Nicholas spent the next 4 years learning everything he could from Circe.
Whenever he got hungry, Circe would chant a spell, wave her hand, and from the ground a tree bearing incredibly delicious fruit would grow; it looked vaguely like a pear, though it tasted like a watermelon, and it made him satiated for a whole day.
He immediately wanted to learn the incredibly convenient magic; however, Nicholas was disappointed to learn that this magic was only possible by calling upon Circe's authority as a regional God.
However, that was an insignificant episode compared to the most important magic he needed for his plans.
That being the ritual needed in order to obtain an authority and Immortal Essence of his own, however, it turned out to be incredibly complex.
Luckily, he didn't have to make it himself but just perform it.
It basically involved using a ritual circle as a way to control the human faith instead of yourself, as demigods were unable to sense or use it.
Then the ritual circle would extract Nick's soul from his mortal body before stripping any mark of Athena's authority from his spirit to prevent him from becoming her subordinate God.
All the while, the ritual would have to create an anchor for his soul to prevent the underworld from summoning it and have him chained up for all of eternity in Elysium.
Afterwards, the ritual would create a sort of cocoon made out of the faith directed towards him, which would then spontaneously lead his soul to merge with the authority that is compatible with how the humans who produced the faith imagined him.
So, if he were to become known as a great soldier or general, the faith coming towards him might allow his soul to merge with the War authority, or otherwise, if he were known to be really a great strategist and thinker, it might merge with the Wisdom authority.
The greater the amount of faith he got to power the ritual, the more of the authority he could occupy, and he could even merge with multiple authorities, just like his mother, who was a Goddess of Wisdom, Strategy and War and thus he would be more powerful.
Nick figured that it would be best to try to occupy an authority that is currently occupied by a non-Olympian Minor God, or even better, not occupied by a God at all, as he wouldn't have to battle over it with anyone, nor would he have to share it.
After his soul merged with authority, it would become his Immortal Essence; in actuality, what Nicholas had been calling Immortal Essence had in fact been the soul-authority merged entity made manifest in reality.
It was also called by another name, a God's true form, and the reason mortals would die when seeing it was that the brains of their mortal vessels simply couldn't comprehend what they were seeing, and they would short-circuit, so to speak.
However, the soul had no such restrictions, which is why he could directly sense the fish's true form with it, as the concepts weren't being seen by his flesh but by his immortal soul and thus bypassed the whole dying issue.
That is also why a powerful God could never be truly killed, as he learned, even if their Immortal Essence was used to power a ritual and utterly consumed, if their faith persisted, they would still reform.
Though their minds would be twisted beyond salvation, they would, in effect, become the same as the Primordials of Old, every single change in human beliefs fundamentally changing who they were.
That's why all of the Olympians trap their opponents in Tartarus. It is genuinely just much easier to trap them while they are sane than to deal with an Immortal irrational monster hell bent on revenge.
The rest of his time in the 4 years that followed was spent learning the art of the Greater Rituals, as he called it.
They were rituals that used Immortal Essence as fuel to achieve a permanent effect and were also used in forging artifacts.
Nick needed to learn it, as the biggest problem after he became a God would be how to keep his sanity intact, and so to solve that problem, he decided to take a page out of the Olympian playbook and learn how to forge his very own artifact.
The Olympian artifacts were forged by the God in question, ripping his own Immortal Essence in half and then using it to create the Artifact.
The Artefact would then act as a filter and container, keeping all of the useless, distracting thoughts found in human belief within itself and only passing to the main body the purest, most useful part of the beliefs.
Or at least trying to do so, there is only so much that an unconscious artifact could do, and thus it wasn't truly perfect; some impurities would always pass through, though that would only become a problem in hundreds of years of constant supply of faith.
On a more personal note, Nicholas and Circe had become sort of friend-ish adjacent in the past 4 years through their discussion of magic.
Although Nick had way less experience than Circe, his domain over the Wisdom authority made him way quicker at learning, and his memory from his past life allowed him unparalleled creativity, thus allowing him to stand on somewhat equal footing with Circe.
Nick would give her advice on how she could improve her Island domain in the future as thanks for teaching him.
He drew inspiration from how Immortals in cultivation novels would either merge their "Blessed land" into their bodies or would upgrade their blessed land into an entire separate world.
He did this to make an ally out of Circe, given that you could never have too many allies. In his next endeavours, allies will be crucial for him to be able to become a God.
Even if he were to become a powerful God in one fell swoop, it would still possibly mean that he would be trapped or killed by the Olympians.
Given that the only reason the escaped demigods in the rebellion didn't meet the same fate was because of their alliance with each other.
The Gods couldn't reasonably kill them all without significant issues cropping up. Such as the destruction of the whole world and all human beings, so they had to compromise.
----------------------------
If you want to support me read 5 work in progress chapters in advance visit my P.a.t.r.e.o.n at
p.a.t.r.e.o.n.com/atanorwrites
I appreciate all comments and take suggestions seriously! Thank you for your support!