"Okay, so what do I need to do?" I asked without wasting time posing who-are-you, what-are-you questions I felt I wouldn't get the answers for.
"Consume the leaf on the left from your side." The childlike voice commanded.
"You have only two; can you manage with only one?" I asked as I plucked the leaf anyway and started chewing it.
It tasted like Darjeeling Tea, with a little hint of mango sprinkled in. I'm positive that no mango tree leaf tasted like this.
"I'll have to manage." The voice answered with a strained voice. "But you could have amputated me a bit gently!"
"Sorry, it was rude of me. Now that I think of it, along with your description of the act..." I suddenly felt a burning sensation on the ring finger of my left hand, as if something bore through my skin at the tip and traveled up my arm.
I imagined a leech wiggling inside my blood vessels, nesting below the inner part of my elbow.
"Your grandmother has given you an interesting training. Even though she picked up the basics by looking at her husband, she gave her own touch to chitram, which is totally different from the established traditional methods. Now that I can access your memories, I can see where your rich imagination comes from. Imagination always starts small, just like I am right now, but when you pile up enough of them and connect them together, you will find something majestic born out of them. Thus, I will grant you a trait that applies to all your skills." The voice continued inside my head.
"Trait?"
"It is the realization of your true nature, something built over time and now expressed like a newly born sapling. I can only grow through you, so get stronger. I don't know about others, but I will always be on your side since we are bound together."
"That was sweet of you." I smiled, looking down at the sapling and patting its remaining leaf. Maybe I was trying to elicit a physical reaction out of the plant. I've always loved watching touch-me-not vines.
"Just as you'll protect me, I will also do so. You can take a look at your auxiliary status later. You can contact me whenever you want using this. Make sure I'm not lonely, okay? You'll also be able to see others' windows. But let me also give you a tip. Every new thing that you learn is realized as a skill. And the more you practice, the more it gets stronger. So, never stop learning. Keep trying things out." The little plant advised.
"I've been planning to do exactly that."
"Our time is almost up; Kalpa is now getting suspicious. Thanks for being patient with me and not interrupting. We can meet every ten levels you advance. So get stronger fast, and don't leave me waiting for long." The childlike voice finally stopped.
I realized that her sentences were concise yet awkward as if it had been only a few days since she started talking. But the emotions I felt from them were different.
One moment, she talked like a mature woman while being innocent and childish in the next. I felt an enormous amount of trust flowing between us. I'll use the status to contact her after this ritual is complete. I had loads of questions for her.
It seems that this synchronization ritual lets me connect with tree beings. When she used the name Kalpa and the fact that she was getting suspicious, I felt like this young sapling had been hacking into the whole network to access my number, aiming to talk with me before everyone.
My trait and status inherited from her are auxiliary, so now I'll be able to meet the mobile tower that will grant me my primary status. Hopefully, she doesn't start asking questions about where I was till now instead of arriving at her place as soon as I touched the Linga.
I touched the only other leaf of this young plant gently and with care for one last time and said goodbye as my vision shifted, leaving me floating in the dark cosmos, with luminous blue clouds floating above and golden stars creating patterns in the sky.
My feet touched an invisible ground, a mirror image of everything hanging above.
"Did you get lost on your way? Turn around." I heard the voice of an old lady from behind.
I was shocked to see a huge pillar that went up to the heavens. So high that it made me nauseous.
How can something be so big? The pillar was a cylinder that ended as a sphere at the top. Six golden circles adorned the tube part of the pillar at regular intervals and seemed palpably alive.
They sometimes became elliptic, sometimes like a rounded star, and again back to being a circle. It was breathtaking. It looked like the circles were present from the beginning, and the tower grew by piercing through the center of the circles and connecting them.
On the other hand, the sphere had a massive glowing eye reminiscent of Lord Shiva's third eye, which can turn everything in front of it to ashes once opened. I flinched as I felt its overpowering gaze and got stung with the sensation of a thousand needles piercing my feet from below.
The burning sensation I felt before with the sapling when I ate her leaf was nothing compared to this. My body felt like it was restructuring itself, from my legs to the head. I tried to move my legs but found them held in place. It reminded me of that one time I stood on an acupuncture mat.
I tried not to make any sound, afraid it might also get transmitted back to the prayer hall where my actual body was. After the pain subsided, only silence followed.
"Um, thank you for the pain, I guess?" I tried to break the ice.
"I'm concentrating. Can't you be quiet for a while?" The massive tower retorted. Being scolded by such a gigantic pillar left me feeling like an ant in front of a herd of elephants. My whole body just wanted to give up and stop functioning.
"You have been fooling around all your life, haven't you? I can't see even a single instance of learning a useful skill from all the memories I can access. There is nothing to see at all. Why do parents even send their child here being as unprepared as this?" The voice complained.
