"Hello, I'm Lance." The blonde boy smiled and stretched out his hand. He was dressed in brown shorts, a pale yellow shirt, and a little flat cap. He smiled, revealing cute dimples that would make one want to smother him.
"Hi, I'm Kai." Kai tentatively shook his hand after an encouraging nod from Roland.
"Cool." Lance nodded and went back to his father. After having a little whisper session that Roland very easily overheard, he skipped back over to Kai. "Do you want to go play?" He asked with a tilted head.
Kai cast another uncertain look to Roland, to which Roland simply nodded with a smile. He wanted Kai to make good friends, and he was sure that Lance would be a good friend. Not only was Anthony a good man, but he was also influential, which would be goof for Kai. Having good friends in high places was good.
Kai and Lance left the meeting room to the adults and went to a different part of the building. Lance was the one leading, obviously, while Kai simple looked around, still mesmerized by the new sights.
"I have a study room to myself at the back of the warehouse. Father lets me practice magic there. Do you know magic?" Lance suddenly said as he led Kai down a flight of stairs.
"Yes, I know a bit." Kai made a gesture with his fingers.
"I can teach you." Lance's grin was bright. Almost as bright as his sparkly blond hair.
After a while, the two came to stop in front of a sturdy metal door. Lance slid in a key and pushed it open. "Father doesn't want me to ruin his warehouse, so he built this room for me to practice in." The boy explained.
"Whoa..." Kai was captivated by the sight of the room. Most of it was made of metal, including the floors and walls, but the room was very large and split into two parts. There was a bare portion at the back that was cordoned off by see through walls. If Anthony was truly scared that his son would ruin his warehouse, then surely, that meant the see through walls were very sturdy.
In the main room that they had entered however, there ware bookshelves lining every wall, packed with books that Kai had no doubt were worth a lot. Paper was expensive, and there were almost a hundred books in that room. Indeed, Anthony was truly a wealthy tycoon.
"Come, I can show you a bit of my magic." Lance led Kai to the reinforced room. Before they entered, he handed Kai some protective gear that could protect him if anything went out of hand. With the protective gear on, they finally stepped into the reinforced room.
"My sister taught me this." He said and raised his hands. With a frown on his face, he began to conjure up a spell.
Spells could be cast through a variety of means. The most common way of casting a spell was through imagery. This simply had to do with envisioning the spell before directing mana to act in that specific way. The second was through incantations. It was a rather straightforward method, but was not usually advised, as a mage would be giving his opponent a heads up to his spell. There was also rune casting, which had to do with drawing magic runes to create spells.
Among the three, Kai was able to cast some little spells through rune casting. He could use imagery or incantations, but he preferred to use rune casting because it looked 'cooler'. As for Lance, he preferred using imagery to cast his spells. It was more fluid and allowed for a lot of flexibility and leeway when casting spells.
"Watch this." He said. The mana in the air swirled, taking on a fluid form, before clear water appeared in the air, controlled by Lance's mind. The boy grinned widely as he turned the mass of water that was as large as his head into a long, watery whip that he waved around. Then he turned it into a sword, and then a few other shapes, all the while laughing.
"I can do that." Kai smiled. He decided to impress this new friend of his with rune magic. He held open his hands and began to make wild movements with his fingers.
"What are you doing?" Lance was confused, but only a moment later, he opened his eyes wide in understanding and surprise. "Is that rune magic?!" The boy was shocked. He had a few other friends that could use magic, talented children of influential people in Henan, but he had seen none of them use rune magic. It was just too complicated!
With a slack jaw, Lance watched as Kai conjured a globe of water then began manipulating it. The glob of water sprouted a watery tentacle that reached out to touch Lance's cheek.
"Whoa! That's cool!" The blond boy exclaimed as Kai manipulated the glob of water to sprout more tentacles. "It looks like the legendary kraken father told me about!"
"Kraken?" Kai paused, curious of what this strange word was. He had never heard his mother mention it, or seen it in any of those books that he had read.
"You don't know what the kraken is? I can tell you about it. Just dump that water in here." Lance handed over a bucket and Kai let the water he had conjured pour into it. The water would vanish in a few minutes as the mana returned to the atmosphere. Lance then grabbed a hold of Kai and dragged him back out to the other room full of books to show off what a cool creature a kraken was.