is it possible to unlock conquest character on normal, if not how short will i be?

for context im around 4.5 million gp. i have two gl’s and a few other decent teams. because i have slkr, i really wanted to focus on this conquest. tbh i usually slack on conquest so i never actually competed normal to unlock hard, but im going to try to for this cycle. however i dont think my roster is built up enough for hard difficulty(i can include pics of it if people want)

with that in mind, i was just curious how many shards by the end of the cycle would i expect to get of the new character? if i dont do hard difficulty will i inevitably have to wait for her proving grounds in 6 months? thanks!