Coal was black, rough, and ordinary to most.
But to Vikram, it was control in solid form.
Every bullet his foundry forged, every train he planned to build, every furnace he lit beneath Bharat's belly — all of it depended on fire.
And fire, in this age, meant coal.
British coal flowed south — from Jharia, Raniganj, and Bengal mines, through rail lines, to port cities and military stations.
Every ton was counted.
Every shaft watched.
Every contract bound in colonial law.
But Vikram didn't need to break the British system.
He just needed to slip underneath it.
His entry point was a man named Shamsher Lall, a mid-rank contractor at the Jharia coal belt.
On paper, Shamsher was forgettable.
Fifty. Widower. Ran two mining crews. Known for cheating both the company and his workers.
But Vikram had no use for honest men.
He needed men with pressure points.
And Shamsher had three:
An unpaid debt to a Marwari financier.
A bastard son who worked in a theatre under a false name.
An ulcer in his gut that flared when he drank too much toddy.
All of this was learned within minutes of touching his shoulder at a railway platform.
Thread formed.
That night, inside Shamsher's sleeping mind, Vikram fused and inserted:
Advanced Contract Ambiguity
Beginner Logistics Reassignment
Greed-Over-Fear Conditioning
By dawn, Shamsher woke with a hunger to earn without being seen.
Exactly as planned.
A week later, two shipments of "low-grade" coal went missing between Jharia and Howrah.
They reappeared — rebranded as gravel — in the hands of a shadow company set up by Vikram's frontman, posing as a rural contractor.
No police inquiry was launched.
No complaint filed.
Shamsher adjusted his records.
The English nodded and moved on.
This was the start of Operation Kaala Dhaaga — The Black Thread.
Vikram created a coal redirection network built entirely on memory control, accounting errors, and worker bribery via emotion adjustment.
Three clerks from the Coal Directorate were connected.
Two rail schedulers had their minds lightly trimmed — forgetting certain shipment IDs.
And nine loaders across Bihar and Bengal received orbs to improve lifting speed and record-check memory.
Every move had Magicnet scaffolding.
Soon, Vikram wasn't just stealing coal.
He was reassigning it — making it appear legally diverted to a roadworks project, or temple kiln donation, or army training site in Punjab.
On paper, it all looked legitimate.
In reality, it all fed his underground foundries, presses, and refinery workshops.
But fuel wasn't just about transport.
It was about extraction.
So Vikram needed to secure mines of his own.
That's where Madho Singh came in — a tribal leader from Jharkhand whose village sat on untapped coal.
The British hadn't claimed it yet.
Too remote. Too wild.
Vikram visited under disguise — appearing as a cloth trader from Varanasi.
He didn't preach. Didn't promise factories.
He sat beside Madho Singh's sick child. Laid his hand on the boy's shoulder.
Thread connected.
Later that night, the boy's fever broke.
And by morning, Madho Singh had agreed.
The land would be lent.
The coal would be shared.
In return, no British would ever enter his forest again.
That became Vikram's first sovereign coal shaft — dug silently by connected men trained through Magicnet with orbs like:
Tunnel Safety Instinct
Breath Control Under Dust
Seam Mapping Awareness
In just three weeks, without blueprints, without oversight, they were extracting 3 tons per day.
No tax. No report. No overseer.
Only fire for freedom.
The coal reached Delhi through disguised carts marked as temple ash, carried by "pilgrims" trained to switch routes and sleep in villages controlled by Magicnet users.
Each route was tracked mentally through thread tags — subtle emotional pulses embedded into the carrier's subconscious.
If stopped?
They'd forget the true route.
If followed?
The trail would lead to a decoy depot.
In time, Magicnet built a coal web with five pillars:
Redirection from British routes
Sovereign mining via tribal alliances
Clerical blind spots in rail logs
Orb-trained loaders and diggers
Emotional loyalty without slogans
There were no banners. No armed guards. No calls to revolt.
Just silent infrastructure.
And yet, the effects were loud.
Vikram's Delhi foundry doubled production.
His new textile mill operated through the night.
And his first rural forge near Gwalior burned clean through monsoon.
Fire was now his to command.
But it wasn't just fuel.
It was the belief behind it.
When coal reached a workshop untouched by British taxes, the workers felt it.
They didn't know who Vikram was.
But they knew this coal came from "our soil, our people."
They whispered:
"This fire is ours."
"This heat listens to us."
"No white man bought this flame."
Back in Jharia, Shamsher Lall received a mysterious bonus from an unknown firm — three gold coins in a clay box with a lotus mark.
He smiled.
Slept well.
And never questioned where those shipments disappeared to.
The British still believed they held the rails.
Still believed Bharat's furnace needed their coal.
They didn't see the shadow economy beneath their feet.
But Vikram did.
And that coal — once burned in foreign ships and British mansions — now lit machines of liberation.
One ember at a time.