Even as the team celebrated their first championship win overseas, Arjun's mind wandered to matters far beyond the pitch.
He observed logistics: how the travel company managed buses and hotels, how local vendors supplied the team with food, how currency exchange and communication lines functioned. Everything was a network, every network had patterns, every pattern had a leverage point.
He realized that cricket, business, and influence were all interconnected. The principles of anticipation, timing, and subtle manipulation applied universally.
He began mapping possibilities:
Franchises in multiple sports leagues, not just cricket
Investments in infrastructure, real estate, and communication to create influence over regions
Strategic control of media, sponsorships, and networks for both visibility and leverage
Guntur, quiet and underestimated, would remain the base. From there, he could expand—first regionally, then nationally, eventually globally.
Sid, meanwhile, was struggling. Even on the international stage, his aggression and raw talent were outmaneuvered by Arjun's invisible hand. Every misstep, every overconfidence, every emotional reaction was noted and stored. Sid had become both a rival and a benchmark. The more he tried, the more he validated Arjun's strategy: control, patience, anticipation, and subtle influence were superior to aggression and flash.
That night, alone in the hotel room, Arjun traced lines on a notebook. Not cricket field plans this time, but networks: cities, supply chains, communication hubs, potential franchises, finance, logistics, and influence. Every variable connected to another. Every domino had a trigger.
He smiled faintly.
The pitch is just the beginning. Soon, everything else bends to the game I design.
By the time the celebration outside the window faded into the quiet of night, Arjun Verma—the Devil—was already thinking in decades, not matches. He was building quietly, invisibly, and strategically. Cricket would be his first empire. Business, influence, and legacy would be the rest.
And no one, not Sid, not selectors, not the world, had yet realized just how far he would reach.