Besides, taking into acount the skills that they possessed, everyone, including me, were around the same level of strenght, except for him.

"Gary Seifer, how about you?" Ksavir called out.

Gary Seifer, 10 years old. He was part of the small group of people that always lived in Feuer. The reason why none of them had been kidnapped to join the Neto program was because, unlike the majority of the population their first rune was not the their strongest one.

Gary's magical power was unusual, it shifted according to his opponent. The lowest I had witness was around six crests, and the highest was in a spar I had with him where he reached nine crests easily.

According to Gary his first two runes were a wind and a lightning spell, while his third one was named by him as 'Copy Magic'.

His rune did not have a fixed form until it locked on a certain rune of his choosing, it would then copy everything about the rune, element, magic power, the contents of the spell aswell boosting slightly the magical power of the rune in question.

In our fight, he had copied my True Blessing and boosted it, in fact, most of the uses to my rune had been created by Gary.

Just that rune would allow him to became extremelly powerfull, but on top of it was how he was so talented in any type of weapon he chosed to fight with.

"Oh! It's seems that he wants to try using a whip today." someone said.

'A whip?' I tought

A whip was a unnusual weapon of choosing, I have not seen anyone in the Neto program use a whip before.

In the arena, Gary walked calmly with a black whip in his hand. A little before he reached the center he halted his steps and swang the whip.

At first he seemed rather awkward while using, but before five minutes he seemed used to the whip in his hand, even comfortable.

He calmly rearranged his reddish brown hair and focused his ambared colored eyes onto the new presence in the arena.

A wolf bigger than the one I fought aproached Gary with an appraising gaze. Beside being bigger than the one I fought, the fur was a few tones darker of grey, but the biggest difference was the beast's magical power.

"As some of you have already notice, this one is in the absolute rank and has a magical power of four crests, this should be a fair fight in case your special rune is incapable of copying the abilities of a beast."

Besides his copy magic rune, his other runes were both gifts, wich meant that in the scenario that he couldn't copy the beast's magic they would be evenly matched, regarding magic power of course.

The wolf circled carefully around Gary, who seemed rather calm. This beast seemed to have a superior intelect than the one I fought, probably because of the diference in rank.

Gary calmly matched the movements of the beast, waiting for the right moment to attack. The whole arena held their breath in antecipation.

But it was the wolf who made the first move. With a defeaning roar, a massive air bullet was shot in Gary's direction.

Gary narrowed his eyes and greeted his teeth in frustration, nonetheless he still dodged by leaping in the air by reinforcing his legs with mana.

'He can't copy the beast's magic?' I tought.

It wasn't that surprising after all, beasts possess a different type of mana than humans and do not possess runes. However, Gary's strenght does not originate from his copy magic but rather his way of figthing.

As if to prove my toughts correct, Gary activated his wind rune, Aerial Maneuver, or so the instructors called it. This rune allowed Gary to leap in various directions mid-air.

And thats what he did. Quickly rising in the air and catching the beast by surprise, Gary pulled his whip out. The whip gracefully dance around him slowly gaining a purple glow.

That was Gary's second rune, Lightning Armament, the capacity to imbue certain object or even himself with the element of lightning, boosting the strength and speed of the weapon.

As lightning coursed through the whip, Gary swung the whip down with brutal force forcing the beast to dodge with haste.

Using the force behind his swing, Gary positioned himself upside down and leaped in the direction of the wolf while using lightning element on himself.

The scene reminded me of lightning falling from the sky, a lightning that fell exactly on top of the poor wolf forming a huge cloud of dust.

'Is it over?' I asked myself.

However in the next moment a pained but powerfull roar was heard and dozens of air bullets were shot, blowing away the dust cloud.

Inside the arena a streak of lightning, constantly dodging the bullets by changing directions mid-air various times, could be seen. That was obviously Gary.

Soon the rain of air bullets stopped and the beast seemed really tired and could barely stand. While Gary was still standing with his usual poker face.

That was another amazing ability Gary had, unending stamina. And it wasn't just his stamina that was unending but his mana capacity aswell.

The average mana capacity was around 50 thousand times bigger than the magic power one had, for example, if someone has a single gift, their magic power would be 2 crests but ther magic capacity would be 100 thousand crests. Did that mean that in average a mage could last 50 thousand seconds without stopping using mana? No.

Magic power refers to the amount of mana one can release from their core each second, per channel. In other words in one second I could release from my core more than 4 crests.

However, each channel has a designated area, not allowing me, for example, to reinforce my legs with more than 4 crests, because each channel can only mantain the amount of crest equivalent to ones magic power.

In Gary's case, his mana capacity was abnormal, altough I don't know the exact number of crests he had, but by overhearing the conversation of two guards, I discovered that there was a rumour that his mana capacity was a million times bigger than the magic power equivalent to his first two runes, which would mean he had 4 million crests of mana inside his core.

Whatever the true may be, Gary cannot be tired out, I seriously believe that in the future he will become capable of fighting forever.

Gary aproached the beast calmly and with the a single swing of the whip he decapitated the tired wolf who did not had the strenght or the mana to dodge.

"As expected, even tough you couldn't copy his magic you still defeated an opponent with same level of strenght as you." Ksavir said.

"Yes, we were in the same level of strenght but what trully matters is skill, I cannot prove my skill against beasts." Gary said while shooting a glare in Ksavir direction.

'Does he have a death wish?' I tought.

"Unfortunaly, you are not my level right now." Ksavir pointed out.

"Tch."

"But you are right, skill it's what matters."

Slowly he took of the armor he was using and the upper part of his clothes and showed an awfull scar across his chest.

"The one who inflicted me with this had a single rune, a crest, but his swordmanship was so refined that I couldn't keep up, and we were of the same rank." Ksavin said.

Altough what Ksavir was saying was quite an inspiring story I was more interested in one thing.

'How much would it hurt you if I slashed right at that scar?'