Nicks plan for these marbles was rather simple really as he was going to set them in place with a spell so that they orbited the planet without falling regardless of how heavy they become from collecting the free floating star metal. After about a month he theorized that they will have collected most if not all of the free floating metal at which point he will go and harvest the profits. While it may seem a waste to create the means to travel to space just to only use it a handful of times Nick knew it was necessary.-
The atronach forge required a very large amount of star metal to get started but once it was made he would profit greatly from it. As for actually exploring the cosmos Nick knew he was definitely not powerful enough for that and that the actual preparations for such a thing were much more intense than this. Despite what many thought magic wasn't some rule less thing that allowed wizards to bend reality without effort. There were very clear and strict rules when magic did anything at all and it ALWAYS demanded a cost to do it.-
Usually this was mana or lifeforce but there was no mistaking that there was a cost to all magic. The cost to travel the cosmos effectively would be so astronomical if done in the conventional manner that it wasn't even funny. Merely the cost to travel to the moon and back was so high that Nick had no way at all to pay it safely using that method. Instead the route Nick wanted to use in the future was spatial magic travel such as teleportation. For a much smaller cost a wizard could connect two points in space and hop between them regardless of distance in nearly an instant.-
'Looks like I am all set minus the portkey from the ministry but that should be here soon.' Nick thought after testing the space suit he made in a vacuum in the realm while he was wearing it. The suit served it's function well as wasn't effected by being in a vacuum at all and still had full range of movement. Returning to the real world after changing out of the suit Nick was satisfied with how well his plans were starting to come together. He had roughly three and a half months before Beltane so he should have all the ingredients he wanted for the ritual at that point.-
All of his many other plans were also coming together nicely as he took firm strides in each of them. He was especially looking forward to completing the atronach forge and getting started on his small army of magical servants that will help him greatly come the time when Zeus appears. Since he didn't have an exact date for that event and merely had the vague as hell "a few years after Grindelwald reboots the world" timeline he knew that he might need expendable forces to collect information and resources after he went into hiding.-
Atronachs fit that description to a tee and the best part is depending on what element they had they were also immune to Zeus's most famous type of magic , lightning. Storm atronachs were in fact totally immune to electricity and in fact it only made them stronger. 'I imagine that Zeus is in for quite a rude awakening if he tries to smite one of them with a thunderbolt.' Nick thought with a smirk. Despite wanting to complete these projects as fast as possible Nick was forced to delay their finishes by factors outside his control.-
In this case he was waiting for the ministry to send his portkey and for Dotty to finish hunting a Lethifold. He wasn't concerned about the time it was taking his house elf to accomplish this task as the creatures were very hard to track down since they had few environmental factors as far as habitat was concerned. The only one known for sure was that they tended to inhabit tropical climates and were always near humans. Obviously that didn't exactly narrow the search down a whole lot considering how many people were spread out in places with tropical climates.-
As for the ministries part in his plan for collecting star metal it was merely the usual slow grind of bureaucracy holding up progress. With nothing pressing him for his attention Nick finally reopened the doors of the workshop to his friends to hang out in for now. "How I've missed this place!" Ron said while lovingly stroking the woodworking equipment he hasn't been able to use for nearly a month. Tracy was not much different with the metal working equipment but the rest were much better since their training didn't need the stuff.