“Oh mom, dad! You’re here.” Michael came out of the mansion with the most casual greeting ever. It was as if his mother and father weren’t gazing at him with the sternest of looks.
“Can you explain what happened here?” his father asked.
Bart pointed at all the strange ‘additions’ that happened to the mansion while they were gone for four months.
“Oh…well, that’s a long story.”
Michael then proceeded to take both his mother and father on a tour of the entire mansion. First, he showed them the kitchen house, which was now fully equipped with plumbing and faucets that supplied clean water for use every day.
Flush…
Then, he demonstrated his new ‘invention’ to them, the toilet, and showed how it solved the problem of waste in the mansion.
“Just one push of a button, and everything is flushed away down the pipes connected to the river.”
He gave them a very rudimentary explanation as to how the plumbing worked, and how every pipe that supplied water throughout the house all came from the tank on the roof.
His father wordlessly examined the metal toilet and faucets, prodding them to see if it worked just as easily as Michael explained.
From what he could see, magic was not the reason why it worked. It was all through the natural way things moved.
Surprise and amazement flashed through his face. In his extensive knowledge of businesses in the world, he had never seen this kind of mechanical advancement before.
Such an easy way to deliver fresh water through small metal pipes…it was such a simple idea, yet no one had ever discovered them before.
Even the castles of Kings and mansions of royals were not equipped with this kind of apparatus. They were still stuck with having mages create water or having their maids personally carry water to their chambers. It would have solved so many security issues. After all, having too many helpers could leave a royal vulnerable to assassins.
It also solved the ever-present problem of cleanliness in the house!
With this plumbing system…
Immediately, Bart’s business mind saw the potential of this plumbing system. If this was implemented in every home, it would revolutionize the entire world!
“Michael…do you know who created this contraption? Will you introduce him to me?” Bart asked.
Michael awkwardly smiled and scratched his head. “Of course I know him, father. He’s me!”
Bart’s face was frozen for a second. “You…you created this? How?”
Michael knew that the time for secrets was over. He was finally going to show his magic to his parents.
He took out a small piece of metal on the windowsill and cast a spell to bend its shape using nothing but the Earth mana inside his body. His whole body glowed into an ivy-green aura as the excess mana he used was manifested as light.
The thin, straight piece of metal was now turned into a miniature framework of a house.
Lylia gasped. “2-star spell…Metal Bend…”
As a self-proclaimed genius of Earth magic, of course she was going to recognize the spell Michael cast.
Even Bart was surprised. “2-star spell…as a five-year old…”
Before Bart could even process this mindblowing information, Lylia grabbed his shoulders and shook him vigorously, almost as if she was trying to shimmy the soul out of his body.
“DO YOU HEAR THAT, HONEY?!?! OUR SON IS AN EARTH MAGIC PRODIGY!’
Michael and the rest of the maids and butlers plucked their ears from the Madame’s scream.
“Oh, my sweet, dear boy! You’ve inherited my genes! That’s great. I always knew you’d be the most talented magician in the entire universe!”
Michael struggled to breathe as his mother took him into a big embrace. If she was this clingy when she found out about his Earth magic aptitude, how would she become if she found out he could use all four elemental magic? He inwardly prepared himself.
Bart kneeled and looked at Michael in the eyes. Even though Bart tried his hardest to remain calm, there was pride and joy in his eyes whenever he looked at Michael.
“Tell me, son. How did you learn magic?”
Lylia immediately hugged Michael from behind and pouted at Bart. “Of course, it’s because I always took him with me whenever I gathered mana.”
She was right. Michael wouldn’t have been introduced to magic so early if she hadn’t shown him how to gather mana while he was a baby. He had her to thank for that, but he wasn’t going to say that out loud.
“I remember seeing mages casting spells,” Michael said, trying to act like a five-year-old telling a cute story. “I thought they were cool, so I copied what they were doing!”
“….” Both of them were speechless.
The last time they invited an Earth mage into their mansion was when they constructed Michael’s first birthday party.
If what Michael said was true, then he was able to remember, memorize, and decode Earth magic spells when he was only a one-year-old boy.
He said it with such innocence that most people would have thought that he was just saying something cute, but the essence of his words was nothing but monstrous.
“And the…faucets? The toilet? How did you know how to create them?”
Michael shrugged his shoulders. “I have a voice inside my head that’s telling me what to do,” he said ever so innocently.
Bart and Lylia looked at each other, trying to seek validation to their surprise.
To them, it looked like Michael was unaware of his own genius. They thought that the ‘voice’ inside Michael’s head was his own subconscious mind. And just like how a genius pianist could create an amazing melody through their intuition alone, Michael could create inventions just through imagination!
It seemed that they gave birth to an intuitive genius unlike no other.
“Haha,” Bart chuckled. “And here I was worried that our son wouldn’t be talented enough.”
Michael was intellectually smart and gifted in Earth magic. He was more than talented.
“Our son is a genius!” Lydia squished her face with Michael’s.
DING DONG
Just then, they heard a ringing bell echoing in the halls.
“What’s that?” asked Bart.
“Oh, that’s the clock, Sir. It means that it’s time for lunch.” Sebastian said.
“Clock?”