My Dungeon Daddy System: Raising Monsters and Waifus Underground-Chapter 41 – Thermal reboot

Chapter 41: Chapter 41 – Thermal reboot
The world above was grey, cold, and smelled like wet dog. Riva hated it.
She shot out of the hidden chimney shaft like a cork from a bottle, her wings beating frantically against the biting wind. "Too cold!" she shrieked, banking hard. "No thermals! No shiny!"
Below her, the hill hiding The Teasing Tomb was crawling with white ants. Skeletons. Thousands of them, digging at the rubble Reed had dropped to seal the entrance.
But Riva didn’t care about the ants. She cared about the vibration. Through her bond with the Dungeon, she could feel it: The Heart was shivering. The Boss was freezing.
"Nest is cold," Riva chirped, her golden eyes widening. "Boss needs feathers."
She didn’t fly away to scout. She dove. She tucked her wings and plummeted back toward the ventilation shaft she had just exited. It was a suicide dive straight down a stone throat filled with smoke and soot.
"SCREEE!"
She hit the grate at the bottom of the shaft of Floor 3 at terminal velocity.
CLANG.
The grate exploded inward. Riva tumbled into the Foundry, rolling through the air and landing in a crouch on a catwalk. She blinked. The scene below made her feathers stand on end.
The Foundry was silent. The lava channels were black ice. In the center of the room, Terra was a statue of frosted stone, frozen mid-swing. Grika was clinging to the golem’s back, shivering blue, her wrench frozen to her hand.
And standing before them, floating on a cloud of necrotic frost, was the Bone-Man (The Lich).
"End of the line, vermin," the Lich rasped, raising a staff that sucked the light out of the room.
Riva puffed up her feathers. "NO!" she screamed.
She reached into her satchel. She didn’t have a sword. She didn’t have magic. She had what she had stolen from Grika’s workshop earlier: Flash-Bang Powder.
"EAT SHINY!" Riva threw the bag.
The Foundry Floor
Reed was shivering so hard his teeth rattled. He was standing in front of Terra, sword raised, trying to shield the frozen golem from the Lich’s coming spell. It’s over, he thought. I can’t move. My mana is slush.
Then, the ceiling exploded with light.
BANG.
A blinding flash of white magnesium fire erupted directly in the Lich’s face.
"GAAH!" the Lich shrieked, blinded, its spell firing wild and hitting the wall.
"Boss!" A ball of feathers slammed into Reed’s chest. Riva clung to him, wrapping her wings around his head. She was warm. Incredibly warm.
"Bird!" Reed gasped, peeling her off. "You’re late!"
"Traffic was bad!" Riva chirped. She pointed at Terra. "Rock-Girl is sleeping! Wake her up!"
"She’s frozen!" Grika yelled from Terra’s back, her voice shaking. "Her core temperature is zero! I can’t restart the engine without a heat source!"
Reed looked at the frozen golem. He looked at Seraphine, who was huddled near a vent, her thermal armor flickering and dying. He looked at Riva, who was basically a living heat lamp.
"We don’t need a spell," Reed realized, desperation clawing at his throat. "We need a pile."
He turned to his team. "Tactical Huddle!" Reed shouted. "Everyone on Terra! NOW!"
"What?!" Kaelen yelled, parrying a skeleton near the conveyor belt.
"Jumpstart her!" Reed commanded. "Seraphine! Wrap the legs! Riva, chest! Grika, crank the starter!"
"On it!" Grika slammed her wrench into Terra’s access port.
Seraphine didn’t argue. She slithered forward, her thermal suit glowing a faint, desperate orange. She wrapped her massive tail around Terra’s stone legs, squeezing tight. "Burn," Seraphine hissed, activating her [Magma Scales] trait. She dumped her remaining mana into heat. "Wake up, stone-sister!"
Reed grabbed Riva and threw her onto Terra’s chest. The harpy spread her wings, covering the golem’s frozen heart-gem with downy feathers. "Hot-Hot-Hot!" Riva chanted.
And Reed? Reed climbed up. He pressed his hands directly onto the frozen stone of Terra’s face.
[DUNGEON TOUCH ACTIVATED] [Action: MANA TRANSFER (THERMAL)]
"Come on, big girl," Reed whispered, dumping raw mana into her. "Don’t leave us." He pushed. He didn’t just push energy; he pushed the feeling of the dungeon. The heat of the pizza oven. The steam of the bath.
Wake up.
Under his hands, the frost cracked.
TH-THUMP.
A dull orange light flickered deep inside Terra’s chest, beneath Riva’s feathers.
"Ignition!" Grika screamed, twisting the wrench. "She’s turning over!"
TH-THUMP.
Steam hissed from Terra’s joints. "SYSTEM..." Terra’s voice rumbled, low and distorted. "REBOOTING..."
For a second, it looked like it was going to work. Then, the temperature dropped.
The Lich had recovered its vision. Its empty sockets burned with cold, blue malice as it saw the pile of monsters clinging to the Golem like barnacles.
"Touching," the Lich sneered. "But physics is absolute."
The Lich raised its staff high. It didn’t fire a beam this time. It slammed the butt of the staff onto the iron floor.
[SPELL: ABSOLUTE ZERO]
A shockwave of silence and cold expanded from the Lich. It hit the group like a physical wall.
SNAP.
The sound of freezing stone was deafening. The orange light in Terra’s chest didn’t just flicker; it died. The steam hissing from her joints turned instantly into icicles.
"SYSTEM... FAILURE..." Terra groaned, her voice sliding down into a deep, warped stop. She locked up solid.
"No!" Grika wailed as her wrench froze to the port. She tried to pull it free, but the cold sapped her strength instantly. She slumped against the golem’s neck, unconscious.
Seraphine screamed as the cold hit her. Being cold-blooded, the spell was devastating. Her scales turned grey. Her grip on Terra’s legs loosened, and she slid to the floor, curling into a tight, shivering ball.
"Sera!" Reed shouted.
He tried to move, but Riva was dead weight in his arms. The Harpy had passed out from the thermal shock, her feathers frosted over. Reed fell backward off the golem, landing hard on the icy floor with Riva clutched to his chest.
"Pathetic," the Lich rasped, floating closer. "You try to spark a fire in a vacuum. I am the Void, little builder. I am the end of heat."
Kaelen charged. "Die, monster!" the Inquisitor screamed, leaping from the catwalk with her sword blazing.
She aimed a killing blow at the Lich’s skull. The Lich didn’t even look at her. It simply backhanded her with a wave of telekinetic frost.
WHAM.
Kaelen was swatted out of the air like a fly. She smashed into the wall, her armor crumpling. She hit the ground and didn’t get up. Her sword skittered across the floor, its holy fire flickering out.
Silence fell over the Foundry.
Reed pushed himself up on shaking arms. Grika was down. Seraphine was down. Riva was unconscious. Terra was a statue. Kaelen was broken.
He was the only one left standing.
The Lich floated toward him, flanked by a massive Death Knight in black iron armor. "Checkmate," the Lich announced with a dry, rattling chuckle.
Reed looked at his fallen family. He felt the cold eating at his bones. He felt the mana drain to zero.
But deep inside, where the fear should have been, there was something else. Anger. Cold, hard, desperate anger.
"Checkmate?" Reed whispered, reaching into his pocket and gripping a shard of obsidian rubble. "We’re just starting the next game."