Demon's Virtue

And immediately, Eiro could see that the flow of mana really was a bit off. Not by lot, but it was a bit more erratic than normal. Sure, there were times when this happened naturally as a result of random chain reactions of some magic. It could have just happened because all of the magically hidden rooms in the manor were being made use of again.

However, that wouldn"t explain why Gobo felt watched. It explained the weird feeling that something was off, but that really didn"t feel like being watched. Even Gobo said that they were two very different things to experience, even to him.

Eiro spread out his mana through the area, through the air and the ground, and soon managed to see something that one of the people seemingly left behind. It was a trace of magic.

Like Gobo said, on the surface, there really wasn"t anything that was out of place. No footprints, no broken sticks, not even a hair that was laying around on the ground all of sudden. But instead what was there was the trace that someone used magic on the ground, probably earth magic to get rid of at the very least things like footsteps.

It didn"t snow since yesterday, and everyone that wanted to practice out here, although mainly Eiro since his magic was the strongest, got rid of the snow using fire magic or fire magic stones. The extra moisture was then pulled out of the ground in the areas where they would actually practice, and instead was pushed out toward the surrounding areas, so they were especially muddy.

That meant that there was no way that people wouldn"t have left behind at least a little bit of a trace in that mud that Eiro might have been able to figure out. But luckily, they didn"t realize that any kind of magic had certain patterns to it. They were uniquely different for everyone, which was why it was possible to differentiate between different people using their mana in specific situations.

Usually, these patterns were practically impossible. Regular mana couldn"t be seen by most in the first place, and they would just disappear for things like Air, Water, and Fire magic immediately anyway, since those were things that were very easily in constant motion. But when it came to things like earth or even ice magic, and generally magic that dealt with things in their solid state, that was a different story.

And sure, the ground was still a bit muddy, so the patterns were probably a little bit distorted by now, but that didn"t matter. It would be close to impossible for Eiro to identify someone through their mana patterns anyway. If he had Bahlsen"s investigation-card, maybe, but not with just his extreme perception. But even then, Eiro was able to at least tell when there were mana patterns left in certain places.

So, the Demon soon saw that Gobo was telling the truth, as these mana patterns were spread around the whole area surrounding the place that Gobo was training at, everywhere in the bushes and at the bases of trees.

And so, the Demon took a deep breath in and picked up the scent of a few of the people that were most likely the ones that were watching the Magic-Warrior Hobgoblin, and immediately made sure to keep those in mind. Not that he would be able to forget them anyway, but he was somewhat trying to filter through his memories to see if these scents overlapped with those of others that Eiro ever met before, and that would take a little while.

After all, Eiro figured that there had to be a certain reason why they were doing this. But for now, Eiro figured he should just go back inside and spend some more time with his children. If he was lucky, they would end up trying to snoop around a little again, and he would get better traces on them so that he could easily find them.

"Alright, let"s go back inside." Eiro said and looked at Gobo and Bavet, although Bavet in particular was confused, "Wait, what? Why"d you even bring me out here with you two if all you"re gonna do is go back inside?!"

"You won"t follow them?" Gobo asked with similar confusion, although obviously about a different part of this topic, and Eiro just looked at the two of them with a light smile on his face.

"I won"t follow them, no. I brought both of you out here in case I had to, so that I could leave it to you to inform the others properly. Or in an emergency, I would"ve had one of you come with me. But it"s fine for now. I just want the two of you to keep watch here for a little while. Well, Gobo, at least. Bavet has to come with me for a good while every time anyway."

Hearing Eiro"s words and following behind him, the two Monsters slowly understood Eiro"s decision, although the slime in paritcular had another question. He was still in the form of that three-headed albino python, and slithered up to Eiro"s side before jumping off the ground and turning into a small falcon as he sat down on one of Eiro"s more horizontally-grown horns, "By the way... Why exactly do you want me to be with you the whole time?"

"Just in case... I"m always trying to be careful, is there something you don"t understand about that concept?" Eiro asked, "I"ll make myself a completely new mask to replace my normal one. Like a fifth of the people at the organization before were wearing masks somehow, so it won"t be a surprise to see that I am as well. But if I get into a situation where I need to act the part of the organization-member, I need your help." 

Eiro quickly made his way back inside with the Falcon-shaped slime sitting atop his head, with Gobo following like an obedient dog like he always did. For now, there was very little else to take care of. Eiro checked up on the children again, spoke to them a bit, and then said goodnight to them.

Eiro also went to bed for a few more hours, since he didn"t manage to sleep all his exhaustion away before being woken up by his party before. But that was fine, really, like this he was able to talk to the children at the end of the day, and he still woke up rather early in the morning to let him spend the time until sunrise just reading a few books about the prison here in the capital.

He managed to figure out things like a basic layout, average power of the convicts in the different wards, the average power of the guards patrolling that prison, and the countermeasures that they had against many sorts of magic that might mess with them.

And really, none of that information was hard to figure out, since the prison"s Warden practically used it to advertise for the prison to have more n.o.bles invest in it. Solomon actually complained to Eiro before that he thought the prison system in Skyhart was a bit messed up, since it was mostly focused around monetary gain instead of the convicts" rehabilitation. He was having a pretty hard time trying to figure out how to reform it properly. But that was somewhat unrelated.

The most important part was that Eiro managed to gather all the basic information that he needed with absolute ease. And in the first place, he was glad to see that even the things that the Warden was bragging about in newspapers was relatively easy for Eiro to overcome. After all, there was no way that he didn"t over exaggerate how well-prepared the prison was while under exaggerating how strong or problematic the prisoners were. Eiro wouldn"t come in contact with the prisoners, hopefully, but if the prison would end up being less well-prepared than they were bragging, and even that bragging sounded like Eiro could easily overcome it... This would be a complete breeze, there was no doubt about that in the Demon"s mind.

And so, after reading up on everything that he needed to, Eiro prepared for the day. He ate breakfast with the others, and then said goodbye to them for the day after making sure everything would be under control here. Jess, James and Krog said they would be staying here today to settle in a bit more and prepare for the request they were given by that paranoid client. Staying home was a rather easy choice to make after Eiro told them that there were apparently people watching Gobo in the gardens yesterday. So, the three of them stayed home to protect the children just in case.

That meant that Eiro had time to take care of his own things. Eiro really wanted to ride to the prison on Lugo, but he couldn"t risk being seen around the Stag right now while he was wearing his disguise of the organization-member, something that he did in case higher-ups from the organization were watching the prison to see what Eiro would end up doing.

He couldn"t let anyone find out who he was just yet, so he had to deal with things like that in this manner. And so, Eiro was flying to the area around the prison instead, landed in an area without any people, and then chose to run the rest of the way. For now, what Eiro had to do was to find some kind of good entrance into the prison as well, and then he had to find whatever rat stole the Warden"s "precious possession". 

He chose to slightly disguise himself with a thin layer of his ace of cup potion to get through the prison more easily. And luckily, getting inside first and foremost wasn"t so hard. The prison was set up so that it was quite literally just set into the ground, using a natural cliff at the side of a river to detain the convicts.

By simply sneaking in together with some provisions, Eiro made his way into the prison, and soon found out that the warden wasn"t even currently here. That was probably why it said to get the "precious possession" back before he noticed it was gone. He would probably return in a few more days and then slowly notice.

The first thing that Eiro then did was to make his way to the Warden"s office, so that he could figure out what his precious possession was in the first place.