In the first year of his training, he was focusing on his observation Haki; It didn't mean that he was neglecting his armament training; it was just that observation was higher in priority since he would be a sniper. What he wanted to do was replicate what Van Augur had done, but on a much larger scale. He wanted to shoot something on the next island. The first 6 months was just really getting a hold on his haki. The last 6 months would be application.
He had an interesting training method for this. Hisoka would blind himself for 6 months. He never took off the blindfold at all. He wanted to get around just using his haki. He would set up targets and hit them while he was blindfolded himself. It didn't take long to master that because they were stationary objects, but the genuine challenge was the moving targets. It took him 5 weeks to perfectly master it.
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Once the 6 months had ended, he finally took his blindfold off and tested out what he could do. When his blindfold came off, his eyes could pick up unimportant details like an ant crawling on the floor. But the big difference was just the range of his Observation Haki. He could see past the island into the sea. He could sense every life form on the island, from rabbits to wolves.
He picked up his rifle, looked through the scope and pulled the trigger. He was aiming for a random bird that he could sense in the air. The bullet travelled the curvature of the earth and finally hit the target. This wasn't just a feat of observation haki, it was a feat of marksmanship.
Hisoka threw his hands in the air and cheered at the top of his lungs. This was a massive accomplishment for him and he was proud of himself for doing this. In a year he did what he thought was impossible. He had a massive grin on his face as he walked over to his hut.
He opened the door and placed his sniper in a drawer that was at the front of the passageway.
Today was the last day of the year, so he decided he'd start fresh in the next year.
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2nd year.
In the first year he practised his observation Haki, so this year he would naturally focus on his armament. The 2 thing he wanted to do was being able to add armament haki to his bullets and get to a basic level with Ryuo.
To use ryuo you have to gather all the haki in your body in your hands, but you had to let it flow rather than forcing it. The first part wasn't hard at all, but it was the flowing part which troubled him. He tried to be as calm as possible while doing it and still nothing.
Months and months passed and still nothing. The flow just wouldn't work. He was getting annoyed and so one day he decided that he would get extreme. He strapped a neck collar on one of his clones. He based this of the creation of the tenryuubito if he attempted to remove the collar off it would explode.
The clone was standing in front of him. Hisoka breathed in and out. He closed his eyes and envisioned his haki flowing with him. He imagined it like a wave of water. He flowed the haki forwards and into his arms and he poured it into the collar. He heard a ticking noise to show that he had disarmed the bomb.
He sighed a sigh of relief and happiness. It seemed extreme training worked for him. Blinding himself for 6 months and now this. He had 7 months left to accomplish all his goals.
He was angry at himself for not picking up Ryuo as quickly as he wanted, so he went crazy with training. Double the time, double the effort.
The thing with the sniper that was troubling him was how to keep armament after it had left the gun. So the solution to this was using Ryūō. He funnelled the ryuo into his gun and put all the Haki into the bullet instead of coating his whole weapon in Haki and to his surprise it worked.
This newfound ability used with his X-axis ability was deadly. With his x-axis, he could shoot anything he wanted. Once he has set a target, it doesn't matter how many barriers you put up, it will always pierce you.
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3rd year.
The year of the King, the year of the conquerors. Conquerors was not what he had expected, because of how easily it took him to understand and use it. It was a combination of the two hakis. He could take the haki out of his body because he was training with ryuo and he could control how much he wanted to exert out because of his observation.
What he wanted to do was to find new exciting ways to use conquerors haki. The first concept he wanted to try was overflowing someone's body with his haki. He wanted to take the idea of ryuo and fuse it with his conquerors haki.
He used his devil fruit to imagine a grizzly bear. This would be his training partner for this year.
The bear was confused. He looked around and saw Hisoka. He instantly went on all fours and went back on all two legs when he went to attack him. Hisoka exuded all of his conquerors haki out in front of him.
The bear instantly stopped in its tracks and was visibly shaking. The bear ran into the forest, never to be seen again.
Day in day out Hisoka continued to do this varying on how he felt that day. Some days he'd summon 100 bears and fight all of them just with Haki, and some days he'd summon 500 and fight them with his devil fruit.
His devil fruit had improved massively while he didn't like to use it for basic things like cleaning and fixing, he still used it a lot. It was the cornerstone of his training. He used some attacks Gremmy used, but he wanted to get creative.
He had the idea, but no idea where to start. He'd get to that next year when he's working with his devil fruit.
