March 1 – March 20, 2015
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1. Dawn Over the Valley
The first week of March arrived with a strange kind of quiet over the pine-covered valley. Winter was loosening its grip, but spring hadn't quite taken over yet. Thin veils of mist clung to the slopes, and the early morning air carried the smell of damp earth and distant woodsmoke from village kitchens.
Standing at the edge of the clearing, the MC — Arun Dev — looked down at the construction site like a general surveying a battlefield. Except this battlefield would birth his fortress of peace.
The 100-acre plot was no longer a simple stretch of uneven land and scattered scrub. In the past two months, teams of carefully selected local workers, supplemented by discreet "specialist crews" that no one recognized, had cleared the central section where the main mansion would rise.
What nobody knew — not even the engineers who were hired — was that half the work was being done by machines no one on Earth had ever seen before. Machines that moved silently, with hydraulic precision, their power cores humming in a way human ears couldn't detect unless they stood within arm's reach.
They came and went before dawn, lifted in and out of the valley by drones that looked like dark shadows in the predawn sky.
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2. The Stealth Deliveries
It had taken weeks for Arun to design the delivery schedule in a way that would draw no attention. The stealth drones — adapted from Marvel tech in his hidden dimension — were coated in radar-absorbing material. They could carry prefabricated steel frames, whole marble slabs, or even entire concrete-pouring modules, dangling from magnetic clamps beneath their fuselage.
From a distance, they looked like nothing more than a few dark birds gliding high above.
The largest of them, SkyHaul-7, made its first run on March 3rd. It came in low over the ridge, completely silent, the fog helping to mask its shape. Two massive beams of carbon-reinforced steel were lowered directly into the freshly dug foundation trenches, guided by MC's humanoid assistant Aarya operating a robotic arm.
By 5 a.m., before the first villager stirred, the drones were gone. The beams were in place, the trenches covered, and the local crew arrived scratching their heads about how the work seemed to advance "overnight" without them.
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3. Inside the Hidden Control Room
Back in the temporary control hub — a repurposed farmhouse hidden behind tall cedar hedges — Arun watched the live feed from thermal cameras. He sipped black tea slowly, eyes scanning every angle. He trusted no one, not even the men he paid triple the market rate.
On the holographic table before him, the 3D model of the mansion rotated slowly. Today was about the foundation grid. He would lay it not just for architectural strength but also as a shield — a subterranean Faraday cage and seismic dampener woven into the very skeleton of the house.
"Aarya," he said, "adjust the west wing foundation depth to two meters more. I want space for the underground library."
"Yes, Arun," she replied, her voice calm, synthetic yet carrying a softness that made it feel alive.
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4. Side POV – The Journalist
That same morning, ten kilometers away in the small district town, Rajiv Sharma, a freelance journalist, sat in the corner of a tea stall flipping through his leather-bound notebook. He had been following the "mystery land project" for weeks.
Something about it didn't add up. Villagers swore that they heard no trucks at night, yet somehow the site seemed to transform every morning. Walls appeared. Steel frames rose. And all without the sound of heavy machinery echoing through the valley.
Rajiv wrote down:
> March 3 – No visible night activity, yet foundation deepened overnight. Possible illegal quarry? Unregistered construction company?
He adjusted his glasses and decided he would try to get a photo of the site at night. The editor in Delhi didn't care much for rural gossip — but if Rajiv could get evidence of something unusual, maybe it could be his big break.
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5. The Precision Pour
March 8th.
At exactly 4:15 a.m., the SkyHaul-5 drone descended with a load that would normally require a convoy of cement mixers — a compact, modular concrete-pouring unit designed in Arun's hidden lab.
The crew on-site didn't know where the material came from. They only knew that by the time they arrived after sunrise, the foundation pits had been perfectly filled and leveled, the surface smoothed like glass.
"Bhai, yeh kaise possible hai?" one worker whispered to another.
("Brother, how is this possible?")
"Pata nahi… shaayad raat ko koi aur kaam karta hai yahan."
("Don't know… maybe someone else works here at night.")
Arun, wearing plain work clothes and a cap pulled low, moved among them quietly, checking levels with a manual gauge even though his wristwatch could already measure micro-tilt with AI precision.
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6. Unwanted Eyes
That night, Rajiv the journalist finally made his move. Hiding behind a fallen log at the ridge, he waited with his camera ready.
At 3:42 a.m., a low hum began to ripple through the air. He squinted upward — nothing visible at first. Then, a shadow, moving fast.
His camera clicked — once, twice, three times — before the object vanished into the mist.
He looked at his shots in disbelief: the images were blurry, distorted, as though the lens had been confused by the air around the object.
"What the hell…?" he muttered.
Back at his room, he would discover that his camera's entire SD card had been corrupted. The only file left intact was a single image of the moon.
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7. The Last Week
By March 18th, the foundations were complete — not just the surface-visible part, but the intricate network of subterranean rooms, conduits, and reinforced cores that would make the mansion more secure than most government bunkers.
Arun stood at the center of the future grand hall, a square pit 40 meters wide, now layered with high-density composite flooring. He imagined the walls rising, the glass panels catching the sunlight, the echo of his mother's laughter in the kitchen.
The thought brought a rare smile to his face.
To the workers, he was just a rich, eccentric man building a big house. To the world, he didn't even exist in the top wealth lists. But in reality, this was the first stone of a silent empire.
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