Henry didn't bother opening the intelligence center. He ran straight for the fourth floor. Another iron gate. He used the same brutal method, blowing the lock with his Sharps rifle and using a corpse as a battering ram to clear the way, killing the ten guards on the other side in a whirlwind of gunfire.
He then ran back down to the third floor and, using his universal keys, opened the doors to the intelligence center. He was met with a staggering sight: rows upon rows of iron shelves and filing cabinets, all of them filled with documents. But he now had over twenty cubic meters of storage space. In half an hour, he had looted the entire archive, taking every file, every ledger.
He doused the empty shelves with the remaining kerosene and then went to the fourth floor. He looted three more safes from the executive offices, then ran back down, setting fires on every floor as he went.
He burst out of the main building and found the twenty-eight guards from the barracks asleep in the guardhouse. He locked them in.
A few minutes later, the entire Pinkerton headquarters was a raging inferno. He fired two warning shots into the third and fourth-floor dormitories, then disappeared into the night.
He rode for the north side of the city, to a small, exquisite three-story manor in a wealthy suburb—the property he had acquired the deed to from the Denver black market. The house was empty, a fine layer of dust covering everything. It had been unoccupied for months.
He found the switch for the secret entrance to the basement, a well-hidden, multi-room complex with its own ventilation system.
He went to the master bedroom on the second floor, barricaded the door with his granite blocks, and then lay down on the bed.
His progress bar now read Level 3, 69.29%. The night's work had yielded a massive haul of pearls.
He used the three new skill-bearing pearls one at a time.
The first gave him a new talent: Intuition LV 1, the ability to instinctively sense the true emotions of others, especially their malice.
The second gave him a new skill: Ventriloquism LV 4.
The third gave him Steamship Piloting LV 4. He now had the knowledge and skill of a master captain, able to pilot any steam-powered vessel, including the new, high-speed torpedo boats.
But his most important upgrade was yet to come.
He looked at his pocket watch. It was 3:12 AM.
He focused his mind and poured all of his accumulated energy—the equivalent of four thousand grey pearls—into his Constitution.
He was enveloped in a cocoon of milky-white light, his body suffused with a warm, primal energy.
He awoke, and it was as if two bolts of lightning had flashed in the darkness of the room. Twenty minutes had passed. He felt completely reborn, his body transformed. If before his bones had been cast iron, they were now forged steel. His five senses were sharper, his strength and speed immense.
He checked his Super Reflexes talent. The duration had doubled, to two seconds. And the cooldown was drastically reduced. His body had finally caught up to his supernatural abilities.
He could now, he calculated, throw nearly a hundred throwing knives in the span of two seconds. The thought was staggering.
The upgrade to LV 5, he learned, would require his progress bar to first reach Level 4, and then an additional forty thousand grey pearls. But as long as there was a path forward, he was content.
He was also intensely curious. At Level 1, he had gained skills. At Level 2, talents. What new power had he unlocked at Level 3?
He replayed the night's events in his mind. He had been a whirlwind of destruction, a force of nature. He had looted the Pinkerton headquarters of its most valuable asset: its archives. With the death of Allan Pinkerton and his son, the agency's legendary founder, and with their vast repository of information now in his hands, he had effectively decapitated the entire organization. He now held the keys to the American underworld.