A team slowly marched from the Anglodar Mountains to the Viscount of Saouf of the former Dabiang Kingdom, the speed of the team was not very fast, but they did not make a detour, but chose to cross the entire Black Reef grassland, and entered the Black Swan Castle in the northwest corner of the Viscount of Saof.

Located in the southwest of the Anglodar Mountains, the castle is built at an altitude of about 500 meters above sea level, and the castle is built on the mountain, with six floors, the bottom two of which were hollowed out of the mountain, and in order to make the foundation of the castle more solid, the hollowed-out mountain was covered with special materials called black asphalt and mountain god gray. The castle on the hill is made of large blocks of black steel.

Because the castle is built on a hill, the fourth floor of the castle is connected to a lake in the Anglodara Mountains, which is about several hundred square meters wide. It is said that since a long time ago, a large number of black swans have rested here in the autumn of this lake, so the castle is also named Black Swan Castle. It's just that when the war between Asuna and the kingdom of Dabion began, the castle never came to the castle again.

When the Tonys Fortress was being built, Asuna lived in this ancient castle, and she actually came to see the black swan, but unfortunately she couldn't see it, and Asuna only learned afterwards that the black swan hadn't visited here for a long time. The kingdom of Dabion claimed that these black swans were the dependents of the gods, and Asuna's act of waging war angered the gods, so the black swans did not visit here.

Of course, Asuna ignored this claim of the vanquished, and only after being annoyed did she respond, "In the name of the gods, let's fight another war to see who is favored by the gods and who will be forsaken by the gods." In the face of Asuna's arrogant declaration, the whole kingdom of Dabiang fell silent in an instant, and never mentioned the matter of the Black Swan Castle again.

And Asuna has never paid any attention to the Black Swan Castle again. It was as if the two sides had reached some kind of tacit understanding.

Until Sean revisited the castle. Asuna remembered that. Of course, Asuna would give this castle directly to Sean so happily, in fact, it was not because she had not seen the black swan before, otherwise, with the black swan castle, which is one of the few castles on the miracle continent that can integrate fortifications and beauty, Asuna will definitely not give it away so easily.

The procession did not stop until it reached the castle.

At that time, it was one of the five most famous castles in the south of the entire continent. Today, due to its years of abandonment, the walls of the castle are mottled, the cracks are deep and deep, and you can even faintly see many traces of collapse left by the siege. Green plants are scattered all over the exterior walls of most of the castle, and weeds are abundant, and these extremely vigorous plants even have their roots planted into the walls. Many of the foundational structures of the castle were destroyed.

When Asuna lived here for a short time, she didn't even think about restoring the castle.

However, Cecilia and William can understand this, after all, the Black Swan Castle is not just an ornamental castle, its location is also strategically valuable - the Savage Lands to the south, the Kingdom of Dabion to the east, and the Tonis Fortress to the north. If the castle is not completely captured, any army that passes through the Shaov leadership will be attacked or even cut off completely.

And if Asuna had repaired and commissioned the castle after the war. It is bound to cost more money. Later, in order to defend the castle, thousands of troops had to be stationed there, which was a big burden for Asuna. So Asuna abandoned the castle. It is understandable that it should be left to ruin completely—or rather, those who know about it will only feel sorry for it, and no one will accuse Asuna of doing it wrong.

"Did you already know that there would be such a situation in the Dao?" When William and Cecilia saw the ruined castle, William finally couldn't help but ask.

Sean had made a big deal in the trading capital, and if he didn't pursue the quality of armaments and materials, and only equipped his troops with ordinary quality equipment, he could even arm a cavalry force of 3,000 men. Although it is only a light cavalry class, the value of such an army is definitely higher than that of a steel wing, if it were chosen by William, he would definitely let the steel wing go to farming, and then reconfigure and train a light cavalry unit.

But after seeing this black swan castle, William finally understood the reason why Sean insisted on keeping the money for him.

The renovation of a castle and a series of subsequent maintenance functions are a lot of expenses, especially for a castle like the Black Swan Castle, if you want to renovate it to the exact same scale as before, William thinks that these two million gold coins may not be enough, right?

"It's much worse than I thought it would be." Sean smiled bitterly.

As for the Black Swan Castle, he had only heard others mention it in the game, and the most impressive thing was that a total of about two million Pan-Continent gold coins were invested in the renovation of the entire castle. It is precisely because of this that Sean has not dared to spend money lavishly after selling the Book of Demons, but he did not expect that according to the current situation, the renovation cost of the Black Swan Castle is definitely more than such a little money.

