possible that she would rather die than help him by threats.
Firstly, he could offer some of his more complex Rituals as a price, seeing as how much help he needed from prescience to be able to craft his own Rituals and spells, it seems like it would be valuable knowledge.
And if that didn't work, he could pretend that he used his connection to the knowledge domain to see the future and give her a few nuggets of future knowledge.
Also given the importance of mythological materials on Rituals, he could also use a truly symbolically significant monster drop as the price that she would need to help him, though that would be quite risky.
And so with his tasks decided, he prepared his most complex Rituals and used a spell to transcribe them from his knowledge into tomes, which he then warded to hell and back to be only visible to him and to those he gives permission to.
He also created a backpack that was bigger on the inside, usually he could make it be the size of a house if only for 3 hours, however he changed the spell and limited it to only 3 cubic meters and spelled it to last 30 years with no re-application.
He filled the backpack with only the books, food spelled to last forever without spoiling and a mattress, anything else he could use spells to steal or conjure.
He also created his staff. Creating the staff itself with the mechanism was easy, as money could solve most of the mortal problems. However creating the Ritual itself was a bit more challenging as it required precise engraving inside of the staff itself, which he easily did by using his newly created domain and intent spells.
All he had to do was intensely concentrate on exactly what he wanted to engrave, and the world would comply.
This also gave him further idea of creating spell inscriptions during combat itself reminiscent of cultivators writing talismans midair during combat.
But in the end, it was successfully built and now Nicholas finally felt like a real wizard with his very own staff to help him cast spells.
The staff itself was made out of stone and was hollow on the inside, at its top stood a floating flame created by the small-scale Ritual engraved on the hollow stone inside the staff.
The flame didn't need any sacrifices now as just Nicholas' presence was enough for it to burn forever.
Below the flame stood a spring-loaded mechanism that would shoot the harpies feathers loaded in it into the flame at the click of the button.
And once all of these preparations were finished Nicholas said goodbye to his father, tasked him with protecting the mansion and making sure the enchantments were being kept up, and finally set off for his journey.
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