On the afternoon of March 29, Ron left Kiel's office and took a carriage toward the Magic Battle Arena.
With the farming base in Tansen City and the assembly-line packaging factories now running smoothly, and with production efficiency in the City of Chaos further improved, Element Cards had officially been rolled out nationwide.
Thanks to cooperation from Magic Academies across various regions, the launch of Element Cards in many cities immediately drew lively crowds.
Local nobles who kept a close eye on the Royal Capital had long learned about Element Cards and Magic Duels through various channels, and naturally wanted to follow the trend.
Whether it was fun didn't matter.
What mattered was that the nobles of the Royal Capital liked it—so they had to like it too.
The Royal Capital's trends had to become their trends.
Otherwise, they'd be seen as outliers among their peers—mocked and excluded.
As for commoners, due to limited finances, they could only afford the commoner version of Element Cards.
The noble version, priced at 1 gold coin, was out of reach.
Which meant they couldn't participate in Magic Duels.
Ron had already anticipated this.
He had prepared two solutions.
First, he instructed Kiel to purchase high-traffic shops in major cities and convert them into Magic Battle Arenas, replicating the Royal Capital model so commoners could participate.
Second, through the Royal Capital Magic Academy, he sent word to Magic Academies across the regions:
Within the next year, a tournament specifically for academies would be held in the Magic Battle Arenas.
Each academy would send one Magic Duel team to compete.
And the prize pool—compared to the first Magic Cup—would only increase.
For many regional academies, a prize of several hundred gold coins was already a huge sum.
Not every academy was as wealthy as the Royal Capital Magic Academy, which needed tens of thousands of gold coins to be impressed.
Regional academies were much easier to motivate.
If their students weren't strong enough, they would naturally recruit external players.
From where?
Obviously, from local Magic Battle Arenas.
It was just like in Ron's previous world: university esports teams recruiting skilled players from internet café tournaments.
Magic Academies corresponded to universities, and Magic Battle Arenas to internet cafés.
Of course, neither of these plans could be completed overnight.
It would take at least one to two months to get things on track.
Especially for Magic Battle Arenas, the managers and key staff would have to be transferred from the Royal Capital.
But with the Magic Cup ongoing, everyone was already overwhelmed.
There simply weren't enough people to spare.
At the very least, they would have to wait until the end of April, when the Magic Cup concluded.
For now, the focus was on acquiring properties and completing renovations.
Once the tournament ended, staff assignments would be decided based on performance.
While thinking this through, Ron's carriage arrived at the arena entrance.
After the preliminaries ended, the arena had reverted to its original layout.
Many Bronze-ranked players were now confined to the first floor, playing casual matches while waiting for results.
Ranked matches were still suspended due to staff overload—they would resume after the Magic Cup.
Even though final results hadn't been announced yet, many idle players had already gone through most of the recorded matches in the Mimic Grass.
Some even recorded every player's wins and losses in notebooks.
They found that nearly 80 players had achieved a perfect 10-win record.
Most were Gold rank, with a few Silver players.
Below that, around 100 players had 9 wins and 1 loss—again mostly Gold and all Silver.
Not a single Bronze player made the cut.
Together, these groups already filled over half the available slots for the next round.
Meanwhile, there were over 200 players with 8 wins and 2 losses.
This meant that losing three matches basically eliminated you from advancing.
Even with only two losses, a low evaluation score could still result in elimination.
The brutality of the preliminaries was clear.
As Ron stepped out of the carriage and entered the arena, countless eyes turned toward him.
This "gold-scattering prince" had made quite a name recently.
Even a tiny fraction of his wealth would be enough to satisfy many people.
Some overly ambitious fools had even considered making a move against him.
But such plans had all been quietly eliminated by Yuna.
Climbing the stairs to the fourth floor, Ron soon spotted a slender figure in a blue dress sneaking around outside the control room, peeking inside.
Just from the back, he recognized his silly little sister, Mia.
Silently approaching, he leaned in and spoke near her ear while also peeking inside.
The control room was bustling.
Over twenty staff members were calculating players' comprehensive scores.
