Divining the future would affect the future, but divining the present and the past would not, because things that were happening or had already happened no longer contained uncertainty and would not change because of divination.
And once he had the present, Manus could deduce the future himself. Doing so would likewise not affect the future.
As for why this was divination rather than investigation... it came down to that classic question: how was he supposed to know what he needed to know?
When he did not know what he ought to know, wanting to learn things connected to it naturally fell within the domain of divination.
Divination that was this purely subjective, where he could not even provide a concrete standard for what he wanted, could not be achieved through prophecy spells.
In prophecy spells, a mage first had to turn subjective demands into objective magical structures. Scope, targets... all of those had to be set before information could be gathered and results produced.
But in this world, magic was influenced by subjective factors, and Manus still did not know the exact ratio or upper limit of that influence.
How focused or intense a thought was could hardly be quantified and compared by specific values.
Yet this also made some seemingly unreasonable magic feasible—I did not know what factors were connected to this target, but I wanted to know the state of those connected factors.
Divination without standards or logic like this was possible in this world.
After listening to Manus's explanation, Paris pondered for a long time.
"No wonder... your divination has never made any real progress."
"How so?"
Manus sat up straight.
Paris did not answer right away. Instead, he asked a question.
"What do you think the Third Eye's relationship with a Seer is?"
What... relationship?