As he slowly examined the long chains of DNA forming the basis of the Ferocious Beast before him, Torus quickly skimmed through it. Currently, there was nothing in particular that he was looking for in the chains.
Instead, he only examined the creature's DNA before moving on, his attention switching to the next Hell-Hound.
He continued doing this for all the beasts before him, examining their DNA sequences.
If an ordinary person were to see this sight, they would be clueless as to what he was doing; however, as he finished this, Torus allowed his brows to furrow, muttering to himself, "Interesting." A slight quirking of his brows being the only signs of his current feelings.
The thing that had caused him to mutter these words was quite simple - the differences in the DNA sequences in the beasts. Where there would naturally be differences between the Ferocious Beasts simply because of them not being clones of one another, there were still some differences between them that Torus found interesting.
These changes were those related to their energy expression - how the converted energy they had was utilized.
Torus was interested in how these differences would affect their evolution, and if this was the real reason as to the differences between Ferocious Beasts of the same species when they reached a higher grade.
Afterall, Torus understood that there must be something about them that triggered the different changes among the same species when they evolved to the highest grade, so Torus was now simply trying to figure out what this difference was.
However, this wasn't actually exactly what Torus had come to his mindscape for, only what he needed to do before he could start testing his idea.
Now that he had seen the differences in the way that these beasts utilized their energy, Torus moved on to his next step - hypothesizing what abilities they would evolve upon reaching a higher grade.
Rather than coming up with one idea, Torus took their usage of energy to form multiple hypotheses.
For example, all the Hell-Hounds had a trace element of fire within them; however, one of them seemed to more directly utilize this fire than the other's, even producing a bit more.
So, Torus hypothesized that its evolution could be something such as using its fire to envelop its body, or may even incorporate a burning effect in its attacks, he even thought it possible it would simply increase the internal temperature of the creature to an incredibly high degree.
All of these were possible based on the differences in the species if Torus' hypothesis was correct.
Next, Torus knew the next step in an experiment - testing the hypothesis! As such, Torus began what would be considered the next step of testing his hypothesis, reaching out and grabbing one of the Hell-Hounds.
The one he had grabbed was one with a very simple mutation in its energy - it added a slight metallic bent to the energy.
Torus' hypothesized result from this with the highest possibility was that it would harden the Hell-Hound's teeth and claws using the metallic energy it converted once reaching Fourth-Grade.
So, after reaching out and grabbing the creature, Torus simply used the connection between the two to flood the Hell-Hound with his energy. As the mass amount of energy flooded the creature, a bead of sweat slowly slid down Torus' forehead as a look of intense concentration appeared on his features.
This sudden change in state was brought about by the rapid pulling of energy he was currently doing, rapidly sapping the energy from his God Seed.
As he did so, Torus watched the Hell-Hound, waiting to see if any changes would occur in it.
The more energy he was sapped of, the more Torus' brows creased as he began to worry if he really had enough to forcefully evolve the Ferocious Beast, or if it was even possible.
However, this worry soon died down as he finally noticed some changes on the Hell-Hound, Its previously straight fur standing on end as it seemed to grow slightly larger, Its claws digging deeply into the ground as Its appearance became far more ferocious, a snarl now held on Its lips.
At the sight of this, Torus let out a breath of relief, feeling exhaustion overwhelm him. However, his eyes simply sharpened at the relief washing over him, realizing he wasn't quite done yet.
With a deep breath, Torus forcefully pulled an even larger amount of energy from his God Seed, forcefully completing the process of the Hell-Hound evolving.
As he finally took in a deep breath, letting his rapidly beating heart slowly calm down, Torus couldn't help but to glance at his God Seed. As he focused on it, Torus couldn't help but to let out a low whistle, glancing at his God Seed which was now only a little over half-full compared to its previous state.
It had taken such a large amount of his energy just to evolve one of them, so Torus doubted he would be able to evolve more than three-four over the night.
Torus soon ignored these thoughts however, his attention focusing on the Hell-Hound that he had just evolved. As he looked at the newly evolved Fourth-Grade Hell-Hound, Torus could barely hide the curiosity he felt.
Looking at the creature, Torus couldn't help but to notice the goofy expression still present on its face, evident the change in grade had done nothing to affect Its personality.
Reaching out, Torus gently pet through the now much thicker, more hardened fur of the creature. As he felt the change in structure however, a brief look of surprise flashed across his face.
It seemed that, rather than the very minor changes he was expecting, the evolution had affected the creature a lot more than he had anticipated. As, feeling through Its fur, Torus could pick up the very minute traces of metal contained throughout.
This led him to the conclusion that an increase in grade was a much larger evolution than he had previously thought. Instead of it being a gradual process, it seemed like each new grade came with an exponential growth in the creature, which would explain why there were so few grades and that the amount of beasts that reaches each new stage gets exponentially smaller.
And as he felt the power emanating from the creature, Torus couldn't help but to feel his guess was all-but confirmed.
While still not nearly as powerful as himself, the Hell-Hound was now much closer to his level of strength than it was to the group of Fifth-Grade Hell-Hounds surrounding him.
What this told Torus was that, with his current strength, he could probably only compare to some of the stronger Fourth-Grade Ferocious Beasts.
This knowledge however, only worked to make him even more grateful for his mindscape. The reason for this feeling of gratefulness stemmed from the current state of the recently evolved Hell-Hound.
After Its evolution, the Fourth-Grade Hell-Hound was now still behaving as if it were tamed by him.
If that were the case, then Torus should be able to work with beasts that were above himself in strength, all he had to do was evolve them from the beginning rather than to experiment with them and create them within his mindscape.
As such, even if the creatures contained within could no longer be brought out into the real world, he could experiment with potential evolutions to find what mutations in their energy manipulations are the most useful.
Not only that, but there was one other major advantage to his mindscape. However, there was one issue with this other advantage - he couldn't currently use it effectively, and probably wouldn't be able to for a long while.
This other advantage was the ability to speed up the passage of time - it was common knowledge that the mindscape was an area where one reigned supreme - even capable of manipulating the passage of time within.
However, the speed at which this could be sped up or slowed down was directly related to how far along one was in filling their God Seed.
Torus had already tested how much he could manipulate the time with his current understanding of his Aspect, and he had found it to be very lacking. Currently, he could only manipulate the time to slow it down by about 1:1.1.
While over a very long period, this change could add up, it wouldn't prove very useful in a small period of time.
However, Torus already had plans for what he could do with this manipulation - generational evolution!
Ferocious Beasts were already known for their fast reproductive periods, giving birth in only two-three months compared to other species, and even being capable of giving birth at any time similarly to more humanoid species.
However, Torus would be able to speed this up even further once he could manipulate time. Using these two factors, Torus would be able to take evolutions that occurred within a species - have them breed with other useful evolutions that he thought may combine well - and find very useful abilities within species!