Just thinking of what Taskmaster could do if he watched Mihawk in battle, or Garp, or CP9, or any of the dozens of powerful fighters around the world, damn near made Peter drool. Then having Taskmaster turn around and teach those skills to a group of talented students?! Oh yes, this was damn near perfect. Though it did mean that his crew wouldn't be filled with just hot babes like his hormone riddled brain wished for.
Still...
Worth it!
He returned to his work station and moved the gun to the side, it was still soaking in its potion. Which was now half gone, having been absorbed into the weapon. He still wanted to make bullets, but that could wait for the time being. Instead, there were much more important potions he wished to make. Skill Potions!
Skill potions were complex and interesting. He immediately got to work once again. Hours passed as he created a massive batch of the potion. He planned to be able to pass on a lot of things to Taskmaster when the homunculus awoke. Soon he was looking at a dozen bottles that contained a clear liquid.
Technically, these were not skill potions quite yet. One last thing needed to be done. Peter picked up one of the vials and drank it down. The entire time he drank it he focused on everything he could remember about swordsmanship that he'd seen on television, in movies, or in video games, even if it wasn't realistic. He kept it all in mind even as his left hand slowly began to swell in size. Eventually his hand was more than twice it's usual size and he felt the potion had run its course. Taking his knife he gave the tip of his left index finger a little slice while holding it over the empty bottle. Rather than blood coming out of the cut, a silvery liquid spewed forth until it filled the bottle. Once it was done his hand was back to normal an the cut was gone. It had only remained so long because of the magic of the potion.
Now he had a completed Skill Potion. To finish the potions someone with the required skill had to drink it while focusing their mind on the skill they intended to pass along. The more skilled the person, the more effective the potion. Peter was obviously not very skilled in swordsmanship but he did have a lot of references in his head. This let him make a low quality skill potion that would be enough to get Taskmaster started on his task of learning and teaching.
Peter repeated the process of finishing the skill potions by picturing various things he'd witnessed in media. Marksmanship, martial arts, languages, and more. Interestingly, drinking the skill potion for the Spanish language that he'd made actually improved his recollection of what he'd learned in high school nearly four decades ago. Which let him make even more effective Spanish language potions afterward. Spanish would be a good 'secret' language he could use with the crew since the only language he'd eve heard spoken in his new life was Japanese.
He would also need to see if he could convince some people to give him copies of their skills. He knew nothing of navigating the sea, even less in a crazy world like One Piece. So, getting an experienced navigator to drink the potion and finish it would be worthwhile. He'd just have to pay them for their time and discretion. A few lumps of gold should do it.
By the time Peter had made a dozen low quality potions with what little knowledge he had, he called it a night. The sun had set at least an hour ago and he'd had a long day of brewing. He took one last look at his growing homunculus, now looking like a six year old male child, and smirked. Tomorrow would be an interesting day for sure.
Peter walked back into his lab while downing what he dubbed as a meal potion. The same thing he'd lived off of while in the jungle. He didn't see the point in wasting time cooking a meal three times a day when he could just drink one potion and be good for the entire day. That didn't mean he didn't like eating tasty food, he just didn't want to commit the time necessary to cooking it, or going out and waiting at a restaurant.
After tossing the now empty vial into his storage ring for future cleaning and reuse, he looked at the container for Taskmaster. The body within the container looked like a teenager closing in on age eighteen. A few more hours and it would reach the appropriate age to awaken. That brought a smile to Peter's face. It also meant he needed to get to work on the potion to help Taskmaster with the memory issues his ability had as a side effect.
Brewing the potion only took about an hour and was set to the side ready to be administered right away. This let him return to what he'd been working on the previous day, his gun and ammo. He checked the container that his revolver had been soaking in, all the potion was gone and the revolver was bone dry. The potion having been completely absorbed into the weapon with nothing left over. Even though its appearance hadn't changed, every ounce of it, even the wood, was now as durable as Adamantium. He wasn't sure how it would compare to the material that Ponyglyphs were made of, but he was willing to bet Adamantium would win in a fight.
With the gun now nigh-indestructible, it was time to make over powered ammo. The first step was creating a new and much more powerful gunpowder. It only took a few minutes to dig through his Essence given recipes until he found one he liked. The process was pretty simple, just measure out the ingredients to the proper ratio, grind into a fine powder, add water to make it a paste, then pack it into the shell. Once the paste dried it would solidify and be ready for use. Though Peter substituted liquid mana for the water to give the powder even more 'oomp'.
Once all of the shells he currently owned had the much less effective local powder removed, he was ready to move onto the actual ammo. For many, he just capped the shells with appropriately shaped led that he'd electroplated a copper shell around. For the vast majority of pirates a regular bullet was more than enough, no need to go crazy and 'waste' things like Adamantium on simple bullets meant to hurt or kill weak fodder.
He left himself with only a dozen shells to experiment with. It wasn't a problem though. He had a foundry casting him a thousand new shells using one he'd given them as a base. It would take a while for them to finish and it cost him way more than it should have, but it would leave him with plenty of empty shells to use for ammo.
Up first? Obviously explosive and napalm rounds. As far as Peter knew, every ship that sailed the seas was made of wood. That meant they were highly flammable so hitting various places with napalm rounds and a few explosive ones below the waterline would make destroying enemy ships pretty simple. Now, obviously, some ships were far hardier than others, especially ships made of Adam Wood, but that was fine. Weapons like his gun were only good against low to mid tier stuff anyway. High level combatant were damn near immune to weapon fire. He'd make special things for them, such as Seastone bullets.
As Peter looked over recipes for explosives, he blanched. He might have underestimated the kinds of explosives he could make. He had five completely different recipes whose end result was, essentially, a nuke. So, maybe guns wouldn't be as outdated as he expected, but no way was he making any of those recipes anytime soon. He settled for a recipe that would make his explosive shells equal to one point five metric tons of TNT. That shouldn't be too bad, right?
Well, it wasn't like he would be using the explosive shells all that often anytime soon anyway. Building them was a bit tricky but in the end he had six red tipped bullets with an explosive compound cradled in a shell of copper just thick enough to survive being shot but not an impact with something sturdy, like wood. They would pass right through a normal human, but any decently tough opponent would also be durable enough to break the shell and detonate the compound.
He moved on to producing the napalm rounds. They had some explosive force but were more about spreading sticky highly flammable goo. Each individual bullet couldn't hold much of the goo, but six bullets would be more than enough to start six fires. The key to the bullets though was that they couldn't be put out with water. In fact, splashing water on the flames would cause the goo to thin and spread out further since it was highly concentrated within the bullet. The flame would only go out if they ran our of fuel or a specific counter agent was applied. A counter agent that he was making next!