Nora sat at the center, overseeing secondary verification with core staff.
To ensure fairness, the arena had established a detailed evaluation system.
Based on Silver-ranked scoring rules, they created a full scoring framework for the Magic Cup.
The trade-off for fairness was complexity.
Fortunately, they only needed to focus heavily on the 200+ players with 8 wins and 2 losses.
For others, rough estimates were sufficient.
After all, the outcome was binary: advance or eliminate.
And the cutoff line lay within that group.
"What are you looking at?" Ron suddenly asked.
"At what time have they finished ranking…" Mia answered instinctively.
The next moment—
"Wah!" she screamed, jumping in fright.
"Ron! Can't you warn me before speaking?!"
"Only guilty people get scared," Ron grinned. "What were you planning?"
Mia puffed her cheeks. "I lost two matches! And Wardson crushed me in one—I don't even know if I'll advance!"
"It's all Soren's fault!"
She planted her hands on her hips angrily.
"The two matches I lost—he was right there praising me the whole time!"
"The other eight matches, without him, I won easily!"
"He's bad luck! Otherwise, I'd definitely qualify!"
Ron couldn't help but laugh.
Was Soren secretly a jinx commentator?
Shaking his head, Ron led Mia inside and called Nora over.
"The results are ready?" he asked.
"Yes, preliminary results are done," Nora said, smiling at Mia. "Mia qualified. Rank 279."
"If nothing changes, that should be final."
"Yay!" Mia jumped excitedly, instantly becoming smug. "Who said I might not make it, huh?"
Ron ruffled her hair. "So confident? Want me to assign Soren to commentate on your next match?"
Mia froze mid-motion.
Then, she immediately switched to a pleading smile, rubbing her head against his hand.
"Please don't! I'll do anything!"
"Anything?" Ron smirked.
Mia grew wary. "What are you planning?"
Ron pulled Nora over and seated her.
"Nora's been working hard. Give her a shoulder massage."
"Huh?"
Before Nora could refuse, Mia was already nodding eagerly.
"Yes, yes, yes!"
As she started massaging, she asked sweetly, "Sister-in-law, is this okay?"
The word hit Nora like a shock—her face flushed red.
"Mm…"
Ron watched, amused.
A few minutes later, Nora returned to work, and Ron took her seat.
"Your turn."
Mia reluctantly obeyed, digging her fingers into his shoulders.
"Does it feel good?" she asked through gritted teeth.
"A bit weak," Ron said lazily. "More pressure."
Mia deflated, then switched back to sweet mode.
"Ron~ please don't let Soren commentate on my matches…"
Ron leaned back, enjoying it.
"That's easy. But with your ranking, advancing further will be tough."
"Why not become a commentator instead?"
"I prefer competing," Mia shook her head. "Look at Betty—10 wins! So many admirers now."
"…Your admirers could fill a city," Ron said dryly.
"That's different!" Mia argued. "Mine like my looks and status. Betty's fans admire her skill."
Ron was slightly surprised.
Still… it wasn't like Betty was unattractive.
He didn't quite buy that argument.
"Fine, do your best," he said casually.
Soon, the rankings were finalized.
Staff recorded the top 300 advancing players using Mimic Grass and went to announce the results.
Mia ran off to see for herself—also escaping Ron.
Ron stretched and gave final instructions:
"Register the advancing players."
"Open the Moonview Street venue so they can familiarize themselves."
"The next round will require more work—Nora will handle it."
"Also, report daily audience numbers to me."
If attendance exceeded 10,000, he might move to the later stages of the Grand Arena.
After leaving, he ran into Mia again.
"Back for more massage?" he teased.
"In your dreams," she snorted. "Lyle's coming back—you told me to remind you."
"The 27th hot pot restaurant in the southern region opened yesterday. Expansion there is basically done."
"He'll arrive in a couple of days, rest, then head west in early April."
"Got it," Ron nodded.
It had only been a few months.
Lyle had gone from a struggling barbecue shop owner to a major business figure.
All because of one neighbor.
Ron smiled.
He was actually looking forward to seeing him again.