I was furious inside, but I couldn't even open my mouth in front of such a presence now that it exuded such an ominous aura.
The things I know are all useless? I wonder how much of my memories she's allowed to see. Either lots of things have been blocked from her view, or her list of valuable skills didn't coincide with what I had.
"I'll just give you a quick acquisition trait for now. Don't go to the front lines with your capabilities. You'll only waste the Sanjeevani Amrita for no reason. You are a lot behind other people, so don't be lazy in your studies from now on." The old mobile tower finally stopped ranting.
The prickly feeling below my feet receded as I bent my leg to see the damage below. There were no wounds despite the sensations still ringing inside my brain. I wanted this to end, but I didn't want to back down without saying a few things to the rude tower.
"In what sense am I behind the other students? Just because I don't conform to your ideals doesn't mean I'm useless."
"It's rich coming from you. Let's do this instead. I'll apologize if you can return and meet me here again." She dismissed me like the lesser beast I was.
The space around me twisted as familiar fluorescent lights of the prayer hall filled my eyes.
I was back at the shrine with faces on both sides. I jerked my hand away from the stone and returned with Saiyan back to my seat on the carpet. He had also come to check what was wrong with me. Thankfully, I wasn't wiggling on the ground like a possessed maniac.
"How long was I out for?" I asked, embarrassed at the set of events.
"Probably for over three minutes," he whispered, clearly thinking about something else. The other people who had come up to help me also sat back.
Most of them were seniors who kept whispering among themselves and stealing glances at us.
I also met Roop's eyes, who waved back at me. He gave a slight nod, asking whether I was okay.
His eyes behind those specs were quite expressive. With a medium build and dense, curly hair, he reminded me of instant noodle cakes. I blinked with a slight nod to relay that everything was fine.
"You could have taken a three-minute instant noodle break in the meantime," I said, referring to the advertisement of a noodle brand in my country. It unfortunately failed to bring him a smile.
That golden light must have been some ominous signal.
"You sure you don't wanna talk?" I asked, unable to suppress my curiosity.
"I want to but can't. Not right now. Can you wait until things get sorted out a bit?" He said quietly.
His distress over an unpredictable circumstance beyond our control worried me slightly. I wanted to be of help but I, myself, was in need of it the most.
"Can you tell me more about the mobile tower? She was so rude! She didn't need to tell me outright that I wasn't good enough..." I complained insincerely. "She told me that she would ask for forgiveness if I managed to meet her again. Do you know when can we do that?"
"After we reach level 100. It honestly will take years, considering the Ashrama's curriculum. Even for me." He answered my question seriously.
"Even for me..." I snorted after mimicking the way he said it. "Yeah, yeah, if Mr. I-have-been-training-since-I-was-born takes years to get there, it might as well take infinite lifetimes for me."
He rolled his eyes at my stupid joke and continued, "She is Kalpa Vriksha—the tree of wishes. Every mythology has a mention of their version of the World Tree. She is the one from ours, born from the collaboration of Devatas and Asuras during the Great Churning of the Sea, Samudra Manthan."
I remember hearing the story of Samudra Manthan from my Grandma.
Samudra means Sea, and Manthan means stirring or churning. It was a nasty business.
The Devatas(Gods) and Asuras used and tricked each other, coveting the treasures of the Universe and trying to monopolize the items as they came out one after another.
To harvest Amrita, the Elixir of Immortality, from the Sea of Milk, they broke off the huge Mountain Mandara to use as a dasher and asked Lord Vishnu for assistance.
At first, Lord Vishnu facilitated the process by turning himself into a gigantic Tortoise, Kurma, to hold the enormous Mountain in place while it was being twisted over the Sea using Vasuki, one of the Naga Kings, as a rope.
Later, he presided over the 'fair' distribution of Amrita, which finally spilled out from the depths of the Sea.
Transforming into a beautiful woman named Mohini to enchant the Asuras, he distracted them while the Gods feasted on Amrita by themselves. The poor Auras got regular yet tasty rainbow water.
A multitude of treasures, deadly poison, Goddesses, a Wish Fulfilling Cow and a Tree, four-tusked elephants, apsaras(divine damsels), eight-headed horses, and several other artifacts were also mined from the event.
The Gods and Asura claimed each of them reasonably until Amrita emerged.
Lord Vishnu deceived the Asuras on the Devatas' request, who went on his way after the deed was done, while the Devatas and Asuras left at the scene duked it out.
The Devatas, clearly at an advantage with Amrita's power, gained victory and exiled the Asuras to Patala Loka, the world under our feet, made of seven dimensions representing each of the seven vices.
Asuras who gave into those sins, were imprisoned at different levels, and the worst of them were sent to the second-lowest dimension.
It was a fascinating story and gave perspective on the right of the victorious. The myths might have been different if the Devatas had been deceived instead.
