I wasn’t some spy, and I wanted to instill some confidence with Lord Duran, so I decided to just activate it in front of him. Plus, I wasn’t confident I could do it and thought he might be able to help if I failed. Hopefully, it didn’t reveal any secret, although I couldn’t think of very many I kept. It wasn’t in my nature to act deceptively. The few times I held back things from the girls, it was usually because of fear and cowardice over the answers I’d receive. I understood that now.
Although it was familiar, I didn’t think I’d need to use the dungeon to activate it though. This was made in Jespain, and while I didn’t know how common it was, how many people had a soul dungeon to enter to explore one? It took a few moments of playing with my mana control before I figured out the means of activation.
A form appeared in the room. Lord Duran tensed for a moment, but he quickly realized that the form wasn’t there. There was something indistinct about the illusion which made it clear this was a recording, not reality. The person standing there was familiar to me. It was Gram, although he was hidden within his cloaks, giving him the appearance of the cloaked stranger.
“Deek Deekson… after our previous encounter, I’m familiar enough for your mana signature that when I detected this near my dungeon, I feared you were mounting some kind of attack. I found this arrived through one of my underground geysers. It had come from under my dungeon. My dungeon runs deep, so for you to get under me seemed unlikely.
“This is not the original memory recording. That was severely damaged, and I digested it to determine the contents inside. After seeing what was inside, I realized that the contents are related to you after all. I considered just destroying this information, but given our turbulent relationship, I’ve decided to offer it to you as a peace offering. In the future, remember this favor…”
“Who is this guy?” Lord Duran’s nose twitched as he looked with narrow eyes.
“Ah… just an acquaintance I met.”
I wasn’t sure if other nobles knew that dungeon masters could be sentient and independent by their dungeons. Well, I knew I said I wouldn’t hold back, but this wasn’t the time to have such a conversation, and I didn’t owe him any kind of explanation anyway. At least I didn’t lie.
Besides, I was focused on what Gram was saying. This was an item I had never seen that had my mana signature and had come from deep in the earth? The material on it addressed me? Just what was it? Wait… deep?
“I will begin the recovered memories now.”
The image flickered, and two girls appeared in his place.
“What is that?” Terra asked.
“Hmmm? Oh? I got it while I was in the Twilight Dungeon. They call it an imager. I guess it takes an imprint of the area around it. Did you turn it on?” Garnet spun around.
“This is amazing! Hey, I know what. We can record our journey and show Master our journey.”
My eyes widened. This was a recording of Garnet and Terra’s journey to the Deep! Didn’t it come back damaged? What was happening?