Registration closed at midnight, sharp.
The instant the dome's great timekeeping array tolled the hour, the intake counters across the city went dark, the floating blocks of the preliminary venue powered down, and the leaderboard locked. Ten thousand names burned steady above the line, half of them Core Genesis, half of them Soul Tree, the chosen field for what came next. Everyone below the cull simply faded, their chance gone until some future realm that, for the one-time Super Tycoon, would never come.
And the moment registration closed, the Guild announced the second phase.
The terms were broadcast across every card in the dome at once, blooming in the air above each one in clean Guild script.
[Qualification Phase. Ten thousand have advanced. One thousand will enter the Super Tycoon Secret Realm. One hundred teams of ten. Report to the Mountain.]
"One thousand out of ten thousand," Rivera read aloud, her calm unbroken. "A nine-in-ten cull, after the first nine-in-ten cull."
