"Aaaaaaaargh!"
The roar made the beam Magnus unleashed even more powerful. In an instant, it burned a massive hole through the mountain. Leman Russ laughed heartily and took out one of his collectibles.
It was a tooth from a beast that lived in the coldest regions of Fenris. The tooth carried a strange chill; merely holding it gave one the sensation of stepping into the depths of winter.
Leman Russ gripped Magnus's head and strode forward. The cold emanating from the tooth rapidly froze the melted walls around them, making them passable for the armored convoy behind them.
"Move faster, brother. If you're this inefficient, I'll have to slow the troops down."
"Shut up! Do you know how difficult this is?"
Magnus grumbled at Leman Russ's urging, but he did intensify the beams fired from his eyes. A mountain thousands of meters thick was gradually bored through like this, saving a great deal of work on the tunnels that would need to be built later.
While the two Primarchs were busy, the True Dragon Lords arrived nearby with their servants. However, the means by which they brought those servants along were far from gentle—indeed, they were somewhat brutal.
Howling winds and yellow sand filled the skies.
The Sandstorm Dragon Lord had brought over a million ogres, Minotaurs, and half-dragons by himself, relying on his unique Wild Magic—Eternal Sandstorm.
Among the demihumans he had brought, only several tens of thousands were actual soldiers. The rest were civilians gathered after emptying city after city. Only through their racial gifts and the parasites inhabiting them in numbers greater than fish in the water did they possess combat strength superior to that of ordinary native human soldiers.
The Sandstorm Dragon Lord did not expect these demihumans wailing within the sandstorm to destroy the Imperium