Nick pretty much left Lucas be for the next month save the occasional check in to make sure the vampire wasn't having any issues memorizing the information. During this time period he had greatly familiarized himself with the enchantment for the rings of protection. To the point in fact that he could lightly tap a ring once and complete the enchanting process with only a small amount of his energy lost to power the enchantment. This had caused his daily total to skyrocket from two hundred and forty to nearly five hundred every day.-
If his previously made rings were taken into account Nick estimated that he would only need about a year to meet the bare minimum required for completing the mission. Unfortunately he knew that this was the absolute fastest he could create the rings as he was now being held back by his energy reserves. Thankfully he expected that this problem would be soon rectified during the approaching ritual. With that out of the way Nick had turned his attention primarily to his studies with great effects. He finished all the fifth year spell work and was now starting on the sixth year.-
This wasn't to say that he wasn't much more skilled than a student starting the sixth year as unlike most Nick didn't forget the previous years information to focus on the new stuff. The sad fact was that the Hogwarts curriculum was perfectly designed to create powerful skilled wizards but the catch was that for it to work the students must remember and practice the older knowledge on top of the new stuff. It was like building a tower where the stuff put down was the foundation or base that the rest was built on.-
By forgetting that stuff the foundation rotted thus limiting the height the tower could be built to via conventional methods. Nick however focused on keeping his foundation fresh and strong thus making him better than those with a rotting foundation. The only person in his age group even close to him in terms of foundation was Hermione as she had an insatiable thirst for knowledge and studied both higher year knowledge but even topics simply not taught in the classes. This lead her to be absolutely flexible in what she could do per situation she found herself in. The only thing that irritated Nick about her was that she never fully devoted herself to a single subject once she felt she had a good grasp of the basics of it.-
On the last day of January though something changes for Nick that was a momentous occasion. He finally figured out how to put a weak version of any kind of enchantment on an organic material using the Celebrimbor style. While this excited him it also frustrated him to no end as it was honestly a simply thing he had not thought of until now. See until this point he had been thinking of the enchantment as a foreign thing and as a result the magic was rejected even if the enchantment was compatible with the material.-
It was only thanks to a moment of inspiration as he watched Ron eat a sandwich that he figured it out. The ingredients in the sandwich were also not a part of the sandwich originally but yet worked together to improve the sandwich when brought together. He thus changed his thinking when adding the enchantment and discovered that it barely worked to allow him to place any enchantment he wanted that was weak on any organic material.-
'With this I am one step closer to enchanting my wand with this style of enchantment as well as the one that makes it work at the moment.' Nick thought with a smile. He then focused his attention on improving the strength of the enchantments he could place on organic materials since he wanted to bring it up to his current standard with metal. Just like before however this was very slow going and he knew it would take a long time or a moment of inspiration to make another breakthrough in this. Celebrimbor himself was of no help in any regard for the organic smithing experiments as he was learning the subject at the same time Nick was.-
Nick was a worthy successor as far as the old elf was concerned as not only did he reach his own level of skill but had even expanded the style a step forward in a new direction. An interesting thing that had happened was that Steve had lost a considerable amount of weight thanks to Nick regularly slipping him some of the workout potion. The little thief was by no means muscular or anything but had returned to the regular weight and health of his species which was a relief for Nick.