"Oh Mom, Dad! You're back."
Michael strolled 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.
"Would you care to explain what happened here?" Bart asked, gesturing at all the strange 'additions' that happened to the mansion while they were gone for four months.
Michael rubbed the back of his head. "Oh… well, that's a long story."
And so, he proceeded to take both his mother and father on a tour of the entire mansion.
First, he led them to the kitchen house, which was now fully equipped with plumbing and faucets that supplied clean water for use every day.
Flush…
Then, with a bit of pride, 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 explained.
He gave them a very rudimentary explanation as to how the plumbing system worked, and how every pipe that supplied water throughout the house came from the tank on the roof.
His father silently examined the metal toilet and faucets, testing them to see if they worked just as easily as Michael claimed.
And 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 flickered across Bart's face. In all 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 thought of it until now.
Even the grand castles of Kings and lavish mansions of royals weren't equipped with these kinds 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 potential assassins.
It also solved the ever-present problem of cleanliness in the house!
With this plumbing system…
Bart's business mind immediately 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 froze 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.
Reaching out for a small piece of metal on the windowsill, he 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 outward 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 could recognize the spell Michael cast.
Even Bart was surprised. "2-star spell… at just five years old…"
Before Bart could even process this mind-blowing scene he had just witnessed, Lylia grabbed his shoulders and shook him vigorously, almost as if she was trying to rattle the very soul out of his body.
"DO YOU HEAR THAT, HONEY?!?! OUR SON IS AN EARTH MAGIC PRODIGY!"
Michael, along with the rest of the maids and butlers, instinctively covered their ears from the Madame's scream.
"Oh, my sweet, dear boy! You 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, crushing embrace. If she was this clingy when she found out about his Earth magic aptitude, how would she react when she found out he could use all four elemental magic? He mentally prepared himself for the inevitable.
Bart kneeled and looked Michael in the eye. Even though he tried his hardest to remain calm, there was pride and joy in his eyes whenever he looked at his son.
"Tell me, son. How did you learn magic?"
Before Michael could respond, Lylia wrapped her arms around him and pouted at Bart. "Of course, it's because I always took him with me whenever I gathered mana."
She wasn't wrong. Had she not exposed Michael to magic so early and if she hadn't shown him how to gather mana while he was a baby, he wouldn't have started learning it so early. 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 and exchanged glances.
The last time they invited an Earth mage into their mansion was when they constructed the building for Michael's first birthday party.
If what Michael said was true, then it meant that he was able to remember, memorize, and decode Earth magic spells when he was just one year old.
He said it with such innocence that most people would have made most think that he was just saying something cute, but the essence of his words was nothing short of monstrous.
"And the… faucets? The toilet? How did you know how to create them?" Bart asked.
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 seemed 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 had given birth to an intuitive genius unlike no other.
"Haha," Bart chuckled. "And here I was, worrying that our son wouldn't be talented enough."
Talented wasn't the word. Michael was intellectually smart and gifted in Earth magic. He was beyond talented.
"Our son is a genius!" Lydia beamed, squishing her face against Michael's.
DING DONG
Just then, they heard a ringing bell echoing in the halls.
"What's that?" Bart asked.
"Oh, that's the clock, Sir. It means that it's time for lunch," Sebastian, their butler, informed him.
"Clock?"