The reason for the shock was simple, and everyone in the room knew it.

Ethereals summoned beasts. That was the rule. That was the only rule that had never once had an exception until now.

The figure standing before Yuto was not a beast. He was a man. Tall, around six foot three, with long white hair tied back in a neat ponytail. Small earrings. A long sword at his hip, one hand resting on it with the easy laziness of someone who had been carrying a sword for so long it had become furniture. He was staring at nothing in particular, as though the room full of stunned people watching him was of no great interest.

Yuto stared at him.

He could feel every eye in the room on the back of his neck. He did the only thing available to him, which was to stand very still and pray silently.

"Please let this be the good kind of anomaly."

Raiden crossed the room and stopped in front of the man, peering at him with open disbelief. Then he turned to Yuto.

"Did you really summon that?"

Yuto nodded. Hesitantly.

Good anomaly please.

Raiden stared at him for a long moment. Then he shook his head slowly, and an expression settled over his face that had nothing generous in it.

"I knew it," he said. "A scrub who barely awakens always ends up like this. The orb never lies."

Yuto felt something in his chest go very quiet.

Raiden had already turned away. He raised his voice at the group. "All new Ethereals, out. I’m done here. I’m not spending another second with this scrub."

The room moved. The new Ethereals filed toward the exit, and most of them managed not to look back at Yuto, most of them. The ones who did look back did it in that specific way people look when they’re collecting material for a conversation they plan to have very soon.

Yuto didn’t need anyone to explain what they were going to say.

He left too, staying to himself, not talking to anyone. He kept walking until the building was behind him and the noise had faded, until he found himself in a small courtyard tucked between two wings of the complex. Quiet. Empty.

He checked that he was alone. Then he focused on the tug.

The man reappeared in front of him, and immediately resumed staring at nothing.

Yuto looked at him. Then, because the system panel was still floating at the edge of his vision, he decided to try something. He focused on the man and attempted to pull up his profile.

The panel blinked. New text appeared.

Name: —

Rank: Paragon

Soul Rank: Menace

Soul Cores: 0/300

Yuto read it twice.

Then he read it a third time.

Paragon was the second rank. Menace was the second soul rank. Yuto himself was a Disciple, the first rank, with a soul rank of Threat, which was the first soul rank. The understood rule, the rule that nobody had ever needed to write down because it had never been violated, was that a summon could not exceed its Ethereal in strength. By that logic, his summon should have been a Disciple. A Threat. Something small and manageable and proportionate.

His summon was considerably stronger than him.

Yuto stood with this for a moment.

Then, slowly, he began to accept it. The orb had glowed pale green, unusual. A god had handed him a system, unusual. It was not, when you lined them all up, particularly surprising that the anomalies had decided to keep coming.

He began to think about what this meant practically.

With a summon at Paragon rank under his command, the first floor of the Astral Tower was not the obstacle it would be for a normal new Ethereal. He could clear it. More easily than he had any right to. And compared to every other person who had awakened in that hall today, he was quietly, without anyone knowing it yet, considerably stronger.

He looked at the man again, who was still gazing into the middle distance with perfect serenity.

He needed a name.

Yuto was not, by his own honest assessment, good at naming things. He thought about it for what felt like a reasonable amount of time. He considered and discarded several options. Eventually, after what he would later describe as careful deliberation, he arrived at his best idea.

"Shiny," he said.

The profile updated immediately.

Name: Shiny

Rank: Paragon

Soul Rank: Menace

Soul Cores: 0/300

And then Shiny came alive.

The distant, vacant expression vanished from his face all at once, replaced by something bright and alert. He bowed deeply, the ponytail swinging forward over his shoulder.

"Thank you for naming me, Master! I promise to serve you always!" He straightened up and gave an enthusiastic thumbs up. He was smiling.

Yuto blinked.

The shift had been so sudden and so complete that it took him a moment to process it. He rubbed the back of his neck.

"Uhm. Okay. You’re welcome."

He moved on quickly, because there were practical things to decide.

They needed to enter an N Gate. The reasoning was straightforward: monsters dropped soul cores, and cores could be sold. Monster corpses could sometimes be sold too. Money meant food, clothes, and better gear, all of which Yuto currently lacked in varying degrees.

A normal newly awakened Ethereal would have gone home first. Celebrated with family. Called friends. Yuto had no family. He had no friends either, he was an orphan, and he had been pushed out of every circle he had ever been close enough to belong to.

He had nobody.

Well. Except Gina.

His face went red. He moved on.

There were two types of Astral Gates. T Gates were found inside the Astral Tower, one on each floor, and they led to the harshest territories on the planet, the kind of places where the strongest beasts lived, and where most Ethereals who entered did not come back. The ones who did come back came back with a higher rank and a different kind of standing in the world. Only the most ambitious Ethereals went near T Gates.

N Gates were everywhere else. Weaker, but not safe, they were simply filled with lower ranked beasts rather than the kind that ended careers permanently. Most Ethereals spent their lives hunting in N Gates, earning steadily, growing stronger at a pace that kept them alive, building comfortable enough lives.

It was to an N Gate that Yuto was now headed.

Shiny walked beside him, ponytail swaying, hand resting on the sword at his hip, looking extremely unbothered by all of it.