Retarded
As he took his attention off the system and looked at the pools in that area, Lothur was tempted to take in more of that darkness. But as he saw the creatures around those areas staring at him intensely, he realized that it would not be easy to do that with them there.
No matter how fast he went, Lothur could not absorb the darkness of one of those pools moving, and those beings would not wait for him to 'absorb' the entire area. Not only would that take away their opportunity to train today, but it could even damage the area permanently.
They could even allow him to have done that in one of the pools since no one knew he was capable of something like that. But now, there was no possibility that these beings would accept him doing such a thing in yet another pool.
Since they were more numerous and stronger than him, Lothur had no choice but to retreat temporarily.