When Athar regained his focus, he found himself in a completely new place. It was his own mindscape.
And what he was witnessing inside his own mindscape shocked him to the core.
The Mindscape, or Beastspace, as it was called, was a supernatural place or a supernatural space. It had two primary purposes.
The first was to store the mana, which would be shared between the beast and the human. The second was to serve as an abode for the tamed beast. The human could summon his tamed beast from the Beastspace as per his desires.
Now, generally, as far as Athar had been able to read and find from publicly available information, the Mindscape, generally, was a square shaped space. And the size of the space was not more than ten meters when it was unlocked for the first time.
But what Athar was looking at had shocked him. He was standing in a circular expanse of green land.
And with him as the centre, the expanse was almost fifty meters in radius. He had a blue sky and white coloured clouds floating above him and it was almost at a height of one hundred meters.
Athar had never read about any such Mindscape. The size was almost ridiculous.
He had known that Mindscapes could have different kinds of appearances. But most of them appeared to be made of either iron or rocks.
You know, square shaped iron or rock boxes what they looked like. He had never ever heard of a Mindscape that looked like this. Grasses. Sky and clouds.
But this was not the main thing that shocked him. If this had been the only thing, he might have been a bit shocked but he would have still found it reasonable. He would have taken it for some kind of mutation. He had heard about them.
The real absurd thing was right next to him. At the dead centre of the expanse, just next to him, was a tree. A tree in his mindscape.
The tree was not very large. It was around six feet in height. The trunk of the tree was almost one foot in thickness and silver in colour.
Three branches were emerging from the trunk, and around a dozen golden coloured leaves were hanging on each branch. A red coloured fruit was hanging on one of the branches.
The tree was giving off an ethereal glow. It looked as if it was some divine tree. This tree had caused the real shock to Athar.
He had never heard about the presence of any other object in the Mindscape of a person apart from their tamed beast. He could not place his finger on what was happening.
Athar tore his focus from the tree and moved towards his tamed beast.
The snake, now his bonded companion and tamed beast, was lying on the ground. It was trying to coil around the trunk of the tree. It was trying to climb and wrap around the trunk but was failing miserably. It slipped back on the ground in every attempt. A chuckle escaped Athar's lips as he spectacled this 'cute act' from his tamed beast.
Now that the tamed beast bond had been fully formed, Athar had learned all about his beast.
And this was another shock for Athar. This was no common grade snake. This was a very special and one of the rarest species of snake. The Shadow Mist Snake.
The snake, much to Athar's extreme surprise, was a silver grade beast. A grade that Athar had not even dared to imagine that he could get his hands on. He had gotten a silver grade beast from a common grade egg. And his tamed beast undoubtedly had very high potential.
Athar, as he learned about the snake, became extremely happy. Getting over his exhilaration, Athar turned his focus back to the tree in the centre of his mindscape and the fruit hanging on one of its branches.
Was it something good? Was it bad? He did not know.
With not much option to do, he raised his hand and placed it on the trunk of the tree to see if he could produce any reaction. For the first few moments, nothing happened. He was about to pull his hand back when a sudden pain assaulted his mind. A load of information had flooded his consciousness.
Athar did not understand much before darkness took over him again.
When Athar reopened his eyes, he found himself back in his room. His consciousness had been ejected from his Mindscape. He shook his head to clear his mind and he tried to process what had happened until now.
He took a few moments to recall what had happened and then process the information that had flooded his mind after he had touched the tree. The moment he was done, a wide smile spread across his lips, which in the next few moments turned into full grown laughter.
It was a laughter full of delight, exhilaration and happiness mixed with an expression of disbelief. This had been the happiest day of his life, and he was exhilarated.
Firstly, the common grade beast he had bought after so much struggle had turned out to be a silver grade beast. A silver grade beast! He could not believe it. This alone was enough to raise his status, and strength, by miles.
But the tree, the silver trunked tree, was the real deal. He, for now, had limited information about the tree.
The tree was called the 'Tree of Origin.' Although the name felt grand, he did not know anything more about what the name implied. But he knew about the two functions of the tree.
The tree would produce two types of fruits. The first was the 'Red Fruit,' which was already hanging on one of the branches. And what would it do? It would raise the grade of the beast. Yes.
Raising the grade of a beast was not an impossible task. For example, it was quite common for a common grade beast to rise to an iron grade beast, then probably to a bronze grade beast. But it had certain limitations.
For example, you could not really raise the grade of the beast from common to platinum. Theoretically, it might be possible, but the resources required for it would be unimaginable and the beast might not be capable enough to handle such evolutions.
And the second limitation was definitely the resources required. Raising an iron grade to bronze grade might not be so difficult, but raising a bronze grade to silver grade was difficult. And then further raising a silver grade to a gold grade was even more a herculean task.
But the red fruit, no matter what, would raise the grade of the beast. Though it was not like every time one fruit would raise the grade by one level.
For example, for a common grade, one single red fruit might directly raise the grade to bronze, but while raising a bronze grade to silver grade, it might require two fruits. It depended on various factors including the strength of the beast.
The other second fruit, which was still not on the tree, would be a purple fruit. And what did it do? This was a fruit that would let Athar form a bond with an additional beast.
Yes. In the future, he could have more than one beast. And forming a bond with more than one beast was not something he had heard of.
How many more? He did not know. But at least, he was going to have two beasts.
And how did the tree produce these two fruits? Athar was not sure, but from what little he had been able to understand, he felt that the tree would absorb some of the mana from his mindscape, and then it would produce the fruit. Thinking of all the benefits he was going to have, Athar could not stop smiling. He felt that in a single moment, he had leaped into the sky.
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