As the gentle smell of bacon wafted into his senses, Torus was slowly awoken to the rumbling of his stomach.
Gently extricating himself from the bed, Torus slowly exited the bedroom, heading for the direction in which the smell of food wafted from. If he were to be fully awake, Torus would recognize that the feeling of strength within his body would be odd considering the weakened state he was currently supposed to be in.
However, due to both the numbness within his mind from just waking up, as well as the fact he was focusing his attention on food, Torus paid very little attention to this oddity.
Instead, Torus' steps seemed to pick up the pace, heading into the kitchen. Once he arrived there, he was only a little surprised to find the person within to be Sofia rather than his mother.
Approaching her figure, Torus took in her appearance, wearing a small apron that wrapped around her curvaceous figure, Sofia was gently humming to herself, a smile on her face.
Approaching her with now deliberately silenced steps, a predatory grin spread across Torus' lips. Getting within a range of around half-a-meter, Torus stretched out his hands, wrapping Sofia in a hug.
Startled out of her movements, Sofia's figure stiffened for but a moment, until he seemed to recognize who these arms belonged to.
Then, Sofia returned to her previous activities, her voice coming out in a stern tone, "You know you shouldn't be out of bed right now. It must've been hard for you to make it all the way here, huh?" Her tone came out a bit authoritative, reminding Torus that Sofia was still his Master.
However, rather than feeling sheepish at the admonishment, Torus simply tilted his head in confusion.
As he pondered on her words, Torus couldn't help but to wonder what exactly she meant by him being too weak to walk to the kitchen? As far as he knew, he had never been so weak as to not even be capable of moving such a trivial distance.
However, it was as he was thinking on this that the events of the previous day-and-a-half flashed through his mind, causing him to freeze up in shock for a moment.
As he recalled his previously weakened state, he couldn't help but to be shocked at his speedy recovery. Yet, as he thought more about this, the reason behind this became far more clear to him.
It was something both he and Sofia had forgotten it seemed - Torus' semblance allowed for him to recover far faster. Due to his Aspect awakening a form of regeneration within him, it was no wonder that a weakened state that would usually affect one for weeks was gone within a day for him.
While he had spent a moment pondering about this, Torus really hadn't frozen for more than ten seconds, as he had a far faster mind than the average person.
As such, Torus responded to Sofia's question in his own unique way - a wolfish grin spreading across his face as he leaned downward - capturing Sofia's lips in a rather heated kiss.
Feeling slightly shocked at the abrupt show of affection, Sofia was a bit slow to respond. However, after a moment of just passively receiving the kiss, Sofia finally responded, seeming to lean into it.
Soon, the kiss became a bit more passionate, a certain hunger to it, and it was only after the two were forced to separate for breaths minutes later that they finally stopped.
As they separated, Sofia gave Torus a curious look, asking, "What brought that on?" She asked, her head tilting to the side curiously. In response, Torus simply sent her a grin.
After a moment where the silence between the two seemed to stretch on comfortably, Torus finally explained to her what he was thinking, "Well, it seems the two of us both forgot something basic due to my previous state." He started, causing Sofia to gain a slightly curious look, wondering just what she might have forgotten.
Seeing this, Torus' grin spread across his face just that bit further, a slight chuckle escaping him, "Well, think about it. You told me that the reason for my weakness was that my body hadn't adapted to my increase in energy yet.
So, what governs how quickly you recover from such an injury." As he got to here, Torus was nearly laughing to himself, watching as a look of understanding slowly donned on Sofia's face.
With slightly widened eyes, Sofia answered Torus' question, even understanding the rhetorical nature of it, "Regeneration!" she exclaimed, a look of understanding donning on her as she realized what they had both missed.
At the same time, her hand came up, palming at her face as a sigh escaped her, "How could I have forgotten something so simple?" She asked herself, a tone of self-admonishment evident.
In response, Torus simply laughed at her expression, feeling overjoyed at his swift recovery.
Silently contemplating to himself, Torus spoke up, "With my swift recovery, I can start to experiment with things in this week before we're set to leave," he said, a feeling of excitement welling up within him.
~One Week Later~
A lot had occurred within this week-long timespan. The most basic of things was that Torus had simply spent some time with his parents, taking breaks from training to simply interact with them.
During these moments, he could feel a wave of relief wash over him, getting to spend some time with his parents like he used to before he had Awakened reminded him of times where things were much more simple.
These actions alone proved beneficial to his future training as well however.
While it didn't directly increase his energy, what it did do was give his mind some time to recover and rest, allowing for more rapid growth once he had returned to training. As well as spending time with his parents, Torus also spent a large amount of time with Sofia, the two of them just exploring their newfound relationship.
While this all occurred, Torus still managed to divert some of his time to training, spending whatever moments he wasn't with his parents or Sofia training either his Aspect or his family trait.
One thing he didn't yet do however, was to explore exactly what he had figured out about his Aspect - that it was different than what they had suspected.
He planned to explore this at some point; however, he figured it was too much of a risk if he could end up in a similar state to what he had previously. Instead, he decided to hold off on exploring this until they had left the village, where they should have a multitude of time for him to explore these differences.
Especially since, as far as he could tell, the differences in what they believed his Aspect to be versus what it truly was, was massive.
As such, Torus spent a majority of his time working on his family trait, spending a lot of his time Blacksmithing and Inscribing.
He would make tools using low-level magical metals, before incorporating his own energy into them so as to gain more experience using it in varied ways, before then inscribing onto the tools different effects.
One thing he started doing in hopes of speeding up his progress, was to start editing the Inscriptions.
Seeing as he understood the meaning behind most basic Inscriptions and how they worked, Torus simply worked backwards from there, figuring out ways to combine symbols to create either new results or mixed ones. In this endeavor, the results he got were rather mixed, with some experiments being successes with the overwhelming majority being failures.
However, his hard word definitely paid off, something that could be easily spotted from the much deeper color the flame on his forehead now was, much more of the original orange now turning reddish in hue.
And aside from this, there was the work he did on his Aspect, where he simply carried out the habits he had been doing before.
Now however, Torus discovered something strange; ever since his new understanding had arisen, his progress in his Aspect had been much slower and all the gains seemed to go towards his Body progress, rather than any other forms.
The only time this seemed to change was when he would research the articles in his village, gaining an understanding into animals.
This studying seemed to somehow boost his Mind, something that gave more credence to the idea he had for what his Aspect truly was.
However, with all that had occurred, it was no surprise that the week seemed to flash by. And with the end of the week, came time for Torus and Sofia to finally depart from the town, heading out into the wider world.
As such, it was no surprise to see the sight of both Sofia and Torus standing side-by-side at the entrance to the town, with both Blau and Maddie standing before them.
As he looked at the two, Torus could feel a wave of sadness overtake him; this would be the first time he had been separated from the two for a prolonged period, afterall.