Banner of the Evil God

Slightly east of the south of the Gold Coin Federation, there is a place called "Dal Territory".

This place belongs to the Dal family. Like most nobles in the Gold Coin Federation, this family is a merchant family. About five or six generations ago, an ancestor relied on a little wisdom and soft skills in the war - it is impossible to verify what it was, but it is thought that there was no lack of fraud, violence and conspiracy - to get the first pot of gold, and then started to do some business such as reselling, smuggling, and lending.

This ancestor of the Dal family was very good at business and had a good vision. He was always able to stab the former master at the right time. After stabbing two masters in the back, he finally became a noble who was qualified to own a territory.

At first, this ancestor was just a knight with a real territory, and there was a viscount as his lord. But somehow, the viscount and his family were ambushed by bandits during a trip, and the whole family was unfortunately killed. Upon learning of this, Knight Dal was furious. He not only mobilized all the troops in his territory, but also took out a large amount of wealth, hired a large number of adventurers, and formed a large army to investigate the cause of the Lord's death.

As the investigation progressed, a huge conspiracy slowly surfaced - it turned out that the only baron under the Lord colluded with another knight to murder the Lord.

The angry Knight Dal and several other knights immediately united and launched an attack on the two conspirators. After a bloody battle, the rebels were eliminated, and one of the knights died.

As a great hero in investigating crimes and eliminating rebellion, Knight Dal received everyone's praise and support, especially the friendship of the bigwigs from the capital. Soon, he became a baron, and together with several other knights who belonged only to the capital, they jointly managed the territory.

In the years that followed, this area was calm. Although there was a dispute over the inheritance of a knight family, and the final heir looked a little similar to the Dal family, those were obviously slanders.

The current Dal Territory is a quiet and remote place.

It is a little far from the "Southeast Avenue" along the seaside, and adventurers and caravans will not pass through here. The successive Dal Barons have no interest in attacking the Great Swamp to open up the territory. Adventurers and mercenaries do not get support, so naturally they will not use this place as their logistics base to open up or invade the Great Swamp.

On the contrary, there are some smugglers here, doing gray business between the Gold Coin Federation and the Great Swamp. However, this kind of business is not open to the public and the scale is not large.

So in general, as Baron Dal is proud of, Dal Territory is peaceful and calm, full of leisurely atmosphere that makes him comfortable.

Whenever he drinks tea on the terrace on the top floor of the castle and looks at the territory under his feet, his heart is filled with a sense of peace and comfort, and he often sighs for this: "Ah! Life is so beautiful!"

But in recent days, Baron Dal's mood has not been so happy, and even the afternoon tea he used to like has become less delicious.

Because there are a few more unwelcome people in Dal City, and some unwelcome things have been done.

They were from a group of clergy called the "Void Mask Church". There were about ten of them, three pastors, one priest, and the remaining six were holy warriors.

Damn, they were all characters with formal professional levels, and none of them were weaklings!

After this group of clergy came to Dale City, they first bought a relatively remote house. Because the house was old and dilapidated, they basically didn't spend much money.

In fact, the house and the surrounding area had almost become a place where beggars and thieves lived because of the long-term gathering of poor people. It was really a place of filth. Unless they needed to find someone to do something that was inconvenient to say, or needed to find a few objects hanging on the gallows outside the city gate, the well-known figures in Dale City would never approach it.

How could a group of clergy, the leader of whom was even at the intermediate level, go to such a place? And buy a house there to settle down?

Could it be that this was the strange hobby of the god they believed in?

Remembering that the god they believed in seemed to be a big jellyfish, Baron Dahl thought that maybe this guess was right.

This incident became a little joke in the upper class of Dahl City, and everyone often talked about it when they got together. Some people even laughed and said that they had been living by the jokes of this group of people these days.

But those clergymen obviously didn't come to perform jokes. After they settled down, the first thing they did was to take out money and hire those poor people to work for them, renovate the house, and build the altar.

To be honest, the money they took out was not much, probably just enough for the baron to hold a party, the scale of the party would not be very large, let alone luxurious. But for the poor, this money is already a lot, at least enough to buy food to prevent them from starving to death.

In addition to wages, the clergymen of the Void Mask Church also said that the poor people's clothes were too tattered, which violated the teachings of their jellyfish majesty, so they gave them some pretty thick and clean clothes.

The clothes didn't fit well and were old, and it was obvious that they were donated by some middle-class family when they were doing charity. But at least they were well-dressed and warm enough to wear.

And the clergy had a morbid pursuit of cleanliness. Every day, two holy warriors patrolled the slums to urge them to keep clean. There was even a priest who caught the poor people every day like catching criminals to take a bath and change clothes. Baron Dahl heard from a patrolling knight under his command that he once passed by that area and saw a group of poor people taking a bath. The stench made him sick!

After such a period of time, the slums gradually improved. The poor people wore neat clothes, the houses and streets were cleaned up, and because they could almost have enough food, even their faces had some color.

So Baron Dahl sent out tax collectors.

Anyone living in Dahl City, no matter what business he made, had to pay taxes.

The poor naturally had to pay taxes. In the past, they had no money, and the tax collectors were too lazy to come to their door. After all, there was nothing good to go to that stinky place, and could they cut off the meat of the poor to pay taxes? Of course, if they had a little girl, they could use it to deduct the tax, but the little girl had probably been bought or kidnapped long ago, so it was not usually the tax collector's turn to collect taxes. They mostly followed the traffickers who bought people.

Now that these poor guys have some money, the tax collector will ask them to make up the taxes owed for the money.

Well, interest is included.

It should be a matter of course, but the clergy came forward to say that according to the laws of the Gold Coin Federation, these taxes cannot be counted as interest if the evidence at the time cannot be produced.

The Gold Coin Federation, which is based on commerce, attaches the most importance to "evidence".

It cannot be counted as interest? ! That's just a few dollars!

The two sides have been arguing about this matter, and there is no conclusion yet.

And this is what made Baron Dahl unhappy.

He is not short of money, but the money that should belong to him, even if a copper coin is missing, he will be very unhappy!