My Wife and I Became Sages in Another World
Chapter 264: A Peek of the Future

Chapter 264: A Peek of the Future

As Sage Astra kept explaining to us how Louie developed his own version of "time magic," she moved on to tell us about the use of the crystal ball.

After Louie became a sage, Astra studied his time magic and read about the crystal ball relic in an ancient tome.

She said that it had been hidden in a cave in the frozen wastes of the Northern Empire and that it had taken her an entire year to find it.

Once she had it, she returned to the tower with it and practiced Louie’s magic on it. She read on the tome that only magic that could control time would work on it, so she kept trying until she got the results she wanted.

"Louie’s magic can only bring a person to a past state, but not years. At most, he can bring them ten minutes to the past..." she said.

’Well, that sounds logical. Making someone’s body go back a few years to make them younger would probably require an excessive amount of MP...’ I thought.

"In other words, it’s good to fix quick mistakes but not long-term decisions..." said Melina.

"Correct. That’s why I had to tweak his spell quite a bit to make it work on the crystal ball..." Astra affirmed.

When she placed her hand on the crystal ball, green energy began emanating from it, turning into a liquid substance that revolved around the inside of the glass.

"This relic allows us to peek into the future, but only little snippets of it..." she said, adding more MP to the relic.

After a few seconds, we all focused on the crystal ball as it began to show different images.

They looked a little hazy, but we could still guess what was happening.

It showed different port towns around the world with dozens of warships and caravels leaving their borders, but it didn’t give any context to where they were going.

Then, it showed a city in the middle of an intense blizzard while the buildings and structures were on fire. Still, no context.

Lastly, it showed us a ringed, black island from the perspective of the sky, as if we were looking down from an airplane window.

Zooming in, a massive dark castle stood in the center of the island with lesser demons roaming all around its perimeter.

The images were getting darker and creepier, making us feel a little anxious until Astra removed her hand from the relic, making all of the images disappear instantly.

"That’s... the future?" I asked, still confused and amazed at the crystal ball.

"Again, it’s just a snippet of it. If you are looking for the reason of how things get to that point, the relic won’t answer that..."

Astra wanted to meet us to show us those images, saying that she looked into it every day, expecting for it to change. Nonetheless, it always showed the same thing.

"My theory is that the future can’t be changed, but the outcome of it can..." the old lady said.

"But why are you showing this to us?" I asked.

"All the other sages know about this and have seen it with their own eyes. It’s better for us to be caught up on the same topics," she replied.

None of the sages knew what the images were about. All we could tell was that it was bad news.

However, we could at least prepare ourselves to the best of our abilities for whatever came to us in the future.

Now that Melina and I were on the same page with the rest of the sages, Astra said that she would schedule both of us to give a few lectures to the mages at the tower before the assembly.

It was essential for us to get our names out there for the mages. That way, they would have more reasons to believe in us whenever we spoke at the meeting about what we knew about the devils.

Basically, we had to show them our skills to get their respect.

’It feels like I’m a professor at the academy all over again...’ I thought.

Our lectures were scheduled for the next day, and we left the office to go to our rooms while Devon went to meet his friend Louie somewhere else in the tower.

Melina and I were still perplexed by what we saw, trying to piece together the images to make a coherent explanation. But they were so cryptic that it led us nowhere.

"Ichi, what do you think that black island was?" Melina asked.

"No idea. I’ve seen a world map before, and there were no ringed islands on it..." I said.

"What should we do?"

"I don’t think there is anything we can do right now. We should probably stick to our plan and see how it turns out..." I replied.

"So, we are going to Guanghua after the assembly?" Melina asked.

"Well, actually, I was thinking... Now that we are so close to Durinhold, we should pay it a visit."

Durinhold was the dwarven kingdom that was blocked off from the rest of the world. However, I had a coin given to me by Dhormec, the dwarf that made our engagement rings, that would allow us to go in.

"But why? We know there are no devils there..." said Melina.

"I know. But do you remember what we read in Kyoko’s journal about a secret weapon?"

Melina gasped, seemingly thinking the same thing I did. "Do you think we could use it if that future comes true?" she asked.

"There is no harm in checking it out... If it’s of no use to us, then we’ll think of something else."

For the rest of the day, Melina and I stayed in our room, thinking about the different possibilities that would lead the world to the future we saw in the crystal ball and what countermeasures we could take.

Even if we wanted to make the golden pearls we used to cure the lesser demons in Kalusia, those were made with black pearls as catalysts, which was an item that only devils could make.

After racking our brains until nighttime, we both fell asleep while brainstorming, only to wake up the following day an hour before our lecture started.