Chapter 1299
It was rather remarkable that such a piece of evidence made its way to me. I supposed given Terra’s love of magical instruments, and Garnet’s long and mysterious history, recording such an event seemed extremely likely if such a device had been available. That said, the device had made it back up into Gram’s passage. Two people who weren’t enemies, but also weren’t friends had to have chosen to take the risk to get it to me.
I understood now why it had my magical signature on it. It had come from two of my slaves. I was pretty certain that the restrictions that allowed someone to view something recorded by someone else was being their master through a slave bond. Of course, even that didn’t stop a dungeon from being able to digest the memories by absorbing the mana. This wasn’t the one that the girls had taken down, but one Gram had created using his dungeon after absorbing the previous one. That also meant I had to trust that Gram was showing me the whole story. If he had cut something out, I’d have no way of knowing.
It seemed like today was a day for trust on everyone’s side.
“This is one of the forgotten pathways down to the Deep. The location was passed on to me by my family before they… ahem.” Garnet explained awkwardly within the recording. “It’ll take about a month to reach the land of my ancestors. I’m not confident we’ll be able to make it there. There are many ancient pathways and they could have collapsed at any point during the years.”𝒻𝑟𝑒𝓮𝔀ℯ𝓫𝓃𝑜𝓋𝑒𝘭.𝑐𝓸𝓶
Was that what happened? Did they get caught in some kind of rockfall? I had already attempted to resurrect everyone in the group shortly after I came back to find everyone gone. Their souls should have come back if they were dead. Unless this had happened over a month before, or in a dungeon. At this distance, I couldn’t feel the tug of the broken bond at all.
“That’s where I come in.” Terra flexed her small arm. “We’ll be able to get through any rockslide. After working with earth for so long, I’m certain I can open up just about any path safely.”
“I also can’t guarantee there will be any treasure,” Garnet warned. “This is all tails and half-remembered stories. Furthermore, even if they do exist, my people might have trapped them. If a golem with earth manipulation could steal national treasures of my people so easily, then wouldn’t that be looking down on my people?”
Terra’s strutting deflated a bit. “We should be able to find something at least. The Deep Dwarves were the only ones that far down there. When they left, there would have been no one else to use such material. I’ve not heard of any expeditions that have gone to the Deep to ever return.”
“Exactly, that’s because they all died!” Garnet laughed. “There have been hundreds of expeditions to the Deep, and not a single one survived.”
“That’s not true… I found a record of one who man made it back. He was insane, muttering about how dark it was before killing himself.”
“Hmm… did you mention that to Master before we left?”
“Of course not! He never would have let us leave if he had known.”
My brow twitched. She was correct about that.