Pearcival was relieved to be rid of the girl, he was obvious enough. What with his height and different physicality, without having to worry about a young woman drawing even more attention to him. He was really unsure of how he felt about the girl. On one hand she clearly was working hard and was at the forefront of her species but on the other cracks were clearly visible. Having rescued a great number of children, and she was still a child to him, he knew a lot of the tell tale signs of damage, it was clear this mission was make or break for her even if she didn’t realise that. If this went well, and it would, he was confident Beth would have the space to process her last several months instead of bouncing from thing to thing.

Back to the job at hand he focused on the guards, the building may be where an amature would focus their efforts but an expert always focused on the sapient aspect, after all that’s where the mistakes are made. Pearcival was generally confident about the mission being fairly easy. After all the guards he’d seen were no level higher than 3 and given the new nature of the planet it was unlikely they were all relevant levels. Back home Pearcival’s school had adopted the same approach to Trials as most cultures born into the system. They have their children focus on an easy but helpful skill while they are still young allowing them to build up Credits before focusing their next approach for skills they were showing an aptitude towards in the real world. That way they were always maximising their infrequent Trials and always had something to offer to the other members of the school.

These guards had clearly received some training though, regardless of their skill level, and attempting to break in and out without killing anybody wasn’t something Pearcival practised very much. After all, people who stole children didn’t deserve such mercies. He hoped however, that such a challenge would increase the amount of Credits he would earn from the Trial. After all, without such a limitation he was confident he could complete the mission with such ease it would be unlikely to earn him even one Credit. He stayed outside the prison for the rest of the day, noting the numbers of guards, their levels and their rough patterns. They all followed roughly the same routine though Pearcival could also see the areas where they were clearly cutting corners with their orders.

They were complacent, that much was clear. It was obvious to Pearcival that nobody had attempted a break in or out in quite some time. Possibly ever. That would almost certainly change going forward as the Trials empowered people and they got more creative and have more options. The guards would eventually adapt but not before many had escaped. Not that that was Pearcival’s problem; his problem was rescuing this Susanna Oakfennny. Ideally without leaving a large trail of destruction as he went. Having decided he was finished for the day, Pearcival turned back towards the town, wishing that Beth had reappeared so he could convince her to pay for his stay at an inn. Instead he’d have to find one himself, one that would accept his system currency which might prove tricky in such a backwards town.

Eventually he did manage to find a place to hunker down and spend the night though he'd had to spend a not inconsiderable amount of time looking around to find such a place. The perils of ending up in a place on the forefront of the system was that it didn't have any of the infrastructure he took for granted on other missions. He cursed himself for not making sure it was part of the deal, something that was normally a staple. He never normally did as he liked the freedom of being able to seperate from the Sponsor and didn't feel like being babysat. However in this case it had proved regrettable. Especially as most of these people hadn't seen anybody otherworldly before and kept doing double takes or in some cases outright pointing and staring.

The next day Pearcival took himself back to the prison glad to spend the full day without any distractions. He still hadn't quite worked out how to get himself into the prison. Absolutely worst case scenario he could go all guns blazing but he was at least vaguely aware of the possible consequences of such an action both for him personally and, not to be dramatic, but for the future of Earth's relationships with other travellers in the future.

After spending another half a day watching the routine of the guards he was ready for some action. He waited until he saw one of the guards finish their shift and head home. His stealth skill had an active element and he had to will himself to fade out and become less conspicuous. He was just annoyed he hadn't gotten it to level 5 yet as the boost offered there would have put him in much better standing. Either way he had trained with the skill and knew tricks to utilise the level of stealth, as well as general tricks. After all, the level of a skill wasn't the same as having actual skill.

Following the man, Pearcival seemed less to blend into the crowd than to be such that your eyes simply glided over him. The skill was wasted on the guard anyway who didn't even bother to check behind him even when he entered fairly sketchy alley ways. Pearcival rolled his eyes at the lack of paranoia, after all keeping your wits about you is how you keep yourself from getting stabbed. But he had made a promise and as such he rotated the blade around and used the butt of his knife to knock out the guard, hitting him as hard as he could, fairly confident it shouldn't kill him, but not actually caring all that much. He was willing to make provisions but he wasn't going to put himself at risk for Beth's request.

Having successfully knocked out the man he quickly stripped him of his uniform and donned it himself. It didn't fit all that naturally but neither did the outfit on any of the other guards given the clothing industry on earth. Having quickly put on the outfit he wrapped up his normal clothes and stuffed them into a corner in the alley, where he hoped they would remain until he could return for them. Then he pulled a small pocket mirror from his abandoned jacket and examined his own face. The guards in the area were all clean shaven, something that was apparently a legal requirement of working for the government.

Deftly handling his dagger he quickly cut through the medium length growths that formed his beard. The organic material fell into a small pile that he diced up until it was unrecognisable. Looking distinctly less like himself he tried to take himself in with the mirror. His beard would grow back quickly, though not until he was back living primarily underwater. He bemoaned slightly his lack of disguise skill, a levelled guard with the correct skills would never fall for his disguise, but again that wasn't who he was up against. His usual approaches didn't include more subtle infiltration but he vowed to add a disguise skill to his repertoire even if it wasn't his usual approach. After all he had a month and that would be plenty of time to prepare for the first 10 Trials or so. Plus it would help him increase his Credit count, something that had been lacking a little since he was focused on leveling up his higher skills which were obviously slower.

He re-approached the prison adjusting his outfit as he went. Again he wasn't particularly in danger but the job would get more tricky if he got caught. Plus that wouldn't reflect well on his overall Trial evaluation. Approaching the front doors he elected to simply nod at the two knights standing on the door. After all he didn't want his differing accent to give himself away, and less is always more. They nodded in return and with that Pearcival was in.