"Just what were the clockwork dragons?" I asked. "Actually, where are the real dragons?"

I had been in this world for some time now, and the closest thing I had seen to a dragon other than the clockwork dragon was Gram. They called him a lower-tiered dragon, but he just looked like a lizard to me. I also seemed to recall someone calling himself "the dragon" in the gladiatorial match to seem dangerous. When it came to actual dragons, I had seen no sign of them. In comparison, I had run into more dinosaurs than dragons.

Originally, I had considered it my luck. If this was a video game, dragons would be saved for the late game. Yet, after all of the lore I had absorbed and the various dungeons I had entered, it seemed like I should have encountered at least a few dragons by now. Maybe, I could have even acquired a dragon as a pet, or a dragon lover with an attractive female form. What was I thinking? When did I become the kind of guy who thought about some powerful beast and wondered if it was secretly a cute girl?

"There are some traces and relics of dragons." Mary explained, "But no one knows what happened to them. They disappeared, and even the dungeon lore doesn't seem to have any concrete record of them. Only in some ancient tomes from the church does it suggest that dragons used to be more prevalent. I believe they were hunted to extinction though."

"Extinction?" I thought back and an idea struck me. "They hunted them for their dragon souls?"

I hadn't understood it at the time, but the clockwork dragon had been my first time truly seeing souls and lore together. The clockwork dragon had been powered by a dragon soul. That soul had also ended up serving as the core for Terra's dungeon.

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Mary nodded. "Anne and her people left the church and went to form their church, so they don't have access to the church's original records, but the cathedral in the capital existed from before the schism. I've sometimes looked through the old records to understand our history and find ways to restore us to our former glory. That's where I found information about the guardians, and sent Carmine to Terra's Dungeon."

"Guardians?" I asked, feeling Terra shift inside my soul world.

I felt a bit foolish not talking to her more about this before now. Terra had never seemed to care much about her former life though. Like Lydia, she felt her life had started with me. The death of her parents and the destruction of her home were painful subjects, and she didn't like remembering them.

Mary shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine. I heard that Terra was a golem guardian, but I do not know the connection."

"You do believe they are connected though, right?" I asked.

Mary looked uncertain for a moment. "The ancient records speak of war. It was a deadly war between the church and some unknown enemy."

"The demons? The fae?" I offered.

She shook her head. "I do not know. They used the clockwork dragons as their means of battle. I believe it was the church that wiped out the dragons, and they converted them into an army. The records of this enemy though have been wiped out."

"What do you mean, wiped out?"

"It was as if the very lore itself was consumed."

Something that ate the lore itself? I had seen something like that once before. Down below in the Deep, Twilight consumed every mention of her existence. She even scraped the words from signs and engravings, absorbing every trace. Had something like that happened on the surface once? It was truly a terrifying prospect.

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