In all the villages of Danburg, it was now known that there was only one gang. This gang was called Venomblade.

Daniel deliberately spread rumors to all the villages that Lola and Tomas had defeated Esther with great losses. Then Lola and Tomas' powers were destroyed by Venomblade, leaving them as the only gang left.

Venomblade's practice was simple, merchants paid tolls, villagers paid tribute and the Venomblade gang attacked no one. But if any of the merchants or peasants failed to pay, Daniel made an example of them.

The Baroness was helpless to intervene, both because of the war and because of the destruction of Esther's troops.

There was a rumor that she had hired a mercenary company from far away. Daniel searched the town for the truth of the rumor. But he couldn't find any definitive information.

Not willing to take any risks, Daniel intended to greatly increase the number of bandits in his gang.

He also wanted to increase the production of weapons and armor, as extortion money was constantly coming in.

Daniel sent Brad to find as many men as possible. Seth had found a vein of iron near Danville. But it needed manpower to extract it. And manpower to build and run the new weapons and armor workshops.

Daniel gathered his squire. Enkra, Seth, Arn, Alex, Frank, Tim, Saul, were there. Daniel said, "You know my plans, Brad went to get me a lot of men.

"Seth has the iron vein, but we need men to work it. There's a steady flow of money from the tributes, but we urgently need to use it to get bigger numbers."

Frank knew that the only reason he was here was because he was second tier and one of the oldest members of the gang, but if he was going to be more than a fighter and a trainer in this gang, he had to learn the logic of it.

Frank spoke "Why do we need to increase the numbers, we have a lot of second tier members and a few of third tier members, and we don't have anyone below first tier now, so we are well armed, well trained and strong."

Daniel "Good question, at the moment the villagers don't give any money to the tax collectors. The Baroness can't do anything because Danburg can't afford to leave the town center more vulnerable. But contrary to popular belief, we are outnumbered, so we don't dominate the whole barony.

And right now the Bassin kingdom is weakened by the war, but eventually this war will end, and when it does, their top priority will be to take care of the bandits. Before that happens, we need to deal with anything the Baroness can send our way and create the conditions for me to take her place."

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Saul smiled, "I should have guessed you didn't intend to be a simple bandit." Daniel said, "I don't intend to be a simple bandit, I intend to be the Bandit King."

Just then Hans ran into the wooden hut where they were having the meeting. Hans said, "Daniel, Danny sent a lot of refugees to our village and said you would help them."

Daniel said to Hans, "Bring the refugees to the slope of the rocky hill outside the village. I will meet them there."

Brad couldn't stop laughing. "Who does that Danny think we are, what do he think we're going to do with the refugees?"

"Boss, what are we going to do with the refugees?" Daniel got up from his chair and said, "We're going to help them," as if he had just said something perfectly normal.

The refugees had been well received in town by Hank. He offered them water and soup. The old man in charge of the refugees said, "Thank you very much, so you, are the family of that heroic giant." Elise was glad that Danny was helping people in difficult situations, but she didn't know how they could help so many people.

"Do you know who this Daniel is?" Hank shook his head, "No, but I think Hans does."

Hans came running and said to the refugees, "Follow me, we are going to meet Daniel."

Daniel greeted the refugees with a smile, there were about a hundred people here with their families. There were maybe forty men of working age.

Instead of his armor, Daniel was dressed in comfortable but elegant and rich-looking clothes he had obtained from a merchant. With him were Arn, Seth, Enkra and Saul, also in normal clothes.

The old leader of the refugees stepped forward and Daniel shook his hand with a friendly smile on his handsome face. Then he turned to Arn and said, "My healer friend will help those who need medical attention. Please the sick and wounded (gesturing to Arn) line up in front of my friend."

"I became a bandit to help refugees?" Arn muttered under his breath. But he would do exactly as he was told. No one among the bandits had ever done anything contrary to what Daniel had said. But the bandits had no intention of finding out what would happen to them if they did.

The old refugee replied with an embarrassed look on his face, "The gods have blessed us with good people like you, and we can't be grateful enough."

Daniel smiled "My friend, what good is power and money if it is not used to help people." The old man smiled, "Danny the Hero said the same thing."

Dainel said, "Unfortunately, I don't have any land to give you, but I have a vein of ore that I want to keep top secret. You can work there. I'll pay you two silver pieces per day for every man who works, but since you don't have anything with you at the moment, I'll give you twenty silver pieces for every worker who starts at the beginning, which will at least allow you to prepare your basic supplies.

The faces of the refugees lit up, normally the daily wage for an unskilled worker was one silver a day, but most employers wouldn't even pay that because of the sheer number of refugees.

Now they were facing someone who was not only paying double the wage but also giving them a start-up allowance so that they would not have to struggle to buy the necessities for their families.

The leader of the refugees fell to his knees and pulled Daniel's hand and kissed it. "You are a great man and we can never repay your kindness."

Seth grinned, they were going to build a small village for the miners in the jungle, the iron would be mined at great speed.

Saul went with the refugees to help organize the work. "Couldn't we spare some of the refugees for the weapons and armor workshops?" Seth asked.

Dainel smiled, "If I know Danny, there will be a lot more refugees coming here. So there will be more than we can handle.

Then he said to Enkra, "Go to the swamp where you and I fought, kill the swamp creatures and the trees. We'll build a big, wetland village there.

More than a thousand refugees arrived as Daniel had predicted, about a hundred of them were placed in the weapons and armor workshops set up by Seth near thi iron mine.

The rest were given money, provisions, seeds and building tools and sent to the village Daniel had built in the marshlands.

The number of bandits grew rapidly, and Brad, as usual, had chosen his personnel well, including some of refugee origin. The one hundred and twenty new bandits began a rigorous training program under the leadership of Brad, Frank, Alex, Tim and Saul.