Under 1 Banner was losing the race with the two Dragon faction led by Zhang Da Zhi ever since Zhang Da Zhi announced an alliance with the Vesper faction. The conditions for the alliance to happen was kept secret as the contents could have devastating effects if they were leaked. The once plateauing Dragon factions were now growing at a speed that Baron’s faction could not hope to achieve with the way things were currently going. If Under 1 Banner was to somehow match or even surpass the strength of the Dragon factions now, it would have to come from outside sources. Someone heard their prayers.

It was the Laser Shark faction that was the other high-tier faction, in addition to M.O.M and Forever Pirates faction, that was being suppressed by the Vesper faction. This move was mostly to spite the Zheng He and his Vesper faction. Under 1 Banner was glad for the extra boost in their power and soon, they too were growing in size and strength quite near the speed of the Dragon faction. Time was running out, the average a faction has for gaining a lot of new recruits early on was just a few years after the statement of their faction. Then, the buzz of the new factions wore off rather quickly and the interest in the community died down drastically.

What Baron and his team decided to do to increase being the talk of the community was to have a referral program that had various reward tiers. Ten referrals would be rewarded with 100 coins.100 referrals would be rewarded with a mid-tier gun blueprint that was slightly more powerful than the Wooden M4 that was given to all recruits.

The final prize tier was 5,000 referrals in exchange for a high-tier naval, aerial, or land blueprint. With many more rewards in between them. The quality check that was in place was there to make sure that no one abused the system. Plus, none of Baron’s allies expected anyone to reach the 5,000 referrals mark, so imagine their surprise when 3 people managed it. This was certainly expensive, but a price worth.

This was no doubt the nail in the coffin for the rivalry of Baron and Zhang Da Zhi’s race for more recruits as the Under 1 Banner faction led by Baron grew exponentially after the release of this news. Such a bold and incentivized plan to get recruits was absolutely unheard of, but the results showed that it definitely worked. If Baron’s faction were to accept everyone that applied, they would have easily become an upper mid-tier faction much sooner. However, Baron, Jaxon, Roxi, and everyone else knew how important it was to make sure that everyone they accepted into the faction had to be either powerful or committed to the faction in the long run.

Such a successful tactic that brought almost 40,000 new recruits into the Under 1 Banner faction in just 2 years was deemed too great an idea to be scrapped. That’s why it was decided by all of the inner circle members to continue to be active for far longer than they had originally planned. It seemed as if the effects of this would never end, but alas, everything had its time. The effects of the event had sent waves rippling across the entire community.

By the tenth year that Under 1 Banner became an official faction, they had amassed almost 60,000 faction members. Meanwhile, the two Dragon factions combined only had less than 30,000. A massive victory for Baron. At this ten year mark, two more managed to get to the 5,000 referral mark and along with the first 3, after an extensive process led by Han Xin, were all promoted to the elder position within the faction. Han Xin had deemed these 4 men, and 1 lady to be people of exceptional character and morality. With such a large faction now under them, it was finally time to get the proper people into ranks and other positions.

With approval from the Inner circle members as well as Baron, Han Xin went around and did thorough investigations on people he had kept tabs on whenever they were referred to him in the interview process. This project would take Han Xin many years to complete, but it wasn’t wise to rush quality.

Around this time, Zi Ji Ge returned and decided to finally move on from her brother, wherever he was, and to enrich her own life. She applied and got into the Under 1 Banner faction and given a post as an inner circle member, alongside commander Ba who was promoted from an elder. Zi Ji Ge was put into a training role to help anyone who was interested in getting better at naval warfare.

Jaxon was doing the same for the aerial side, and various other inner circle members were doing the land portion. Of course, doing it one one one was horribly inefficient as it would take literal centuries to get through them all, so, a competition was devised within the Under 1 Banner faction to determine who the best of the new recruits were in each domain of warfare.

It was all planned and set up in 3 years’ time so that everyone would be able to enter without fear of conflicting schedules. The inner-circle members were to stay outside and peek into the 3 competitions that ran one after another to determine who was worthy of being ranked near the top. Their plan was to gather all of those who were powerful, or had potential and be given special tutelage under some of the more powerful members of the faction. Then, they would in turn go and pass around the knowledge.

Naturally, there would have to be a feedback process as it didn’t reflect well on the faction if their instructors would go around with anything else but the best of the faction’s best interest in mind. However, this was not nearly as much of a problem as it was in the other factions due to the rigorous interview process that was devised very early on.