The Neto Program was created twenty years before my entry.

In my village in particular it was only present for around fifteen.

Each year they gather the children with the strongest runes, and group them according to the year they joined.

For example, I am in the fifteenth batch. Because of that, I have to eat, sleep and train alongside the people that entered the program this year.

I’m the only one who is only six years old.

Being the youngest normally meant that I was the weakest. After all I was the only one with only one rune.

However my magical power was enormous and with blessed mode I was able to duplicate it, being then capable of surpassing the gap created by age. Unfortunally I didn't had control over it so it didn't really mattered.

There were a lot of things that changed in my demeanor after my entry.

I became a little colder and I have huge difficulty in socializing with the other trainees.

Another thing that changed was my knowledge. Knowledge that I would still get either way and knowledge that I’m only capable of receiving here.

One of the things that I learned is the correct way to give numeric value to magical power.

The unit used to measure the magical power of one's body is a crest.

A crest is obviously corresponding to the magical power that the rune called Crest possesses.

Being the weakest rune we are capable of measuring the magical power in someone by quantifying how many crests one would need to have such magical power.

For example, I have a magical power of four crests, and with Blessed Mode I can reach eight crests, this with only my True Blessing rune. Someone with three Talents would have around nine crests.

As far as I know the strongest person in my batch is a twelve years old guy, he is also the oldest one. This guy, whose name I don’t really know, has three Gifts and one Talent, his magical power reaches nine crests.

Normally one with at least one Gift would already be kidnapped by the brotherhood, however he came from the city. Just how unlucky he is that the first bestowal that he has once he moves to the rural area gets him kidnapped.

Nevertheless, he is the one whose growth should stop anytime. It’s already impressive the fact that he is able to control four elements, what’s the probability of him getting a fifth.

My routine has been the same ever since I joined.

In the only week that I spent until now here, I was able to understand how it works, what’s gonna be my routine for now and for the future.

In the morning, around six in the morning, the guards would wake us up and lead us to the dinner hall.

The food was always the same.

A piece of bread made by some specific cereals that were supposed to help our growth.

But there is a catch, every week it seems that they will give you less food than in the last week. Today should be the day that they do this for the first time to my batch.

The difference between one week and another isn’t much, but when I look at the food on the table of the fifth batch, where the youngest person is sixteen, I couldn’t really believe how much they were eating. I could barely see the bread in their hands.

The seniors of the third and second batch, which had guys around nineteen and twenty eight years old, didn’t eat breakfast, but they didn’t seem bothered by it.

According to the program, it was supposed to train us to be able to fight in a state of inconceivable hunger.

The only reason that our veterans were in the dinner hall was because of the second event of the routine.

The Poison Training.

It was really simple. We needed to ingest poison in order to build resistance.

Each week the dosage would increase, but that’s not all. At a certain point, if a trainee showed good results in that training they would start giving way more dangerous poisons, directly into our blood.

Not sure if my situation will ever get to that, it’s very uncertain.

The odds aren’t really pointing to a good future.

In my batch I’m the one who has the highest defense mechanism against poison.

Don’t know how, don’t know why. Such is fate.

For now my poison is delivered to me in a cup of water, so the poison is a little weaker than it should be.

After this lovely breakfast, it’s Magical training.

We learn a lot in this training, and it’s the one that involves more theory and less ‘beating’.

In this training we learn the basics of mana control, how to reinforce our bodies with mana properly and how to apply these last two in combat.

I’m glad I wasn’t capable of using my mana when I got here.

If I was, then the way I reinforced my body with magic could’ve blown up my muscles into tiny pieces, turning me into a cripple.

This training session starts at seven in the morning and ends at twelve.

Halfway through we separate according to our elemental affinities and train specific spells.

I learned that the limits of my True Blessing are non-existent.

Just by watching the other people with fire magic I was capable of adding more and more spells to my arsenal.

Sometimes I even improved their spells.

Lunch was basically a better version of breakfast.

The food was always the same.

The more time you spend in the program the less you eat.

