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(A/N: Hello everyone, I have a new novel out named Transmigrated As High Elf In Skyrim go check it out! I know I know I have to much now, literally six novels, but hey as long as I can make it and give it to you guys, who am I to protest right?! Of course this also actually helped clear my head because I have a new source to made, so don't worry and please give me your comments or reviewed if you like it, have a constructive criticism, and lastly, please no need for personal insult if doesn't like it thank you! Oh also don't forget the power stones and put in you library for support if you like it!)
The man jerked a thumb toward the back of the store. "Through there. First door on the left at the top. Don't touch nothin' that ain't yours."
Caleb nodded his thanks and moved through the cluttered back room, pushing open a heavy door that led to a rickety exterior staircase clinging to the side of the building.
The room was exactly as in the game, a tiny, square cell with a narrow cot, a washstand with a chipped bowl and pitcher, and a single grime clouded window overlooking the main street and, beyond it, the hulking silhouette of the mine's sorting facility. It was bleak, anonymous, and perfect.
He dropped his satchel on the cot. From his vantage point, he had a direct view of the comings and goings on the street below, and more importantly, of a large, well guarded building at the end of the row, the Cornwall Mining Co. office.
It was a two story structure of dark brick, cleaner than the surrounding buildings, with uniformed guards posted at the door and patrolling the perimeter.
'There you are,' Caleb thought, a cold focus settling over him.
He spent the rest of the daylight hours establishing his cover. He bought a meal at the sad, company owned saloon, listening to the muted, fearful conversations of the miners.
He walked the streets, mapping patrols, noting the shifts of the private guards, Cornwall's private army, distinct from the weary local law in their crisper, navy blue uniforms and newer rifles. He saw ore wagons rumbling toward the train station, and payroll wagons, heavily guarded, making their way to the company office.
As dusk stained the smoky sky a deeper gray, Caleb returned to his room. He lit the single oil lamp and sat by the window, watching the orange glow of furnace fires from the mine paint hellish patterns on the low clouds.
The plan was simple in objective, complex in execution. He needed to know Cornwall's intentions. Was he just licking his wounds? Was he reorganizing for another assault? Did he have new leads on the gang's whereabouts? To find out, Caleb needed to get inside that office, or get to someone who was.
The dynamite in his inventory was for a last resort, a distraction, or a message written in fire and rubble. But first, he would try the quieter arts, observation, infiltration, and if opportunity struck, interrogation. He was one man against a private army in the heart of their territory. It was a suicide mission for anyone else.
But Caleb wasn't just anyone. He had skills they couldn't imagine, a system that defied their reality, and a reason that burned colder and brighter than any furnace in Cornwall's hellish mine.
He watched the guards change shift, memorizing their patterns, and waited for the cover of full night. The darkness of the small room felt heavy, pressing in with the scent of coal dust and old timber.
Caleb feelin enough turned from the window, the orange flicker of the furnace fires still dancing in his peripheral vision, and moved toward the narrow cot.
He sat on the edge, the rusty springs groaning in protest under his weight, a sound that seemed to harmonize with the weary sighs of the town outside.
He ran a hand over his face, scrubbing away the grime of the day. He had gained much. The layout of the streets, the patrol routes, the shift changes, it was the foundational data required for any operation.
But as he swung his legs up and lay back against the thin, lumpy pillow, his mind didn't rest. It began to churn, processing the next phase, which was infiltration.
Observation from a distance was safe, but limited. To know what Leviticus Cornwall was truly thinking, to understand the man's next move against the Van der Linde gang, Caleb needed to be a fly on the wall. Or, more accurately, a cog in the machine.
He stared up at the water stained ceiling, weighing his options for a disguise.
'A miner,' he mused. It was the most obvious choice. The town was crawling with them. All he needed was a layer of soot, a pickaxe, and a downtrodden expression. It would be safe. No one looked twice at a miner, they were part of the scenery, the expendable fuel for Cornwall's empire.