"So she's the tree from the myths; I thought she might look like a huge Banyan tree. The structure was not remotely close to something like a plant." I remembered the mobile tower-like structure.
Whoever gave her this nickname to bypass Maya had enough reason to do so.
Status!! I totally forgot in the midst of everything. I can now see my abilities quantified in front of me.
"How do I check my status out?" I asked Saiyan, "And yeah, what was all that pain for in my legs for?"
"She needed to inject some of her sap inside you for the awakening and synchronization process. After you consume the Sanjeevani Amrita in the Ashrama, you'll be able to see your status. I learned about it from my cousin, who's in tenth grade now." He answered patiently, even mentioning his sources.
Something felt odd about this conversation, though. It was as if this exchange shouldn't have taken place right now.
So that's why the little sapling wanted me to eat her leaf. There might have been some sap inside the veins. Some of it even got on my finger when I plucked it, now that I think about the stinging feeling I received back there.
"I still need to wait? I thought I could see it if I said 'Open Status' or something." I flinched as a black screen with a green border and letters appeared in front of me. It totally looked like those hacking interfaces in movies.
Saiyan probably sensed the surprise in my emotions and took a glance.
"Only a few rows left. You also need to go meet the warden. Let me know if you need something. Sometimes, the views of an outsider can give a simpler solution to the problem." I said, trying to change the topic by focusing the conversation on him.
He gave a light chuckle and started spectating the remaining students who went one by one to the shrine.
"You're not an outsider anymore." He assured me and became quiet.
I tried not to get embarrassed and discreetly viewed my hack-mode status screen.
_________________________________________
STATUS
Name: Dhruva.
Species: Human
Age: 12
Trait: Fabrication (Auxiliary)
Class: Guardian of [] (Auxiliary)
Level: 0
HP: 300
Attack: 14
Defense: 4
Crit chance: 0.02
Crit damage: 0.1
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
STATS(Auxiliary)
Strength: 8
Stamina: 5
Agility: 6
Dexterity: 26
Intelligence: 17
------------------------------------------------
Shakti(divine energy): 0
Kundalini(internal energy): 0
Prana(life energy): 10
------------------------------------------------
Curse resistance: 0
Enchantment resistance: 0
Poison resistance: 0
Ailment resistance: 4
Mental resistance: 2
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SKILLS(Auxiliary)
Passives:
Reasoning: LvL 2
Intuition: LvL 2
Visualization: LvL 3
Space Comprehension: LvL 1
Chitram: LvL 5
Chanting: LvL 2
Concentration: LvL 3
Mental Fortitude: LvL 1
Active:
Field of protection: LvL 1 (New!!)
One with nature: LvL 1 (New!!)
Recovery: LvL 1 (New!!)
Wood Flesh: LvL 1 (New!!)
Bonk: LvL 1(New!!)
_______________________________________________
The amount of zeroes left me unsettled.
I would have been disowned if it were my report card. It was also confirmed that the little sapling had definitely searched through my memories. The hacking interface from the movies was a reference to what it had done during the synchronization ritual.
The Bonk meme was definitely one of my favorites. The doggie with a baseball bat chasing a scaly lizard and a monkey never failed to make me chuckle.
Chitram and Chanting, being Passive skills, came as a surprise. There must be Skills that use them as a foundation then.
My first priority would be to find and learn about those.
Considering all my active skills are new, I understood why Kalpa was so frustrated with me.
What can I do? I only trained my passives. It might also be possible that Kalpa can't access our passive skills. Or that she didn't care to take a look at it.
A chat button was also at the top right of my status window. Looking at it and having the urge to touch it in the air, I somehow restrained myself. It would look suspicious if I suddenly started pressing the air out of nowhere from an outside perspective.
But the status window seemed to understand my intentions and opened a pop-up to the right of the window.
"Thanks for the new skills, little sapling. It says I'm the guardian of an unnamed entity. Do you really not have one?" I made out the words in my mind one after another.
It was like a monologue that turned into letters as soon as I thought about them.
Send.
"Give me one." The little sapling replied back instantly. Was it happy I remembered it this soon?
I thought about what would be a nice name for a little plant. For mango products, I really loved mango panna, which was a sour and refreshing drink made from unripe green mangoes.
"How about Panna?" I said, wondering whether she would like it.
"Panna. Like emerald, right? It's a cute name, thanks!!!" She replied back excitedly.
I didn't correct her. Emerald also works fine, I thought, remembering her beautiful green leaf.
I gave her a beautiful name unknowingly. By reading my memories, she will later come to know why I gave her this name anyway.
"So Panna, it seems you really like movies. I'll make sure to watch more when I go back home during vacations." I suggested, "But, how does it happen actually? Can you share my vision or just see glimpses from my memories?"
"Actually, I can do both. But for the first one, I'll need your permission. Can you allow me when you're watching one?" She texted back.
"If it makes you happy, I'll give you permission anytime."