Given that the Air Element had a connection to the soul in the Ancient Greek culture, Nicholas thought the reason for this phenomenon was that his soul was enhanced enough as to develop a sense similar in nature to Divine Sense as described in cultivation novels.
The next step in his Ritual process he used his prescience to investigate the Ritual in order to find out at what time interval the sacrifice was needed to maintain the Ritual.
The answer he got was quite surprising, since usually when investigating Rituals and symbols he would get fuzzy and vague answers, but now the answer he got was significantly clearer almost exact, evidently it was due to the Rituals effects.
It required as always, an offering every 3 hours as per the Greeks foundational number being 3, i.e. the number of perfection.
"So? Did it work?" Jonathan said, barely capable of suppressing his excitement at being capable of doing magic.
"Yes I think so. But we need to test it. I think its best we go somewhere far away from civilization, I have no idea how powerful the Gale spell would be now" Nick replied, suppressing the urge to immediately cast the spell.
And so after instructing the servants in what needs to be done in terms of the offerings, utilizing a healthy dose of the confusion charm, Jonathan and Nick called the driver over and quickly departed towards the woods right outside New York city.
With Nicholas constantly prompting directions to the driver trying to keep clear of the monsters within the city.
It took them an hour and a half to finally leave the city, as the cars of the 1900s were barely better than carriages, and the roads were made for horses, causing the already slow cars to move even slower.
Though with the protection spell and Heat and Cold protection spell Nick and Johnathan had a very pleasant trip, even with the uneven road causing mini earthquakes.
As soon as they arrived at a place relatively far away from town they got out of the car and set off into the woods.
Given that they had no threats of the mortal kind that would work against them due to Aegis Phylax spell, they only had to keep track of mystical threats.
Using his prescience this problem was barely an issue.
So, once they finally went deep enough into the woods, Nick raised his hand with his palm facing outwards and finally started chanting the spell.
As soon as Nicholas started chanting a torrent of gray smoke gathered from the world around him while Nicks voice sounded layered as if 4 people were speaking in unison.
«Βορέας, Νότε, Ἐῦρε, Ζέφυρε, ἀναπέμψατε τὸν ἄνεμον ὀργισμένον·
διασπάσατε τὰ κύματα καὶ σείσατε τὰ δένδρα·
ἐλευθέρωσον τὴν δύναμιν τῆς θύελλης !»
"Boreas, Notos, Euros, Zephyrus, send the angry wind
shatter the waves and shake the trees
unleash the power of the storm!"
As soon as the chant was finished, the gray smoke that had gathered started moving like a flood towards the direction of his outstretched palm and with it the world burst into motion.
Nicholas could feel it in his bones, the raw force of air moving with intention, tugging at his clothes, howling in his ears, bending the world to the echo of his words.
Branches whipped violently, the gale surged outward, swift and relentless, bending everything in its path. Even the trees directly in his path started bending under the pressure of the wind his words caused.
Leaves tore from branches, swirling in chaotic eddies, and pine needles stung like a hail of tiny arrows. Bushes and ferns whipped violently, some flattened completely as the wind tore across the forest floor and some were even ripped straight from the ground.
And after a mere 30 seconds the wind ceased, and all of the destruction was evident in the winds path. The forest in front of his palm had trees almost entirely devoid of leaves mud and dirt strewn all around, from plants being ripped from the earth, creating quite the apocalyptic scene.
The carnage was quite huge in scope, almost a 100 meters in front of him was almost unrecognizable in comparison to what the forest looked like mere seconds prior.
Nick and Jonathan were so surprised that their jaws dropped so much that you could almost fit an entire chicken egg. They looked at each other before bursting into laughter.
After they finally managed to calm down their next order was business was testing a more applicable spell. As the chant that produced these extraordinary results required at least 5 seconds of chanting, which in a battle could mean life or death.
Thus they settled on trying the following. First Nick wanted to know what the spell would look like if he used only his intent to do it, i.e. not chanting at all, and secondly what it would look like with a shorter chant.
Once he tested only using his intent to guide the wind, surprisingly it did work, but the results were somewhat disappointing but not entirely incapable of combat utility.
The only thing he could possibly do with it is to maybe cause a swirl of leaves or sending wind into the eyes as a sort of distraction or he could use it to grant him a speed boost while running.
The effect was similar to his previous ability before he executed Air Element Ritual when chanting the Wind spell.
However once he tested the following chant, using only one sentence
«Βορέα, Νότε, Ἐῦρε, Ζέφυρε, πέμψατε τὸν ὀργισμένον ἄνεμον καὶ σεισάτε τὰ πάντα!»
"Boreas, Notos, Euros, Zephyrus, send the furious wind and shake everything!"
It showed a significant combat ability. Nowhere near to the absolute devastation that the previous chant caused but it would be enough to both significantly harm his enemies movement and ability to see as it would be like fighting against hurricane winds in 20 meters in radius.
And if needed he could probably run as fast as the wind itself if the chants' intent was changed to be entirely directed towards speed. To test this Nick thought for a while before he on the spot created another chant.
«Πνοαὶ ἐλαφραί, ἀνυψώσατε τὸ σῶμα· ταχεῖαν κίνησιν δότε, ὡς πτηνόν ἐν ἀέρι!»
"Light breaths, lift the body; grant swift movement, like a bird in the air!"
Upon finishing the chant his body felt almost weightless, with just a simple flex of his feet, his body launched itself upwards, with the wind itself aiding his movement.
Jonathan looked in awe as Nicholas jumped on to a tree, its branches combined with the winds force holding him effortlessly.
The feeling Nicholas experienced was unlike anything else, he was jumping from tree to tree, his form reminiscent to the martial arts novels he was used to reading in his previous life.
However, the spell lasted for a small 3 minutes before he needed to chant the spell again.
Nonetheless it was a major upgrade to his overall safety level. As the number of monsters that could catch up to him if he used the chant could be counted on one hand.
Now that the test was complete another idea fell on his head. If the one word chant could allow him to run as fast as the wind, would then the much more impactful 3 sentence chant allow him to fly.
However as soon as that idea came upon him he quickly discarded it, he could possibly predict how his Grandfather Zeus would react to such an intrusion. Even in the modern world he forbade his brother's children from even using a plane.