The group of Asn, Aria, Aimee and Roselyn followed Hunny carefully down the byrinth for a couple of hours

  "This is where I barely escaped!" Hunny said, showing the colpsed tunnel blocking the way further into the dungeon

  Asn looked at it, and using the shadows of the rocks, the rubble cleared itself, much to the surprise of Hunny

  Thanks to his darkvision, Asn could see clearly in the pitch bck darkness, while the other girls required a light

  Hunny was carrying a torch that Asn had lit for them, but he walked ahead by 5 meters, to make sure the path was safe

  "What the ...?" Asn suddenly said as he saw a figure he did not recognize

  The other girls could only see a shadowy figure, but as they got close, Hunny gasped

  "Oh no! Icecream!" she muttered

  The gnome mage had been petrified to stone! Asn immediately went on high alert! If there was something that had a petrifying gaze, he wanted to detect it before it stares at anyone!

  He looked nearby and saw a creature frozen in ice! It was a gorgon, a ugly creature with head covered with snakes, a naked female top and a giant snake bottom where it slithered on the floor with, and it was already thawing after perhaps days stuck in ice, presumably caused by Icecream

  The gorgon was dead, but it's ugly gaze could still perhaps turn someone to stone. Immediately, Asn cast a cone of darkness, the basic darkness spell his race the dark elves could cast, over it's head and immediately beheaded it with it's own shadow before anyone could see it's face

  The head was disintegrated in bck fire, completely blocking it's face as it turned to nothingness

  Fortunately, the way the petrifying gaze works is that the victim must see the face of the creature within a range of 15 to 30 feet, for the petrifying gaze to work

  While Icecream was turned to stone while freezing it, Asn was lucky that the freeze spell obscured it's face!

  But fortunately, the pce wasn't very bright, so the girls nearby could not see the creature, let alone it's face. But the torch Hunny was holding would surely attract the creature.

  From a distance, Asn could see several three more gorgons from a distance further than their petrifying stare could reach. The only reason he could see them was that his darkvision could see from a far distance

  Asn didn't waste any time, and all three gorgons were beheaded and their heads incinerated

  Suddenly, he heard a loud thundercp and saw a familiar hammer smashing a giant cockerel-like creature to the wall. It was injured but still fighting

  "A cockatrice!" Asn gasped as the hammer returned to Anvi's hand and she jumped high to smash the creature on the head

  He joined the battle and covered the creature's head with a globe of darkness before beheading it and incinerating the head

  "Anvi! Are you ok?" Asn ran to her, seeing that she was somehow unaffected by the petrification stare!

  "Asn?" she asked seeing her lover approaching

  Her left eye was closed with a cloth and she was only using her mechanical right eye that can see in the darkness

  It was then that the other girls joined them

  "Anvi! Are you alright?" Aria asked

  "Yeah. Put out the light! The creatures here all have petrifying gazes!" Anvi said

  "Your eye" Aimee said

  "It's ok. I just covered it so that I don't accidentally see those creatures. They don't affect my mechanical eye" Anvi expined with her usual cheeky smile

  "We found Icecream. Where are the rest?" Hunny asked

  "Oh hi Hunny. You made it out?" Anvi asked

  "Yeah I did. I found Asn on the way back to the Academy. The exit is opened already. What about the others?" Hunny said

  Anvi sighed

  "The others' didn't make it, Their bodies are probably petrified around here somewhere. There are so many petrifying monsters. As it is, watch out for the basilisk" Anvi said

  Now that the exit is cleared, there was no reason for Anvi to stay there anymore. She lost nearly all her team, and found nothing to show for it.

  So they went back to Icecream and Asn kept his petrified body in his shadow realm. Then they went to search for the others Pancake and Foxy!

  Apparently Anvi had also killed another cockatrice and when they discovered it, Anvi had already smashed it's head to mush. Although it was dead, Asn immediately disintegrated its head just in case

  A while ter, they found both Pancake and Foxy. Pancake was caught in a posture of surprise and fear as one of the monsters turned her to stone. Foxy was in a battle position to fight, but to no avail. Anvi and Hunny looked sad as they watched Asn keep them in the shadow realm

  Just then, at the side of his eye, Asn saw a rge creature slithering on the ground nearby. As he had darkvision, he sees everything as if in the brightness of day, and cast a globe of darkness on the basilisk's head to prevent it's petrifying gaze from affecting anyone

  Suddenly finding it's head caught in darkness, darker than the pitch bck byrinth it was in, struggled and writhed in fear

  Asn held out his hand, stopping Anvi, Aimee and Roselyn from attacking

  Within the globe of darkness, the basilisk screamed as it's head started vanishing in fmes of darkness

  As Asn disintegrated all the creatures heads, he never recovered their mana cores. But their bodies were still full of treasures, so he kept the basilisk, the 2 cockatrices and the 4 gorgons in the shadow realm for ter

  With their mission to rescue Anvi over, they took another 2 hours to walk out of the byrinth, without meeting any more monsters

  --

  Back at the Academy, Asn brought the petrified bodies of Icecream, Pancake and Foxy to the medical faculty in hopes they could be revived and healed

  A gorgon, a cockatrice was rare and a basilisk was even rarer, so the cure to their spells would be difficult

  Fortunately, Asn saved their bodies, and their blood could be extracted to make antidotes

  The problem is, that each creature's blood can only make antidotes for it's own petrification spell

  So besides Icecream, where he froze the gorgon next to him, not even Anvi knew which creature petrified Pancake and Foxy. Thus the faculty had to administer all 3 antidotes to both of them

  --

  It took 2 days for Icecream to recover, 6 days for Pancake and Foxy

  The de-petrification process was painful as stone was becoming flesh again and their bodies reviving again

  Stone clothes had to be painfully peeled off their bodies and healing potions had to be used to regrow skin on sensitive and private parts on their body

  They were like serious burn victims, only with the benefit of having magic healing potions

  After 7 days, all 3 had recovered and they thanked Asn when he visited them with Anvi

  --

  Within the shadow realm, Asn gave the bodies of the basilisk, two cockatrices and four gorgons to Mya and Maya

  They had preferred to remain nude, but Asn found that he could not use them without drawing attention because they were always nude.

  So he got them to make clothes for themselves from the skins of the creatures. Some of the creatures, like the basilisk, had skin that was flexible, yet harder than steel

  The gorgon's skin was softer, but not that much softer than iron. The cockatrice's feathers and skin underneath felt like bronze

  Mya made a dress out of a gorgon's skin. The she covered her breasts with the breast skin of a gorgon, which still made her look nude, only the skin color was light green. The bottom of her dress from the waist down was the darker green rge snake skin of the gorgon, which at least covered her bottom. The skin was slit and hung loosely down past her pussy, past her knees

  Maya on the other hand, used the basilisk dark green skin to make a skin tight skinsuit. It was dark green, nearly bck in color, that allowed Maya to fade into the darkness easily

  Both of them easily cut the skins to their liking using their own cws, which could shred even steel easily

  As there were more than enough spare material, they both made a skinsuit for Asn, made from the skin of the basilisk, like Maya, and got him to wear it. It certainly was more comfortable, yet more durable than any leather armor he could wear

  And because Anvi had survived by herself in the byrinth and even killed a cockatrice, Asn got them to make Anvi a set of clothes from cockatrice skin and feathers. With the feathers extending between her arms and back, when she extended her arms, she could glide in the air, and the rest of the skin gave her a modern, yet tribal look, with the durability of bronze, yet more comfortable than bronze