The more they won the more they would get paid. If someone was not able to best Xu Da then they would receive 5 silver coins. It was customary to reward people for taking the time to come here within the Chinese community. If someone bested Xu Da but lost to Ban Chao they would receive 20 silver coins. If they won the first two but lost to Han Xin they would receive 50 silver coins. If they won 4 then they would receive 125 silver coins. If they won 5 then they would get 250 silver coins. If they managed to beat all 6 of Baron's group then they would receive 500 silver coins.

Due to the sheer volume of people that came, there was going to be quite a wait line. All in all of the close to 5,000 that showed up Baron chose to do the people who weren't well known to have a go at Xu Da first. Some of the more respected strategists were given an explanation and were asked to come back in a month or so. The reason that they wanted to sort through the lesser known people was to see if anybody was even worth Xu Da's time. For this they decided to use a different approach. All six of them were going to test the unnamed people in the crowd.

Baron informed his faction-mates to not go easy on these people, because otherwise they were just wasting everybody's time. If any of these lesser known strategist was decently good they were to be instructed to come back at a later date. Of the 5,000 that came there were close to 3,500 who weren't very well known. Of these 3,500 only about 200 were invited back to continue further sims. The 3,300 or so others were given their coins and they went on their way. Baron's group had spent more than 16,000 on the preliminaries. Just how much would they have to spend on the actual pros of serial warfare. Spending over 20,000 wasn't just for naught though.

The six of them had gathered a lot of useful information from having sims against these guys. First of all, they managed to pick up on who was and who wasn't a pro just by looking at their first engagement. Second, they also noticed the small little details like how most of them all made the same beginner mistakes. Finally, they were able to pick up some quite interesting fellows, who knows maybe they were good enough to be offered an invitation to be part of Under 1 Banner. The 200 that made it through the month long preliminaries were told to come back at the same time as the well known strategists and from there the actual interesting part began.

To not waste any of their time, Baron split up the 1,700 into groups of about 20 and started from there. Baron instructed Xu Da and the others that it didn't matter if he won or not, what matters is to find out how a more seasoned aerial strategist employs tactics and the like. Of the first 20, 16 made it past Xu Da, 14 made it past Ban Chao, 9 made it past Han Xin, 3 made it past Baron, and none of them made it past Yue Fei. Guan Yu was itching to have a sim so he picked the best out of the the 3 that made it to Yue Fei and they had a batlle. It was close but Guan Yu still managed to win.

This was what they did for the rest of the others. All the while making mental notes of what strategies worked, when to use certain strategies, and all the rest. With every new opponent they faced they became more and more familiar with what was preferred within the Chinese community. After several months they had finally gotten through all of the 1,700 aerial strategists. The price they had to pay for them as well as the other group was a staggering 60,000 silver coins.

It was a good thing that the items they had sent to be auctioned off covered all of this, because if they didn't they would have had to pay quite a large sum out of their own pockets. After paying the aerial masters Baron and the five others picked out the 100 best and most courteous out of the 1,700 and asked them if they were willing to come again and have a few more sims at a later date. Compensation included. All of them agreed and everyone left with some gain for their time.

Baron, Xu Da, Ban Chao, Han Xin, Yue Fei, and Guan Yu had ama.s.sed a lot of experience in sky warfare, even if the way they got it was quite costly. The 3,300 that left with only 5 silver coins could only curse at their inability to perform better, but being as the average yearly wage was less than 100 this was definitely well worth their time. The 1,700 that had some skills were probably the most excited. Playing a few sims to win a hundred or two silver coins? They had never made money that easily before.

The statistics were as follows. Of the 1,700, only 15 individuals were able to best all 6 of them. Less than 100 were able to get past Yue Fei but fall to Guan Yu. Only about 400 made it past Baron. There were 600 who made it past Han Xin. Close to 280 of these individuals were considered to be invited back. The other 20 were extremely rude to Baron's group so they weren't considered. Of the 280 they were a.s.sessed in three categories. First up was skill, then modesty, and finally uniqueness in tactics. Skill should be pretty self explanatory, Baron had no need of people he could already beat, he needed someone that could challenge even Yue Fei or Guan Yu. Secondly, modesty was an important factor because dealing with people who constantly look down on you or anything like that just gets everyone heated up. Lastly, uniqueness was something that Baron informed the others were an extremely important factor. This meant that they were looking for people who could employ tactics that weren't very conventional, much like Han Xin. If someone could only use strategies that are by the book, they can't exactly think outside the box. That is a very big boon to a successful strategist.

Of these 100 Baron was hoping to recruit a few, but sadly the majority of them already belonged to a faction. Changing factions was allowed, but no faction would be willing to let go of any of their great strategists unless they were properly compensated. So Baron was hoping to recruit one or two of the factionless strategists.

After this whole mini aerial tournament, they had undoubtedly attracted quite a bit of attention from everyone. By this point there were already multiple pieces of gossip going around that Baron's group was investing heavily in the faction selection tournament which was true. Others were blown completely out of proportion like one that involved Baron's group planning on making an all aerial masters faction. Which is not true. They paid no mind to this and instead began discussing about what they had learned fighting all of these aerial battles.

(GY) "I've gotta say, most of the people that could beat me did so in a very domineering matter. I can only imagine what those guys did to you guys."

(BM) "Let's not talk about that for now elder Guan Yu. I think we should pool together our wealth of knowledge and see if we can pick up any patterns."

(GY) "Fair enough, but I will say. The people who came here to partic.i.p.ate are nowhere near the best that our Chinese community has to offer. They do know their stuff, but even the best of them would probably only rank in the top 500 of the best aviation masters here."

(BM) "For what we want to achieve they have served their purpose well. We aren't here to become the absolute best in this field. Rather we should focus on just besting the strategists that the Vesper group has sent to interfere with us in the faction selection tournament. If we can achieve that, then we won't have to worry about aerial warfare for quite a while."

(HX) "Let's get to work. Fighting sims for months on end with no break has really fuzzied my mind. It's fun, but a break in between would've been nice."

(BM) "Next time i'll arrange for that then."

(HX) "Wait, next time?"

(BM) "Yes, I hope to get one more of this type of event in before the official tournament. This one took close to half a year, perhaps next time it will be even longer."

For the next few days they discussed over and over again what they had learnt from their numerous sims. As time went by their understanding and consensus among the topic began growing and growing. Soon, they would become true masters of this field, but for now they were only one step away from being well known aerial strategists.