Artillery boomed across the battlefield from time to time. The distant horizon was veiled in thick smoke, and only the bursts of fire exploding in the sky now and then revealed faint outlines of the ground.
A squad of soldiers crouched impassively as they searched through this area where the fighting had already ended. They searched the corpses ruthlessly and efficiently, gathering every piece of equipment they carried.
Some soldiers even used the bayonets they carried to chop off a dead soldier's finger, then placed it in the bone reliquary in their packs.
Their heavy black coats did not hinder their movements, and the gas masks completely covering their faces gave away not the slightest sound. If not for the faint rise and fall at the sides of their masks, one might not have believed these silent soldiers were alive.
The recovery work came to a halt because one soldier discovered an anomaly dressed in rags.
This was a battlefield. Everyone wore armor and insignia representing their respective units. Those who had left nothing behind could only have been reduced to chunks of flesh scattered across the ground, not like this strange thing before them, merely lacking proper clothes.
The anomaly drew over a watch officer. The Imperial Aquila on his helmet was more intricate and ornate than those of the other soldiers, with more decorations marking his rank and service.
Silently calling up the display built into his respirator, the officer began calculating the toxicity level in this area and how long this strange humanoid thing had been lying there.
The officer quickly determined that at this level of toxicity, this thing—without the slightest protection or cover—should have had all its skin burned away, exposing white muscle beneath, corrupted by lethal poison.
Instead, it merely had some mud and