But as he played out the simulation in his mind, the flaws became apparent. Miners were restricted. They belonged in the pit or the shanties. If a miner was seen wandering near the administrative offices or the secure warehouses, they would be shot or beaten first and questioned later.
Furthermore, the schedule was grueling. He'd be under the constant, shouting supervision of foremen, his time accounted for down to the minute. He couldn't sneak away to read a ledger if he was busy swinging a pickaxe under the watch of a gun-toting overseer.
"Too restrictive," he whispered to the empty room.
The alternative was bolder, a guard. One of Cornwall's private militia.
The risks were significantly higher. Guards knew each other. There was a hierarchy, a chain of command, and the constant danger of being recognized as an outsider. If he slipped up, he wouldn't just be fired, he'd be executed as a spy. But the rewards...
As a guard, he would have access. He would have authority. He could walk through doors that were barred to everyone else.
He could stand outside an office door, ostensibly protecting the occupants, while listening to every word spoken inside. He could move between the sorting facility, the train station, and the main office with a Carbine over his shoulder, and people would step out of his way.
He weighed the safety of the miner against the access of the guard. Caleb was a man who preferred calculated risks over guaranteed stagnation. He needed total information, and he needed it fast.
'Guard it is,' he decided, the choice settling in his gut with a cold certainty. It was the better choice. It bypassed the tedious supervision of the foremen and placed him exactly where the secrets were kept.
With the decision made, Caleb closed his eyes. He regulated his breathing, forcing his body into a state of rest. Tomorrow would require perfection.
The morning sun struggled to pierce the smog that hung over Annesburg, casting the world in a sickly, yellowish gray light. Caleb woke instantly, his mind snapping from sleep to full alertness without the groggy transition of a normal man.
He prepared his weapons, slinging the Litchfield Repeater across his back for show and storing the more conspicuous Pump Action shotgun in his inventory, a hidden ace. He checked his coat, ensuring his knife was accessible, and stepped out of the room.
He left the gunsmith's lodging early, blending into the morning shift change of miners trudging toward the pit. His max level Acting Skill made him a non entity, his posture, his pace, the direction of his gaze, all communicated a man with dull, legitimate business, not a predator scouting for a kill.
He walked the perimeter of the town again, this time with a specific target in mind, a lone Cornwall guard, isolated and vulnerable.
The docks area, with its skeletal cranes and piles of rusting machinery, was perfect. The air was thick with the smell of stagnant water and coal runoff. Few miners worked here, it was a storage and transport zone, mostly quiet except for the distant screech of the mine. After an hour of patient observation, he saw his opportunity.
A single guard in the crisp navy blue uniform and peaked cap was making a desultory patrol along the main dock plank, his Carbine Repeater slung loosely over his shoulder.
He looked bored, resentful of the early hour and the foul posting. He paused to light a cigarette, turning his back to the wind and to the maze of cargo sheds behind him.
Caleb moved. His max level Sneaking Skill rendered his footsteps silent on the damp wood and gravel. He became a shadow among the long morning shadows cast by the cranes.
He closed the distance, the Civil War knife appearing in his hand from his inventory as if by magic. He timed his approach with the guard's exhale of smoke.
In one fluid motion, his left arm snaked around the man's head, clamping over his mouth and nose. The right hand drove the blade up and deep into the side of his neck, severing the carotid artery and silencing any cry before it could form.
The guard stiffened, a brief, violent tremor passing through him, then went limp. Caleb lowered him gently to the planks, the man's unseeing eyes staring up at the smoky sky, the cigarette extinguished in a puddle of his own blood.
It was quick, clinical, and utterly merciless. There was no hesitation, no flourish. It was a necessary removal of a component, like clearing a blocked gear from a machine.
Caleb dragged the body into the nearest shed, a dark space reeking of oil and mold. He worked swiftly, stripping the uniform. It was a tight fit, Caleb was broader in the shoulders, but serviceable.
He kept his own trousers and boots but donned the navy tunic, cap, and belt, as for the rest of his clothes he stored inside his inventory. He took the man's Carbine Repeater and ammunition, storing his own Litchfield.