But there was so much food on the plate that even the people from the second and third batch were eating.

I feel bad that their lunch is even less than my breakfast.

One day I would reach their point.

If I don’t die before, of course!

After Lunch there was Hand-to-Hand Combat Training.

The class started at one in the afternoon and ended at four in the afternoon.

In the first hour we would stand in formation and repeat a certain set of moves.

The rule was that we needed to keep with the speed of the best trainee in the batch, once we all mastered the 

movements.

Because only a couple of people mastered the movements, we are not obligated to keep up with the best trainee in the batch.

Once that hour was over we started sparring.

We couldn’t use mana or any movements besides the ones that we were taught.

Because I was the youngest and the most frail of the batch, I was an easy target to a lot of kids who wanted to 

vent their frustration on a weak person.

Fortunately, I was one of the few who mastered all of the movements that we were taught, not only that, using my small stature I was able to perform the movements in rapid sequence on unexpected parts of their bodies.

And let’s not talk about the fact that I seemed to be smarter than some of the adversaries.

Nevertheless, once I get hit I lose all my composure and end up in a bad situation. Wounded I couldn’t stop sparing, such were the rules.

If someone asked for a pause, our ‘master’ would heal us with a potion and beat us half to death before healing us again, after all, because they asked for a pause they received a new sparring partner for the class.

If things could not get any worse we had Magical Combat Training before dinner.

This training session was simple.

One hour of theory lessons and everything after that was considered slaughter.

We were lined up and called one after another and were forced to fight our teacher.

Of all people it had to be him.

The man with a blind eye whose presence made me shiver. His name was Kvasir.

In the fight we were allowed to fight with mana, as well being authorized to fight with killing intent.

The same goes for the teacher.

The guy was not simple.

He did not trust the way that the brotherhood selected the trainees for the program.

He believed there was more to a warrior than just the rune.

So he did not hold back while fighting us.

If he judged us to be failures in the art of combat he would kill us on the spot.

While I was thinking all of this, a head rolled to my feet.

I resisted the urge to puke, remembering what happened at our first lesson when we all did.

The disgusting flavor got stuck in my mouth.

“John.”

“Yes, sir”

I stepped forward and looked at my enemy and made some calculations.

Because he always fought with his top naked, I was able to tell which elements he had and how good were his runes.

I also knew his rank, with all of this I was able to tell exactly how much magical power he should have.

He was Awakened Rank and had four Talents and a Gift, that add up to 26 crests.

Right now I can only enter in a pseudo-blessed mode, so my magical power should be six crests.

That’s more than four times the magic that I have.

This was not the first time I realized this, of course, it was just a habit they implanted in us every time we started a fight.

“Ready?”

He asked.

“I’m ready.”

“Then, come.”

As soon he stopped talking I reinforced my legs in the correct way and sprinted forward in his direction.

Engulfing my fist in flames I aimed for the left side of his abdomen.

With a swift movement he dodged my attack and prepared a counter.

Noticing this I focused on avoiding his attacks.

By creating a small explosion beneath my feet I escaped the place where I was in time of seeing a kick in the place where my head was before.

His speciality is clearly in close combat, I cannot let him get closer to me like in the other sessions.

I invoked several fire balls and fired them at him.

With a small movement of his hand, the man invoked a water blade in his right hand and slashed each fireball in half.

But I was not aiming to hit him with that.

I use my mana to form a connection to the flames in the torches around the room and started controlling them.

Without leaving the torches the flames shaped themselves in the form of hands and flew in the direction of the man, grabbing multiple parts of his body.

Now!

I stomped my feet in the ground and zoomed in on him.

At the same time I started conjuring my strongest spell.

“Flame Curtain!”

The man was engulfed in flames, his screams echoed around the room.

Wait, screams? Those do not sound like screams. They sound like, laughs?

He was laughing?

“Very good, very good. It seems that in that final move you even were able to enter the complete Blessed Mode for a split second. Very good.”

The man made the flames disappear with just a movement of his hand.

“Class dismissed.”