Eiro sneaked through the halls of the prison, trying to make his way to the Warden's office as quickly as he could without being noticed by anyone. In the end, it was quite straightforward to navigate through this place, and just as Eiro thought, the security was definitely lacking in comparison to what the Warden was advertising the whole time.
There were a few people that were indeed quite skilled, and might even give Eiro a bit of a tough time, but they were just the odd ones out in the whole prison. The prisoners themselves, on the other hand, were another story. There were plenty of them that were strong, incredibly so.
They were locked up in special cells, created in ways that would make it impossible for them to get out of them using magic or brute strength. And as far as Eiro could tell, there were far worse people deeper down in the prison, protected much stronger. In some cases, Eiro couldn't even properly see into the cells from this position by using the vibrations of the ground.
This kind of thing made Eiro wonder why exactly he would get a copy of the central prison key, which Eiro assumed would let him open a lot of the doors and sometimes even cells in this place. If the penalties were made to fit the one that took the quest, then maybe the rewards were too? Was it in Eiro's best interest to open one of the cells?
He kept thinking about that, and he did really want to find out more about all of this, but it seemed like he may be able to actually figure that out while looking for that stolen precious possession. So, he figured he would put that to the back of his mind for now and then quickly made his way through the prison to the Warden's Office.
And to Eiro's surprise, it really wasn't hard to get to at all. Even if he hadn't turned himself invisible, or if he had a very low to no level in the stealth skill, he may have been able to get through there if he had just been careful with where the Guards were at the moment.
Eiro slowly tried to open the door, although it was locked, and quietly sighed. So, Eiro looked down at the small bead that was set into the back of his hand right now, "Bavet." He whispered, and the Transformation Slime, who was currently only with Eiro while in the form of his marble-like slime core, quickly responded and slid over his hand, travelling to his fingertip before turning into a small, thin metal rod.
Eiro pushed that metal rod into the keyhole and waited for Bavet to get to work. It only took a few moments for him to properly see through the actually pretty simple mechanism, and then changed his shape into that of a key. With a small twist of his hand, Eiro then swiftly opened the door and stepped inside.
"Good job." Eiro told Bavet, and the slime core simply slithered back down his skin onto the back of his hand and turned into a small mouth, "Yeah, it's kinda like you should treat me better... Because I'm so useful, you know?"
"Bavet, shut it. I let you live in a literal mansion, give you as much food as you need, and give you a shitton of freetime in return for just helping me out a little bit every once in a while." The Demon replied bluntly, and Bavet's mouth slowly closed down before the slime just turned back into the bead form that was placed into the back of Eiro's hand, not saying anything else.
The Demon sighed a bit as he closed down the door and immediately started to look around the room. Immediately, he could tell what kind of person the Warden was. He had a big painting with an intricately carved, gold-painted frame of himself hanging on the wall. There were a lot of expensive things here as well, packed into this room all the way to the top.
Newspaper articles were hung up on the walls as well, those that the Warden himself appeared in. Eiro remembered there being a lot more articles about this prison, but it seemed like the Warden was a bit of a narcissist and only hung up the ones that were about himself.
Immediately, Eiro took a look around in this room, just glancing at everything from every perspective for a moment. And after he was done with that, he revisited that memory with his 'Memory of a Scholar' ability so that he could see this scene a thousand times in a matter of seconds.
Without even having to think for long, Eiro soon figured out a few different things. One, there was just a single spot free in this whole room where the precious thing could have been. It was right on the Warden's desk, and Eiro could see definite differences in the level of deterioration the desk received between the spot where that thing seemed to have stood before and the rest of the desk. On top of that, there was even a small imprint in just that place.
As if it was something rather heavy that stood there for a long, long time. The rest of the desk was nothing like that. It was still covered to the brim with random things, but it seemed like they were frequently moved or switched out, but just that one thing always stayed in the same spot.
There was no doubt about it in Eiro's mind, that was the place where the 'Precious Possession' that was stolen from the Warden used to stand.
Now that he at least had somewhat of a clue, he was able to somewhat figure a few things out. Since it stood on the desk right next to where documents would be handled, it obviously wasn't all that big. Something that could easily be held in a hand just from the size.
Weight-wise, it was probably on the heavier side, so it seemed to be mostly made of metal. Other than that, Eiro could see that the base that it stood on was round, since the same was the case with the imprint.
The demon thought about if he was able to figure out something that might fit this description and this room.
But there was something else weird. There was no free space anywhere else in this room, every place to put something up for display was covered beside that one spot. Nothing else was taken, and there were incredibly expensive things there. There was even a wall-safe filled with a lot of expensive things that made Eiro realize that this wasn't some random guy trying to steal something for money.
It was clear from the moment that Eiro stepped inside here that it wasn't a real 'rat'. There was no place that it could crawl through in here. In the first place, there weren't any rats here at all. The sewers were specially made to not let through things like rodents, or inmates, trying to escape or get in, so there was no way that this could have been a proper rat. Especially not if the stolen thing was as heavy as it seemed to be from the imprint on the table.
So, the 'rat' was metaphorical. It was an intruder, someone that simply wasn't supposed to be here, that snuck in, and stole something that he knew meant a lot to the Warden. This was a personal vendetta.
Obviously this wasn't something that could incriminate the Warden, otherwise it wouldn't stand in plain sight of everyone that entered the room. It was simply taken from here in order to hurt the Warden, there was no way anything but that was the case.
But the thing was that the intruder must have had some sort of key, even if they just stole it. There weren't any unnatural scratches on the lock, and the door didn't seem to have been forced open either. So in the end, Eiro figured that he should start by trying to figure out if someone's key have been stolen, or if some keys went missing somewhere.
The biggest problem was that Eiro didn't even know when exactly it was stolen. The thief could really be anywhere. After a bit of thought, Eiro came to a simple conclusion of what he should do. While making his way through the prison, he heard someone speaking about how they just started working here, and Eiro figured he should go ahead and try to make use of that fact.
The Warden had apparently been gone for three days now, and this guy started working here one week ago, so they were definitely here at the same time before.
Eiro quickly left the room, and quickly locked it with Bavet's help again, before starting to make his way through the prison again. And the moment that he saw him, Eiro started to do something else. He started stalking that new guy again. His voice, his behavior, the way he carried himself, all the way through to awkward habits that he resorted to out of nervosity.
And soon, he went on break, and for that, made his way to an area of the prison only accessible for the Guards, where he was able to catch a breath of fresh air. And the moment that Eiro noticed that nobody was around or was watching from far away... He stepped up behind the new Guard, opened up a hole in the wall of this cliff using earth magic, and pulled the guard inside.
With fire magic, Eiro quickly made a light for them while he dragged the young man through a tunnel that Eiro was continuously creating with earth magic, bringing him to a place where he could just pick him up later and bring him somewhere for... well, 'safekeeping���, for a lack of a better word.
And then, Eiro stripped him down and put on his uniform, seeing how he already was roughly Eiro's height and build. The rest just had to be done by Bavet, who completed the whole disguise by making Eiro look exactly like this Guard.
"Wh-Why are you doing this?!" He exclaimed, and Eiro slowly looked down at him, "To protect myself. It's as easy as that. But don't worry, once this is all over, you'll return to your normal life without ever remembering this encounter." Eiro explained quickly, "And no, I won't kill you, so don't even ask."
Slowly, Eiro felt as Bavet started to affect his vocal chords as well, and slowly started to speak again, "Imma head back to work then, bud. See ya later."