He folded the guard's body with a disturbing, pragmatic efficiency and stuffed it into a large, empty crate meant for machine parts, scattering some loose coal dust and rags over the top. It wouldn't hold up to a thorough search, but it would buy him a day, maybe two, before the man was reported missing.
He adjusted the cap, pulled the brim low over his eyes, and stepped back out onto the dock. The transformation was complete.
He now moved with the entitled, slightly bored swagger of Cornwall's private security. His Acting Skill shifted to embody this new role, the set of his shoulders, the way he held the repeater, the dismissive glance he gave a passing miner.
He fell into the patrol pattern he'd memorized, making his way from the docks up toward the heart of the operation, the Cornwall Mining Co. office and the foreman's shack adjacent to the mine entrance. The first test came immediately. A pair of guards on duty at the office door nodded to him as he passed.
"Hey," one grunted. "I thought rotation weren't ongoing to happen 'til noon."
Caleb, without breaking stride, grumbled in a passable approximation of the dead man's likely tone, "Foreman needed a runner. Dumb bastard forgot the shift reports." He kept walking, injecting just the right amount of aggrieved annoyance.
The guard just shook his head and turned back to his post. The Persuasion Skill, layered over the performance, smoothed over any minor inconsistency in his voice or story. It made the listener's mind dismiss doubt.
His new "position" granted him access to the outer areas of the compound. He patrolled, his eyes and ears absorbing everything. He lingered near the foreman's shack, hearing snippets through the open window.
"…production is down again this week. Mister Cornwall is not pleased. Says we're squandering his investment…" a harried foreman was yelling at a subordinate.
He walked past the open doors of the equipment barn, seeing stacks of new rifles still in crates, Winchesters, better than what the local law carried. A private army, indeed.
His biggest prize came mid morning. A clerk from the main office, a nervous man with ink stained fingers, hurried out with a stack of telegrams, heading for the train station. Caleb, falling into step beside him as if providing an escort, engaged him.
...
Name: Caleb Thorne
Age: 23
Body Attributes:
- Strength: 8/10
- Agility: 8/10
- Perception: 9/10
- Stamina: 8/10
- Charm: 8/10
- Luck: 9/10
Skills:
- Handgun (Lvl MAX)
- Rifle (Lvl MAX)
- Firearms Knowledge (Lvl MAX)
- Past Life Memory (Lvl MAX)
- Knife (Lvl MAX)
- Blunt Weapon (Lvl 2)
- Sneaking (Lvl MAX)
- Horse Mastery (Lvl MAX)
- Poker (Lvl MAX)
- Hand to Hand Combat (Lvl MAX)
- Eagle Eye (Lvl 2)
- Dead Eye (Lvl 4)
- Bow (Lvl 3)
- Pain Nullifier (Lvl 4)
- Physical Regeneration (Lvl 3)
- Crafting (Lvl MAX)
- Persuasion (Lvl MAX)
- Mental Fortitude (Lvl MAX)
- Cooking (Lvl MAX)
- Teaching (Lvl 3)
- Trilingual Language Proficiency - G, I, & C (Lvl MAX)
- Inventory System (Permanent - 10x10x10)
- Acting (Lvl MAX)
- Alcohol Resistance (Lvl MAX)
- Treasure Hunter (Lvl MAX)
- Drugs Resistance (Lvl MAX)
- Business (Lvl 1)
- Leadership (Lvl 1)
Money: 3,370 dollars and 60 cents
Inventory: 250,392 dollars and 61 cents, 11 gold nuggets, 65 gold bars, 1 Double Action, 1 Schofield, 2 Colm's Schofields, land deed (Parcel), 1 Mauser, 1 Semi Auto Pistol, 1 Lancaster Repeater, 1 Old Wood Jewelry Box, 1 F.F Mausoleum small brass key, 1 Ruby, 1 Braithwaites Land Deed, 1 Broken Pirate Sword, 1 Milton's Safety Deposit Key, 1 Senator Pendleton Sealed Envelope, Proof Of Marlin-Thorne Firearms Co., & 10 Dynamites
Bank: -