As Spook was slowly gaining control of this island, nothing seemed to stop him from becoming king of this island. That was until he found his one big obstacle that would forbid him from progressing further. It was his haki, it needed to improve and it needed to improve fast. Since he felt rejuvenated ever since last week he's been trying his best to improve his haki. This proved to be no easy task however, merely shouting at things as loud as he can wasn't always very productive. He once managed to blow over a deer, it fell on its side and then sat there for a few hours. That was a pretty cool experience, and thus ever since that moment he decided to expand on that. Learning more as he tried his best, evenings of sweat rolling down his face as he shouted at many objects. Be it trees, grass, bushes, various animals. He worked his way up the food chain, first ants, small spiders, bigger spiders, turtles. Then came faster animals, animals that moved very quickly and were agile- such as rats, small rats then big ones of course. Then came birds, then he got back to animals and kept increasing in size. Going from a turtle to a bunny. Then came things that weren't as predictable and had a weird moving pattern, like turtles and other waterly creatures. He learned how far his haki could go, and began to increase the range of this slowly. By concentrating, and doing it repeatedly he could pull it off. Knocking out birds from a fair distance was a feat to him, but that would eventually change. Animals that had a certain sense of intelligence were usually much more difficult. Such as parrots, he found one that had existential thoughts and it took a very long time to be able to affect it by his haki. This was something he learned by practicing. He had also learned to manifest haki through other ways other than fear alone. A black encasing of sorts could cover his limb, at first - the black encasing could only be manifested through one limb. But by practice he managed to raise the amount of limbs he could protect with this black encasing. It seemed to protect him more than his natural skin did, thus he told himself to utilize it as much as he could. Of course, under his armor would be the most subtle. But it would also mean that his armor was vurnerable against the means of devil fruit users. To no avail, Spook has attempted to cover his armor with his haki. But, practice after practice he has mastered this and managed to pull it off. -- This was done through great practice and concentration...

After these discoveries the mentally strong man had begun finding ways to look 'through' nature as it were and see the life force of everything around him. It gave him a great sense of calm, it added a layer of confidence. It also motivated him by fueling his ambition - made him even more curious about the great wonders of this world. What is left to be discovered? So right now, he has managed to get his haoshoku haki up to level, as with his busouhaki and his kenbushokou. His next objective would be raising these three haki's to another level, a higher level - a tier, if you will. He did this by meditating a lot, especially on Gaia. Around the nature, hearing drips of the rain hitting the plants and slowly trickling down calmed him a lot. It made him reach out for something more, something... that wasn't there. While he was on a spiritual search in the great forest there would be no single day that didn't pass without him improving his haki at least a tiny bit. Some days, he learned a lot of things, other days he barely learned anything. He began seeing with his minds eye. Marines, rookies, ensigns - from hundreds of meters away he saw with a tint of blue. Impressive, he thought. What else could he do now? He began to experiment with his haki some more and found out he could easily knock out a marine ensign, rookie, low ranking people. They were no longer a challenge for his haki any longer. Haoshoku no haki was the most complex haki out of all the types, he discovered, as he gained ranks and learned new ways of manifesting it he had discovered that there were a lot of different sub types. He found out he is capable of doing these tricks, knocking out lowly ranked marines from up to 25 meters away. And he could do it with some powerful marines as well, marines equal to himself. Though doing this to those marines meant that he couldn't knock out others.. it worked in mysterious ways, but Spook slowly began to understand.