Chapter 17 - Crystal Ball

Steve left the Monster Tamers' Association and decided to go back to his school building. However, just as he stepped out of the building, he had a strange feeling. He turned and looked to his right. There, he saw a large, bright beam of light in the distance. Steve knitted his eyebrows. He couldn't explain why, but for some reason, something was telling him to go towards the direction of the light. Steve shook his head and decided to not go to back to Silveredge Academy and went in the direction of the light.

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Steve arrived in the place that the beam of light was. The beam of light was still shining brightly, and it did not seem like the light was going to dissipate soon. There were a lot of people near the beam of light. Steve looked around and walked next to a person. He tapped on the person's shoulder. The person turned and looked at him.

"Hey, buddy, what's going on here?" asked Steve.

"I'm not really sure," said the person, shaking his head. "I just got here a while ago and no one seems to know why the light beam has appeared. "However, some people speculate that the light might have been because a treasure has appeared and shown itself to the world."

Steve nodded his head. "That seems like a good reason. Thank you for telling me."

"No problem," the person said. He then turned his head and continued to watch the beam of light.

Steve asked himself in his mind. He reached into his pocket, took out a monster card, but then stopped and put it back inside his pocket. He then took out another monster card and summoned Aqua out. This time, he did not put the card to his forehead because he was pretending to be a stage 9 monster tamer and stage 9 monster tamers were not required to put the monster cards to their foreheads to summon out their monsters, although they could choose to do so. Steve had originally wanted to summon Icy out, but he decided against it since it would make the Head Branch start to suspect that he was a student at Silveredge Academy.

Aqua appeared behind Steve and stood there.

"Aqua, do you know what caused that light beam?" asked Steve.

Aqua looked at the beam of light and shook her head. "I don't know what the reason for the light beam is," said Aqua. Aqua had a calm look on her face, but in her mind, she was shocked. She recognized the presence of the object inside the beam of light.

"Oh," said Steve, sighing. He was to ask something else, but the beam of light started to fade and he looked towards it. Once the light was cleared, people could see an object inside the floating in the place where the light beam was. The object was a clear, crystal ball. Seeing that, almost everyone froze.

"Is that seriously just a crystal ball?"

"Seems like it."

"No, I think that's a monster globe."

"Yeah, you're right, it does look like a monster globe."

"Well, I'm leaving."

"Yeah, I am too, what a waste of my time."

"Agreed."

Everyone, except for Steve and Aqua, left the place and they did not even get close to the crystal ball. They just went away with disappointment clearly written all over their face and didn't even take another glance at the crystal ball.

After the people left, Steve started to walk towards the crystal ball. However, after he took about 2 steps, the crystal ball that was floating in midair suddenly moved and flew slowly towards him. Subconsciously, Steve put his right hand out in front of him with his palm up. The crystal flew towards Steve and stopped right above his palm, floating above it and not landing on it. It was as if the crystal ball was inviting Steve to take it.

Steve looked at it for a moment, and for some reason, he felt inclined to close his hand and touch the crystal ball- and he did. He wrapped his hand around the crystal ball. After a few seconds, the crystal ball let out a bright light and then the crystal ball became smaller and smaller and went inside Steve's palm.

Steve looked at his hand, shocked.

Amazingly, right after Steve said come out in his mind, a tiny crystal ball came out of his hand and came out and expanded until it was just about the right size for Steve to fit in his hand.

Steve, who was still looking at his hand, was once again surprised when the crystal ball suddenly came out of his hand and turned back to its original size. Then a thought popped up in Steve's mind. The more that Steve thought about it, the more that Steve thought it was plausible and that it was worth a try.

Steve's assumption was correct. Right after he thought about the crystal ball going back inside to his hand, the crystal ball started shrinking and after a while, it went inside Steve's hand.

However, something else bothered Steve. For some reason, he felt familiar with the crystal ball. He had a strange feeling, and it was like the crystal ball had been his property. It was like he was the owner of the crystal ball for a long time and he was just reclaiming what had been his property. It was weird, since he had never even seen the crystal ball before toward, let alone come into contact with it or be the owner of it. However, Steve decided to ignore the feeling and concluded that he was just being overly sensitive ever since he came here because he felt that so much in this world even though it was his first time coming here.

Behind him, while Steve had been focusing on the crystal ball, Aqua was smiling.