The year went on and Hisoka trained and practised every day. He accomplished his goal of putting his haki in other people through touch earlier than expected. He had 3 months left, so he just practised a different type of haki for each month.
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Year 4,5 and 6
Devil fruit training for 3 years. He wanted to go beyond anything Gremmy could ever do. He wanted to be as creative as possible. Hisoka never liked the way Gremmy used his powers, he felt that it was a basic use of an incredible power. He wanted to go beyond that. Imagination truly was as Gremmy said the strongest force in the world.
Hisoka wanted to A) Improve on Gremmy's already used techniques and B) make techniques on his own.
For the entire first year, all he did was improve upon Gremmy techniques and he did well. It was just a matter of repetition. He went from having to use 8 clones to create a vacuum dimension to only having to use 2. He no longer needed the 2nd clone to create the meteor. He created a meteor, then removed it before it reached the island. All the elements could be created on a whim now, water, fire and earth, whatever he wanted.
In the last 2 years, he just created his own techniques. He took the basis of other techniques and used them as a foundation. A small technique he made was shape-shifting. He could imagine himself as anyone he wanted, this was for whenever he wanted to infiltrate some place.
He made 4 new techniques.
The first one was Tsuihō. In this technique, Hisoka would freely imagine that time and space would open and cause a rift around someone. This wasn't hard to grasp because he could already create the vacuum dimension, so this was just a step up. He tested it out on animals as an experiment and it worked. It twisted the insides of the target and it turned them inside out, leaving no signs of death at all.
The 2nd one was interesting. It was called Ugoku. He would imagine that the space between him and an object was non-existent, allowing him to travel that distance without walking at all. It was just easy and simple but incredibly useful.
The third one was his favourite. It was an illusion where you wouldn't be able to know what was real and what was fake. Hisoka would have to be always shifting it. He would create things like beasts and ghosts and then turn it into reality. It would slowly drive the opponent crazy as they tried to figure out reality from illusion.
And lastly, the hardest one to learn there was the atom breaking. He used this in conjunction with his sniper. This was a combination of sniping and imagination. He imagined that the bonds in the bullet weren't there and when it hit the target, they would disintegrate into nothing.
The reason this was so hard was because he had to learn the composition of atoms in his bullet and split it perfectly. The first few times he did that, his arms just blew off.
It took him 4 months to even get to a point where his arms didn't blow and another 4 months for the technique to have the effect he wanted. Again he tested them on animals and it worked. Once the bullet hit them, they would start to slowly disintegrate into dust. The bigger they were or just the more physical they were, it took longer to work so they could still attack before they died.
The reason he didn't make too many techniques was because he didn't need a wide variety of them. You see his power was so versatile that he didn't need flashy attacks or 100 attacks, all he needed was 3 or 4 abilities that he could use.
For the rest of the time, he trained in everything. Haki, marksmanship and his devil fruit.
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The last year was a wrap up of everything he had learnt in the last 7 years. He figured out where he was. He sent a clone to the nearest island and had it do some investigation work.
He was in the new world according to what he had been told. This was pleasant news. The underworld main operations take place in the new world. He had plans for wherever he ended up.
If he was in one of the 4 blues, he'd start from the bottom up but if he was in the new world or paradise, he'd find the most influential person and take their place. Whether that meant stealing all their contacts or killing him or her, he would decide them when the time came.
Since he was in the new world he made this island his base of operations. He got rid of the forest in the middle of the island and replaced it with houses and shops, just about everything a city needed. Book stores, bakeries and parks. He made the island bigger. He made factories and hospitals.
You might wonder, how is he going to get people to work here? Simple, he imagined them. Gremmy could create a sternritter capable of fighting two lieutenants, so why couldn't he make doctors and factory workers. He gave them specific jobs and orders. He called the island Sozo, which just meant imagination.
Hisoka changed his outfit to something more fitting. He wore black trousers, a white shirt, black tie and a black suit vest. He was standing next to a hot air balloon. He was thinking about using a small plane, but if the world government caught wind of that it wouldn't be good for anyone. So a hot-air balloon would be perfect for travel. He'd be in the clouds where no one would see him and it wouldn't be too technological.
He had put someone in charge to do his job of managing the island and because they were figments of his imagination he didn't have to worry about them betraying him. He, of course, had security measures on the island just in case something happened. He left clones to only come out if they knew the island was in danger and the people couldn't defend themselves.
He jumped into his hot air balloon, and his plan had begun.
Lots of animal testing in this chapter, I hope PETA doesn't read this.