An unfortunate fact of both the magical side of things and regular side animal experimentation was a fact of life. For wizards it was using rats as targets for new potion recipes or even new spells. As a result the common species was quite regularly stocked in beast selling shops. The owner might suspect that I was up to no good buying the rats as a child but the act itself wouldn't be odd at all if an adult wizard were to do it.-
Honestly besides training my conquerors haki on the things I didn't even plan to mistreat them at all. Assuming they survived the training I was just going to release them into the wild. During the training however I would provide them good food, water, toys and a large cage to roam about as they pleased. Really if anything I'd say I was going to be pampering the little rodents other than the sheer terror they'd have from feeling my conquerors haki. As expected the old man in charge of Eeylops gave me a rather stern look when I made my reason for being there clear but sold me the rats along with a cage and the works to care for the rats.-
The guy seemed have a misunderstanding when I got all this unnecessary stuff for mere experimental rats and probably thought I wanted them as pets as his attitude towards me visibly improved. I certainly wasn't going to correct him as it was better this way in my opinion. When I finally got back to the pub Tom stopped me with a serious look. -
"Look lad I know I said treat the room like your own but you might be going a tad too far." he said sternly.
"Hold that thought." I said calmly before unhooking my coin pouch and dumping a small pile of galleons on the counter. "Let's see it's about thirty galleons a month so for twelve months that is three hundred and sixty galleons. Please count that amount out if you'd please Mr. Tom." I said and he seemed to realize what I was doing.
"You mean to rent out that room for the whole year!?" he said in shock.
I nodded "It's that or having to deal with paying you over and over again every month to hold the room. Really this is much easier." I said honestly.
"Bloody hell kid, now I feel all sorts of foolish for going and trying to scold you for decorating the place like home. " He said with an awkward smile.
"No problem, this was kinda on me for not clarifying things before I started." I said with a friendly smile before bringing the rats in the cage up to my room.
Of the three I purchased there none looked the same as the others so I had an easier time telling them apart. One was pure white, one was grey and the last was brown and none had names.-
All were male to prevent any sort of breeding issue with them while I had them and they seemed more curious than anything at the moment. When I opened my room I slipped off my shoes and set the next to the inside it before walking in my socks across the fuzzy warm carpet. I set the cage up near the window before setting the room protecting orbs in each of the rooms four corners. A glassy sheet of magic rose up when I did before turning invisible. Against the wall next to my bed stood the target dummy ready for use.-
Satisfied with what I had accomplished so far I relaxed in my bed with a couple books to study until Tom came to get me for dinner. After eating I set up my alarm again before going to sleep. Once I woke up and found that it hadn't been messed with checked the rug for depressions and finally filled the room with smoke before being satisfied that I was truly alone. I did my exercises before moving on to wandless practice and then having breakfast. After breakfast I began to practice my conquerors haki while trying to focus it exclusively on the white rat.-
I failed as all three were knocked unconscious rather than the one I was trying to focus on. I waited for the rats to awaken by practicing Diffindo and Expelliarmus on the dummy. Once the rats were up and about I made another attempt that was little better than the first. I wasn't discouraged by this as I knew from the skill that conquerors haki was the hardest to train. It took both a firm will as well as a lot of practice focusing ones spirit on a single target or just fully unleashing it over a wide area.-
There was a big difference between that second one and what I was doing at the moment. Specifically how "even" the haki was spread out. Right now my haki was a bit like formless patches of smoke that filled an area but didn't hold any consistency. A refined usage of it would be like flooding an area with deep water as it pressed evenly everywhere with no gaps. I repeated this practice of mine until dinner time and did my nightly set up before going to sleep. This pattern held up for the next two weeks.-
By then I had already begun to fill out from my daily exercise and proper nutrition. I had mastered the entire first years book of spells and few extras not in any of my books but I remembered from the story before I died such as Silencio, Evanesco and Colloportus. The silencing, vanishing and locking spells in order. In addition to that I had made some progress at controlling my conquerors haki. Specifically I had managed to narrow the effect down to the general area of the cage and not in every direction. -
I know this because I leashed one rat behind me and left two of them in the cage. At first they'd all get knocked out but by the end of these two weeks only the rats in the cage would be. To be fair I knew that the only reason I was making such fast progress was because I was merely following the skills knowledge that came from Whitebeard who had long mastered the same ability. I wasn't like those people actually having to learn how to use it from scratch, I had a very clear path set for me that I merely needed to follow.