At the sight of Torus' rapidly retreating figure, Sofia could only shake her head as she watched his figure disappear in the distance, "Seems he's found some form of inspiration. Wonder what he'll come at me with next!" As she said this, a tiny amount of enthusiasm dripped from her voice, showcasing her feelings toward their next spar.
While she didn't want to admit it, she knew that the truth was she really enjoyed the battles she had with Torus.
While if she were to go all-out, Torus nowhere near compared to her in strength, she still gained a lot of experience fighting such a different opponent than she was used to such as Torus.
Especially considering his unorthodox style, the rapid movements that he produced seemed completely counter to the more rigid forms of movement she was used to seeing in trained combatants.
Actually, as she thought of this, Sofia figured that might actually be the secret to his unorthodox way of training - not being professionally trained.
It may be that the way they were trained was to perfect the basic forms of combat that the Divine race excelled at, while also snuffing out any innovative styles of combat members might come up with.
~The Next Day~
After his sudden inspiration, Torus had spent the rest of the day reading any book related to poison or the brain he could get his hands on, learning all kinds of different poisons used by animals of the past and how they administered them.
This all culminated in his current situation, where Torus was sitting in a meditative position and trying to pull out some of the energy from his God Seed to bring about an effect on his body.
Seeing as Torus had previously theorized that he could create traits from animals of the past, he figured that the difference between them and the beasts of now was that they didn't have a form of energy of their own, meaning it was possible to facilitate the evolution of their abilities as there was no energy structure he needed to replicate, he could simply use his own to bring about a sort-of controlled evolution.
However, he also realized that it would be impossible to bring about a change to his body without any energy, so Torus eventually came to the conclusion that he could somehow use the energy from his God Seed itself to upgrade his body.
And Torus figured the reason that this only worked with animals and not beasts, was that the beasts had their own unique energy that either his God Seed didn't currently have, or that it couldn't actually hold, that was needed to make changes based on beasts.
Torus theorized that, if he could find some way to replicate the energy released from these beasts, it may be possible to use it to facilitate his own evolution, evolving in a similar way to how that beast had.
However, Torus felt that this would be a very advanced form of energy manipulation, something impossible for him with his current understanding of the God Seed as well as the current amount of energy he held.
So, with this way of thinking in mind, what Torus was currently trying to do was bring about this effect himself rather than allowing his God Seed to make the changes it saw fit as it had to create the tail and ears he now sported - just using an animal instead of a beast.
And after a frustrating few hours of sitting in a meditative position in silent contemplation, Torus had finally seen results.
While it was a miniscule amount, Torus could feel it as he slowly dragged out a small amount of energy from his God Seed, pulling it into his body. Dragging it through his body, Torus eventually reached the location he wanted to make the changes to.
This location in specific, was Torus' tail. What change he wanted to bring about was actually two combined effects rather than one singular one.
Being inspired by when he had used his tail as a means to flick a throwing knife in combat that morning, Torus began researching into animals of the past with similar methods of combat - eventually settling on porcupines.
This animal had quills, hair-like objects that grew on its back that were incredibly sharp and could easily pierce into the thick hide of its predators.
So, Torus wondered if he could turn the hair on his tail into something similar to these quills, allowing for them to shoot out and stab into people in a similar manner.
This wasn't the only plan he had however, as he still wished to incorporate poison into his attacks in some capacity.
And the means that he decided to use was to allow his tail itself to grow poison glands within it that could secrete outward and cover these hairs, that he could then launch out at people.
However, after finally managing to gather a small amount of energy from his God Seed and gathering it within his tail, Torus could only sigh as he realized one thing - 'This is gonna take forever.' He thought, sighing resignedly as he got right down to it.
As he felt the changes brought about by this small amount of energy, Torus could feel that all it managed to accomplish was increasing the rate at which his hairs fell off and regrew by a tiny amount; they couldn't even be launched yet, they would just helplessly fall to the ground.
And on top of that, he had no active control over this, it was an effect that happened on its own in response to outside stimuli. With a heavy sigh, Torus bunkered down, planning on drawing out energy from his God Seed for the rest of the night, determined to bring about the changes he wanted.
The more he practiced, the more aware Torus became of what his true limiting factor was - energy manipulation.
Simply put, Torus had little-to-no control of his energy, making the process of manipulating and controlling it all the harder. However, this weakness of his was slowly being whittled away the more practice he got.
Before Torus could be sucked too deeply into this process, he was abruptly interrupted from this plan as a soft wrapping of knuckles against his door rang out, breaking him out of his meditative state.
As his thoughts came back into focus on the present, Torus immediately took note of two things.
These two things would be the light tapping on his door that was currently occurring, as well as the soft voice of his Mother that rang out, "Torus," She called softly, trying not to disturb him while still gaining his attention. 'Hu, I guess I'll come back to this later.' Torus thought with a bit of regret, getting up to see what exactly his mom wanted so late at night.
As he got up and opened the door, Torus came face-to-face with his Mother; well, it would be more accurate to say face-to-chest considering their height difference. As he looked down toward his Mother, he could see that she looked the same as usual, if a bit more aged.
She was a woman who appeared to be in her mid-thirties, had beautiful olive-tinted skin with thick eyebrows, sea green eyes that shone like gemstones, long lustrous brown hair that reached the small of her back, and a motherly smile that gave a homely appearance to her mature features.
Smiling softly, Torus answered with a gentle "Yes, Mother?" to her previous calling of his name. As he spoke, Torus tilted his head, curiosity evident in his expression.
Seemingly taking a deep breath to steady her roiling emotions, Maddie spoke once more, "I was wondering if you could come downstairs to talk? Your Father and I have something really important to tell you." Maddie spoke with a slightly shaky voice, fiddling with her thumbs at the same time.
Noticing the solemnity in his mother's tone, Torus gave a slight nod of his head as he followed her down the stairs, finding his Father, Blau Dialo, sitting on the couch with an equally solemn expression to the one his Mother sported.
As he looked at his Father, he was reminded once again how massive of a man he really was. The man was only a couple inches shorter than Torus himself with a broad build that made his chest actually wider than Torus' own, short-cut brown hair, and a no-nonsense face that gave him the appearance of a military commander. Which, funnily enough, was his old occupation before moving to this secluded mountain-side village.
Still, looking at the solemn expressions the pair sported, Torus could tell that whatever they wanted to talk to him about was very important. In fact, there were very few events that Torus could recall leading to his Father gaining such a serious expression.
So few in fact were these events, that Torus could count the number of them on one hand. As such, a much more serious expression flitted across Torus' own face as he looked at his parents, taking a seat opposite them on the sofa.