Deep in the middle of the night, Matthew had tried to cushion his walls as he was staying up late to study. Being so late up had it's own quirks such as no longer being affected by the limiter, so he used it to the fullest by double downing on the wall's thickness. Laying on his bed, he was reading a book on engineering and blacksmithing, trying to learn the fundamentals on creating tools. He learnt that heat was a necessary thing for molding the creations into fruition but he could just skip that part as he could mold the earth to his will. All he needed to learn was the innerworkings of more complex creations such as guns and turrets.
His attempts to create an easy broadsword was successful...the problem was...it was quite easily broken, so he needed to fix that and luckily for him, reading about blacksmithing was incredibly useful for this as he just needed to compress it with more earth, making it more durable. On his second attempt, he created a full blast great sword that was double his height, obviously he couldn't pick it up as he was just a kid and his body wasn't mature enough yet to augment his muscles, so he improvised by hollowing the blade out and only hardening the edges and making holes in the middle of the great sword to increase the lightness of it. The second attempt to lift up the greatsword was a little more successful but he still couldn't lift it up well, and then he smacked himself on the head as he had just come up with the most obvious solution to this problem. The sword itself was entirely made of earth that he created, so he could obviously just manipulate it and alter it's weight by using magic to lift the blade enough to allow him to lift it.
Then another issue had come to his mind, on his limiter, he wouldn't be able to create such massive weapons. This idea bummed him out and so he resumed his studies on to smaller weapons. The older shows that he watched from the televisions in the tv shops had contained a lot of old action movies with weapons from eastern origin, such as: the katana, the kunai, the shuriken, the naginata, the chain and sickle and etc. From the western origins were: the broadsword , the shield, the mace, the greatsword, the pistol, the rifle and more. He could easily just replicate the shapes of the more simple weapons but had a hard time trying to get the firearms to work as they wouldn't just work by creating the basic shape of the weapon, but rather he had to create the interior intricacies and make bullets separately so that they wouldn't jam the gun. Getting them to fire was a whole other story on its own as the trigger wouldn't make the bullets fly off, so he did a little digging and found out that he needed gunpowder or something that did the same thing as it. Gunpowder was rare so instead of wasting his precious time to find it, he instead created an equivalent by using making a combustible dust, compressing it in the gun and adding a small flint and steel inside of the gun that activated when pulling the trigger to cause an explosion that propelled the bullet forward. This -of course- didn't turn out so well as the gun just exploded and Matthew was left with a permanent memory.
He gave up on the gun idea for now and went back to being primal, but then he got the idea to just make a spring action rifle that used his mana to propel the bullet forward. The rifle he created was simple, it had a long barrel that was used for the bullet, a trigger to shoot the bullet but what made this thing stand out was the extremely long piece of earth protruding out from the other side of the barrel. The idea for this weapon was to use his mana to push the protruding earth end at a rapid speed to push the bullet forward as he couldn't create a spring easily. This weapon would have been as useless as a bubble gun for most kids his age because of their low supply of mana but luckily for Matthew, he had a vast and highly developed mcs (Mana Circulation System) so he could use the gun pretty well. The problem was, the protruding piece of earth was moving too fast and would shatter the bullets inside, but this was an easily solved problem as Matthew just compressed the bullets with more earth, making them more dense and durable -quite a monkey brain way of thinking I know, but it got the job done- as he did before.
He readied the rifle in front of him and pulled the trigger, immediately a loud crack could be heard followed by a speeding whistle and then a crash. When the dust had settled, Matthew could only stare in a mixture of awe, pride, amazement and shock as he looked at the tiny crater in his room. Before he could start celebrating, the door to his room swung open -or rather kicked open- and his mother burst in, coated in a thick layer of mana, ready to fight off the attackers that were inside her son's room. To her mixed state of surprise, she saw no attackers but rather her son with an odd looking rifle in his hands. She looked at the little crater in his wall and back to her son, trying to get confirmation that he was the one that had done this and when she did get confirmation, she grabbed the gun from his arms and shattered it with her knee.
"What in the name of GAIA are you doing with a rifle!?!?" She screamed at him.
Outraged that his mother had broken the tool that he worked so hard to create, Matthew retaliated. "Mom! I worked so hard on that!"
"I don't care about how hard you worked on it! I don't want my son to be killing people!" Mary shot back. "This is a tool of war! Not a tool for a child to play with. I Don't ever want to see you make one of these or any of the likes again ok?".
"But why? I'm not going to kill anybody with it, I'll regulate the output of the gun and only use it to knock out or scare people!" Matthew justified. "Besides, how am I going to even make it during an actual fight! It takes way to long to create the separate components, and don't even get me started on even figuring out the right output to not kill people with!".
"Listen to me, or else I'll woop your a** so bad that you won't be able to use mana anymore, promise me never conjure such a weapon ever again" Mary pleaded.
Frustrated but understanding of his Mother's point of view, Matthew let out a grunt. "Fine Ma...".
"Thank you" Smiled Mary. "Now get your a** to sleep! it's 4 in the morning for Gaia's sake!".
. . .
"Now, remember that a normal earth mage who is afflicted by the curse can only lower the cool down, they still can't raise heavy earth structures or raise more than one at the same time. You can get away with raising a singular small earth structure rapidly, but remember to never go past certain thresh holds yes?" said Mary, raising an eyebrow at the young boy she was talking to.
Matthew ferociously nodded his head back in forth due to the sudden revelation. "So that means earth mages CAN be awesome!" Matthew shouted with glee.
Getting into a crouching stance, Mary smiled as she touched the ground. "Let me show you an example". As she said that, what seemed like a moving line of spikes erupted forth from the ground and moved rapidly towards Matthew. Stopping just short from his body, Mary gave out a proud look. "I call this move 'Stalking Spike' because it can follow the target".
"Woah...that's amazing!" Matthew beamed. "I think I can do it too!".
Smirking at the audacious Matthew, Mary couldn't help but stifle a laugh at the absurd accusation but was quick to shut her mouth when Matthew had actually done it. From Matthew's feet, what seemed like an actual moving cluster of constantly shifting spikes came from beneath him and moved at breakneck speeds towards his mother, stopping shy at her foot. "I'll call this one 'Revolving Spike' hehe".
Again, her son had shown her how amazing he actually was. Mary let out a warm chuckle as if to say "Ah well, what did I expect" and picked up her extremely talented 8 year old and gave him a hearty peck on the cheek. "I'm so lucky to have you...our future".