On the edge of Delhi, between the Yamuna's bend and a decaying cluster of cattle sheds, a new sound had begun to rise — not prayer, not song, not the cries of bullocks, but the deep, rhythmic clank of hammer on iron.
It was barely audible from the road.
But below ground, beneath layers of packed dirt and stone, Bharat's first native foundry had been born.
And no one outside the Magicnet knew it existed.
The land had once belonged to a fading princely family — reduced to irrelevance, buried in tax debt, their estate sold piece by piece to contractors who never built.
One of them — Seth Harinarayan — had been "convinced" by Vikram through memory adjustments to lease the land for a modest "grain storage facility."
The papers said storage.
The workers thought storage.
Even the local collector's file said "low-yield granary development."
But inside the threadspace, the project was titled:
Project Agnigha — The Fireborn Weapon
It had begun with blueprints.
Vikram didn't steal them.
He simply extracted them — skill orb fusion from multiple British engineers over time:
Beginner Steam Valve Design
Intermediate Metallurgy
Advanced Gear Ratios
Basic Armament Casting
Each fragment was partial, scattered across minds.
But Vikram fused them, ran trials in simulated dreamspace, and completed designs that even the British themselves hadn't yet refined locally.
The problem wasn't theory.
It was execution.
No Indian had the full training. No schools taught metallurgy beyond religious texts. And certainly not for military use.
So Vikram built his own crew.
From factory sweepers, mechanics, sons of ironsmiths, and women who worked in brass polish stalls.
He pulled their orbs.
He fused:
Beginner Fire Control
Beginner Moulding
Elementary Safety Awareness
Intermediate Heat Discipline
Then added new ones:
Advanced Forging Pressure Tuning
Weapon Barrel Symmetry
Each person got a bundle.
Each one changed in a week.
Sattu, once a print boy, now handled furnace timings to the second.
A woman named Kamla, who had never held metal heavier than a sickle, cast a barrel with a 0.2mm error — better than the British army factory average.
None of them understood how they learned so fast.
They just worked.
The foundry was disguised with three-layer obfuscation.
Top level: Grain sacks and broken carts.
Mid level: Hollow stone bricks leading to tunnels.
Core level: Iron smelter, cooled molds, cast tables, and a controlled airflow system designed by a Magicnet-linked sweeper who once repaired British boilers.
Every tool was borrowed knowledge.
Every hand was controlled memory.
Every plan was Vikram's will given shape.
The first weapons were simple.
Single-shot rifles modeled on the outdated 1885 Martini-Henry design.
But they were made in secret, from Indian ore, by Indian hands, under Indian command.
And that made them priceless.
Vikram ordered fifty units — not for distribution, but for training.
Each was handed to a separate squad of Magicnet-linked fighters spread across Bharat.
They were told to learn it backward and forward.
And each time they improved a technique — speed reload, barrel cleaning, recoil dampening — the skill was pulled back into the net.
Like teaching the net itself how to fight.
Within weeks, Magicnet developed:
Beginner Rifle Maintenance
Intermediate Load-Speed Tactics
Elementary Barrel Error Detection
All of it became fusable packets.
And Vikram began implanting military instincts into farmers, printers, and errand boys.
Not to raise armies.
Not yet.
But to build potential energy.
The British had factories.
But they also had audits, reports, inspections, paper trails.
Vikram had silence.
No names.
No brands.
No suppliers.
Only the work.
Only the rhythm.
The first test came on a moonless night when British lancers moved near the Yamuna bank to intimidate a group of farmers refusing new taxes.
Vikram's scouts, equipped with the foundry's test rifles, moved through the sugarcane fields.
They never fired.
They just appeared, rifles in hand, stances crisp, eyes calm.
The lancers saw them.
Turned back.
Never filed a report.
But changed the patrol pattern for the next two weeks.
Fear had entered the system.
Without noise. Without blood.
Only shape.
Vikram named the unit Vahni, meaning flame that doesn't flicker.
They were trained not to kill.
But to appear.
To remind.
To suggest that force lived here too.
Production increased.
The foundry began producing barrel cores, firing pins, and bolt casings.
Two engineers from Rajasthan, connected through Magicnet, arrived under the guise of copper traders.
Within days, they were building improvements — faster drills, mold cooling, safety protocols.
They received:
Advanced Weapon Material Flow
Precision Drill Application
Soon, Vikram would not just produce rifles.
He would produce the men who made them better.
The British still debated labor tax in the Assembly.
Still fought over cloth tariffs.
Still issued warrants for men who carried knives.
They didn't see what was growing beneath their boots.
They didn't feel the heat.
Not yet.
But in the threadspace, the heartbeat of Project Agnigha thudded like a smith's hammer:
Chak
Chak
Chak
One barrel at a time.
One flame at a time.
Bharat was arming itself.