First Real Day of Battle (part 4)

Even more baffling, not a speck of dust had sullied their hair or dirtied their armor. It was as if the earth and rock upheaved by the explosion had magically avoided them.

This was especially striking with the two young women who had been buried alive. Even unharmed, their skin and clothes should have borne the mark of rotting six feet underground just seconds earlier.

"What sorcery is this?" The Vitalist grumbled in a wrathful voice, tinged with an involuntary fear.

The warrior was not the vice-commander of his company for nothing, and his gaze quickly shifted to the identical armor and weapon materials each of the four surviving recruits wore. It was all the more eye-catching because Jake had made no effort to embellish his creations, focusing solely on functionality. Thus, for the wary Vitalist, these plain weapons and armors forged from the same black steel seemed all the more suspicious.