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. 𝘧𝓇𝑒𝑒𝑤ℯ𝑏𝓃𝘰𝑣ℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

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."

"They really only want the best," Ryzen said, swallowing.

’They want exactly one hundred teams,’ Isalyn noted from the mirror. ’No more, no less. The realm takes a thousand and not one body more. So they will carve ten thousand down to a thousand, and they will be ruthless about it.’

...

The Mountain was the next morning’s destination, and it earned its name.

It was a single peak, but a peak past all sane proportion, a vast spire of dark stone that climbed twenty-two thousand meters into the engineered sky, so tall its higher slopes vanished into a permanent crown of cloud. It dwarfed everything. The towering dome-city they had marveled at now looked like a model at its feet. Ten thousand qualified experts gathered at its base, and against that immense flank of rock they were less than a scattering of ants on the side of a cathedral.

Two great barriers divided the Mountain down its length, shimmering walls of translucent force that ran from base to peak, splitting the slopes into two enormous arenas side by side.

"Left for us," Rudrean said, reading the markers. "Core Genesis. The right barrier’s the Soul Tree pool."

Both sides held the same trial. The Guild had simply separated the two stages so they would not interfere with each other, each pool fighting for its own five hundred spots, the same contest mirrored across the divide.

And the contest was, on its face, almost absurdly simple.

[There are one thousand Spirit Bells upon the Mountain. Five hundred on the left slope for the Core Genesis pool. Five hundred on the right for the Soul Tree pool.]

[A Bell must be touched to be claimed. Once touched, it activates and floats within one meter of its claimant. If another person touches an active Bell, it transfers to them.]

[Duration: thirty-six hours. When time expires, the one thousand individuals holding a Bell qualify to enter the Secret Realm.]

[Hold your Bell. Take another’s. Survive. Begin.]

Out across the Mountain’s slopes, faint and ghostly, the Bells hung in the air. Pale blue, softly luminous, drifting in slow idle bobs above rock and ravine and the scattered shapes of monsters that prowled the heights. Five hundred on each side, glowing like will-o’-the-wisps strewn across a mountain the size of a small country.

"So it’s not about killing," Aelira said slowly, working it through. "It’s about holding. Anyone can take a bell from anyone, any time, just by touching it. Which means the fight never stops for thirty-six hours straight."

’Precisely,’ Isalyn said, and there was something appreciative in it. ’A bell in your hand is a target painted on your back. Five hundred bells, far more than five hundred people who want one. Most of this field will spend a day and a half hunting each other across the rock. It is not a test of who is strongest in a single clash. It is a test of who can hold what they take, against everyone, without rest.’ A pause. ’For us, of course, it is simpler.’

Rudrean’s mouth curved. "Get a bell. Keep it. Don’t get tired."

’You won’t get tired,’ Isalyn agreed dryly. ’You three could nap through this if the rules allowed it.’

The barrier ahead of them thinned. A horn sounded somewhere high on the Mountain.

The phase had begun.

...

The first hour was almost too easy.

The instant the trial opened, ten thousand experts surged onto the slopes in a roaring scramble, and the Mountain erupted into a chaos of light and motion. But the Mountain was simply too vast for the chaos to be everywhere at once. Twenty-two thousand meters of slope, ridge, ravine, and cliff, with the Core Genesis pool of five thousand spread thin across all of it. In whole stretches of rock, a person could go minutes without seeing another soul. The crowd that had looked so dense at the base dissolved, the moment it spread out, into scattered knots and lonely hunters lost against the immensity.

The team moved as one, climbing a broad shoulder of the lower slope, and they found their bells within the hour.

Rudrean reached his first, a pale blue chime drifting lazily above a shelf of black stone. He simply walked up and laid his palm against it. The bell pulsed, brightened, and settled into a slow orbit a half-meter from his shoulder, his now.

Aelira claimed the next, plucking hers out of the air over a ravine with a delighted little laugh. Rivera found one tucked against a cliff face and took it with quiet efficiency. Ryzen, grinning, chased his down where it bobbed above a cluster of rocks and slapped it like he’d scored a point in a game. And Lyra, rather than run hers down on foot, simply sent one of her crafted scanner-orbs ahead, located a bell in a quiet fold of the slope, and walked to it at her leisure.

Five bells. One each. Inside the first hour.

The monsters of the Mountain came at them as they climbed, beasts of stone and storm that haunted the high slopes, drawn to movement and mana. But against this team they were barely an inconvenience. Aelira’s revolvers cracked and a charging stone-beast came apart mid-leap.

Rivera’s light lanced clean through a pack that tried to flank them.

Ryzen, eager to prove his new strength, met a horned brute head-on and actually held it, then put it down, beaming at the result.

Rudrean dealt with anything large enough to matter and didn’t break stride doing it.

The bells bobbed serenely beside each of them through all of it, untouched, unclaimed by any rival, because no rival had yet come close enough to try.

An hour passed like that. Climbing, killing, holding. Easy.

An hour in which all 500 bells were claimed.

But the rest 4500 who didn’t have a bell...started making move to claim from others.