After overcoming the bitter taste of his first potion, Mateo immersed himself in the pleasurable feeling of the potion working, as instead of the gut wrenching, soul tearing and needle piercing pain he was expecting, he was assaulted with a warm soothing feeling spreading throughout his whole body that made him feel as if he was in a jacuzzi, soaking in a warm bath that eased his tense muscles and melted away all his stress. Heck, he could hardly remember where he was or why he was here in the first place, as the pleasure prevented him from forming coherent thoughts, but as depicted by a commonly used phrase, all good things must come to an end, and unfortunately for Mateo, he was not an exemption to this timeless law.
After Mateo was forcefully ejected from his pleasure filled situation, he began scanning his body, checking for any physical changes, like a mana core or gem placed in the center of his forehead or chest, as depicted in the novels and manga he had read, but ultimately didn't find any, causing him to release an exaggerated sigh of relief.
Afterwards, Mateo addressed the heaviness he felt in his head, accessing his mind or at least trying to, in order to see if he had lucked out and gotten a mindspace, sea of consciousness or any other thing relating to a vast expanse of space accessible by only it's owner, but it seemed as if it was all wishful thinking caused by his bad habit of overdosing himself with novels and manga, both very powerful and addictive drugs bad for the health according to parents and other abstainers.
Even though he did not have a mindspace like he thought he would, he was not sad, for what he found was equally important, an earth brown sphere with inscriptions on it and the words, EARTH BOULDER SPELL, floating right above it in a faint brown colour.
Driving by instinct, he willed the sphere to be crushed, leading to a downpour of information which he soaked greedily.
As the name suggested, the spell taught one how to use mana to influence the surrounding landmass. It taught on how to use both internal and external mana to coerce the existing earth into a spherical form.
Next, a video started playing in his mind. It showed an old man with flowing gray beard, identical to the ones of grandmasters in cultivation mangas standing still, in the next second he opened his eyes and waved a hand over the barren expanse ahead of him. Then, as if the earlier calm was a trick of the eyes, violent brown mana gushed out of his body and into the earth, causing it to shift and rumble as a small pebble, which was increasing in size at a fast rate floated up loftily.
By the minute's mark, the small pebble had transformed into a planet sized sphere with no sign of stopping or slowing down, that is, until the old man willed it to. Afterwards the old man waved his hand in a forward motion, shooting the boulder off at a speed incomprehensible to human beings which was followed by a loud *BOOMMM*, a telltale sign of the destruction caused that sent a shockwave ruffling the old man's sagely robes, then as if unbothered by the destruction he caused, he closed his eyes again, bringing about peace and silence once again.
Mateo was left standing there, stunned at the relative effortlessness with which the old man formed and released an attack comparable to a nuke, just without the aftereffects from the radiation it is normally accompanied by.
The loud snarling and growling coming from the other side of the fortress wall woke him up from his stupor, and with a spring in his step and a wide smile plastered on his face, he raced up the old stone stairs, eager to put what he just watched into practice, the test subjects: brainless and pain-numbed zombies.
The smell of death and rotting flesh welcomed him as he looked down at the undead who had started climbing over each other in a messy looking pile of flesh.
For some reason the smell didn't bother him as much, but then again being exposed to such a smell for about 12 hours straight, combined with watching a blood pumping demonstration of destruction could prove fatal to the nose's ability to perceive bad smells, that's how effective the combo was.
Calming down his excited heart, Mateo took a deep breath and adopted the same stance as the old man. He closed his eyes, a sign of his absolute concentration, and started to probe around internally all in the hope of activating the spell, but after a long time (about 5 minutes ) of seeing no results, he gave up and took his frustration out on the zombies, whose mountain of writhing flesh had almost reached the battlements.
The sound of bullets may have proven to be just what he needed as in the middle of his slaughter-fest, an idea hit him, or more like tripped him as a small piece of rock gave him an idea that he had forgotten to try. Probably due to it's origin being a novel, an idea so simple that it was basically overused, and that was... to feel and envision and become a rock, or in his case, a boulder.
The faint trembling of the earth below his feet confirmed his guess that the final piece of the puzzle had finally been found. Following the rumbling, a faint speck of dust, practically invisible to the naked eye, if not for the faint brown plasma looking wave of mana that surrounded it's presumed location.
The particle started growing bigger, though not with a speed even remotely close to that of the video's, but it still fell within Mateo's range. By the time the particle had formed into an acceptable football sized sphere of earth, about 8 minutes has passed and the plasma wave of mana had reduced drastically, with the last of it being used to keep the sphere afloat.
Mateo used the last vestige of his mana to shoot the sphere downward, and due to his relationship with gravity, the zombies found themselves being crushed by the force and weight of his attack.
The next few hours were spent like so, channel mana, form an attack and release it. The only things that kept his mind off how repetitive the process felt was the nauseating feeling accompanied by every mana drain, the visible improvement in the speed and size of the spell cast, and the worry about how long his ammunition stock would last.
His worry seemed to be unfounded as eventually he received a message in front of his eyes stating he had a few minutes left to survive.