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Chapter 2 - Chapter 2 Terrifying Realizations

~7 years later~

Throughout the years he deduced a few terrifying facts.

His new "father" was wealthy, really wealthy, as in have a maid, a butler, a chef and a nanny type wealthy.

Through his prescience, as he came to call his ability to 'know' everything around him, using it "eavesdrops" on conversations, he managed to figure out that he was from a noble English family that moved to the States.

Specifically New York at the turn of the 19th century where they quickly took root. His father though appeared to be a professor of religion, specifically ancient religions, teaching history at the University of New York.

Oh and he also found out a rather disturbing fact, the year he was born was 1901, right in time to suffer the horrors of World War 2, huzzah.

The only shining grace of this disturbing realization was that his family was wealthy enough that the only way he would participate in the war was through his own will, and not due to being forced to by the draft.

It felt weird being on the other side of the capitalist wall for a change, though it was all tainted by the knowledge of how it felt to be on the other side of it. So Nick made sure to be extra nice to all the staff milling about the mansion.

The incredibly weird behavior of my new "father" was another strange thing to note as he was constantly observing my every move, less like a kind loving father and more like a researcher looking at a frog they are dissecting or a detective looking at their newest case.

He even bought me a pet owl that he forced me to play with as a baby while he also kept the creature in my room with my crib while the beast had no cage! Lunacy! It was, however, seemingly extremely well trained and cuddly so at least he wasn't a complete lunatic.

A horrifying fact also presented themselves on a random morning walk, that being that monsters are real.

 This he found out by an unfortunate incident where, while he and his nanny were taking a walk to buy formula milk at the pharmacy, made necessary by his seemingly absent mother ("Thank god formula milk exists" he thought horrifyingly imagining the alternative).

However, as they approached the store, his constant passive use of prescience, informed him that a gigantic woman easily 3 meters tall attended the counter at the pharmacy with her face slit from ear to ear.

Another strange oddity being that monsters were seemingly invisible to everyone else but him, nobody else in the store seemed all that bothered that an eldritch monstrosity with a smile that split half her face was attending the counter.

He however promptly screamed his head off so badly that the nanny thought he was having a medical episode and quickly left to take him to the hospital.

After this incident Nick used every next opportunity that he was ever taken outside, mostly walks by his nanny to the park, to use his prescience to explore his surroundings to document every monster he could.

Their appearance, traits and abilities which he wrote down using his photographic memory as to aid in his quest to stay alive.

This was aided by his exploration of his prescience ability; he figured out that his ability was incredibly overpowered.

He could request any knowledge, and it would deliver, the quality of said knowledge appeared to be entirely determined by distance and seemingly by the importance of the knowledge requested.

It was through years of patient trial and error that Nicholas realized this was the case - the more insignificant the knowledge he sought, the sharper the answer became.

Whenever he tried to grasp something profound, like the origin of his ability or the reason monsters walked unseen among men, his mind returned only blurred fragments, half-formed words, a woman with three faces seemed prevalent, and fleeting impressions that slipped through his grasp like smoke.

Yet when he asked something mundane - how many times his father blinked in a minute, the exact pattern of scratches on the study desk, or the composition of the dust in the library—the knowledge came crystal clear.

Stranger still, the definition of "importance" seemed utterly alien.

Whenever he tried to probe the information behind "things" that feel or used to feel important to humanity like the fire burning in the fireplace or even a storm cloud in the sky, his prescience became vague, like static noise in a television.

It felt like he was receiving the information with what could only be described as interference.

But when he focused on an ant crawling nearby, he was met with an impossible flood of detail-the anatomy of its body, the structure of each cell, the chemical makeup of its scent trail or on what a human was thinking, he would receive the knowledge without any issue.

This was also the reason why he still needed to be within a certain distance to be able to even get a physical description of a monster, apparently his ability considered them to be very important and thus prone to interference.

To find them he would use his ability to find the location of the closest monster which was surprising easy as to his prescience they practically screamed their presence.

He would then during his walk with his nanny guide her until they were just close enough within range so that his ability was able to obtain the information he needed. 

Usually that was over a kilometer away depending on the fame and strength of the monster, safe enough that he wasn't too worried about being spotted and/or brutally killed.

The final clue, that finally unearth where and what he was, came at 7 years old when he started being "taught" how to read with his private tutor.

His father had attempted to get him to "learn" to read earlier however he had been avoiding by crying, as he had much better things to do instead of pretending to learn how to read.

However if he knew what he would uncover he would have done it much earlier, because it was then that he realized that he had dyslexia.

Thus with that knowledge came the terrifying implication, served crystal clear by his now upgraded mind.

"Oh fuck, I'm in Percy Jackson"

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