Mindscape

When Athar regained his focus, he found himself in a completely new place – his own mindscape. And what he witnessed inside his own mindscape shocked him to his core.

The Mindscape, or Beastspace, as it was called, was a supernatural place. 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 store the beast inside it. The human companion could summon the 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 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 saw shocked him. He was now standing in a circular expanse of green land. And with him as the centre, the expanse was almost fifty meters in radius. The blue sky and white-coloured clouds floating in the air were almost at a height of one hundred meters.

Athar had never read about any such mindscape. He had known that Mindscapes had many variants, but most of them appeared to be made of iron or rocks – you know, square-shaped iron or rock boxes. He had never ever heard of a Mindscape that looked like this.

But this was not the main shocker. If this had been the only thing, he might have been a bit surprised but not more.

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 six feet in height. The trunk of the tree was almost one foot in thickness and was silver in colour. Three branches emerged from the trunk, and around a dozen golden-coloured leaves were hanging on each branch. And on one of the branches, a single red fruit, almost the size of a fist, was hanging. The tree was giving off an ethereal glow, and it looked as if it was some divine tree.

This tree had caused the real shock to Athar. He had never heard anything like this before.

The snake, now his bonded companion, was lying on the ground as it was trying to coil around the trunk of the tree. Now that the bond had been fully formed, Athar had learned all about the snake.

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. And the snake undoubtedly had very high potential.

Athar, as he learned about the snake, had turned 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 simply 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, then a sudden pain assaulted his mind, and a load of information flooded his consciousness.

Athar did not understand much before darkness took over him again.

When Athar was able to reopen his eyes, he found himself back in the same room. He shook his head to clear his mind as he processed 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 had turned into full-grown laughter.

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 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 second limitation was definitely the resources required. Raising an iron grade to bronze grade might not be so difficult, but raising a bronze grade was difficult. And then further raising a silver grade to a gold grade was 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.

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.

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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