Of course, this refers to the money needed to completely renovate and complete the Black Swan Castle.

But in Sean's inner mind, he couldn't put all the money here, because he still had more than 7,000 Northland barbarians and more than 1,000 white-winged mercenary regiments to settle. Although the Black Swan Castle can accommodate nearly five hundred soldiers, it is impossible for him to put all the troops in this castle, who knows if there will be any accidents, so this means that he needs to build at least one more stronghold, or directly build a new town, which means that it means a greater expense.

Two million gold coins, what should I get first?

This multiple-choice question is really difficult.

Sean thought a little distressedly, "Let's go inside the castle first." ”

With that, Sean walked towards the main entrance of the castle.

It was a three-tiered barrier door that required a runner to actuate: the outermost layer was a grid-shaped iron bar door common in castle architecture, with a steel hanging door in the middle, and two thickened steel wooden doors at the back. However, the first two floors of the castle gate have been completely destroyed - more than two-thirds of the grid-shaped iron bar door on the first floor has disappeared, apparently melted down from the fracture, and the hanging door in the middle has also been smashed into a huge hole that can accommodate three people side by side.

Only the last door is still intact, but only the one on the left. The one on the right has collapsed to the ground.

In Asuna's army. There is only one person who can completely melt down and destroy these steel plates and steel so easily.

Thunder Shine. Sago.

It is not difficult to imagine how strong the humiliation and panic were when the 500 defenders of this black swan castle were forced to abandon all the fortifications of the castle and engage directly in hand-to-hand combat with Asuna's wolf-like army.

"It's crazy." Sean walked past the gate of the castle, glanced at the gate that was useless for a magician with special means, and secretly made up his mind that in the future, the gate of the Black Swan Castle must be built with materials that can resist or make magic ineffective. It doesn't matter if it's a little expensive.

Then, the whole procession streamed in through the city gates.

After passing through the castle gates, there is a vestibule of about 100 square meters.

It can be seen that the view of this vestibule should have been beautiful at the beginning - there were two lawns on the left and right sides of the vestibule, but now it is overgrown with weeds and dead branches and fallen leaves. There are four sculptures on each of these lawns, each of which has different shapes. There were knights with bows or swords, and even with their front hooves off the ground, but with the exception of two or three of them that were still intact, the others had long since collapsed.

In the middle of the lawn is a black stone path leading to the inner fort, and in the middle of this stone path is a fountain about three meters high. The fountain was carved with four baby-height statues with wings on their backs, and it appeared as if they were flying in mid-air and saluting something in the middle, except that the thing they were paying attention to was gone. A water pipe under the base of the inner lining is exposed. And the fountain has dried up.

No matter how you look at it, it's a dilapidated ruined fort.

Sean pushes open the door to the Inner Castle. Then the two gates collapsed in Sean's hands, kicking up a cloud of dust like a mist of sand.

The castle hall is also very luxuriously built, seven meters high, and in the center is a huge statue five meters high, the statue stands with a sword, as if the wind is blowing, and the cloak behind it is raised like a hunting sound, which looks very powerful. It's just a pity that the head of this statue was cut off with a sword, and the incision is very smooth, so Sean doesn't know who this statue is carved after everywhere.

Behind the statue is a double staircase – a staircase that rises from the left and right sides, and then joins in the middle to form a projecting platform. Behind this landing is a twenty-three staircase, which then extends in opposite directions to the second floor in the right and left directions, a staircase common in aristocratic mansions.

There were supposed to be many decorations on the first floor of the castle, but now they are all gone, and it is obvious that they have been looted. But even so, the luxury and scale of this castle is still enough to make people feel shocked, especially the Northland barbarians and those white-winged mercenaries who have not seen much of the world.

Sean is actually understandable about the psychological thoughts of these guys, and he was also shocked when he first saw Utopia. So he didn't let the soldiers stay here, but let them move freely, as an expedition to see if they could find anything to use in the castle - of course, he didn't expect much from that, because Asuna had lived in the castle for a while, and for her poor and white at that time, the value must have been emptied.

However, these soldiers didn't care about this, they just enjoyed this adventure-like mentality.

Soon, all the soldiers were gone, leaving only William, Anno, and Cecilia.

Sean didn't say anything, and walked straight to the wall under the platform at the staircase of the double ascending room, and then reached out and pulled the candlestick hanging on the left side of the wall, only to hear the click of the mechanism activating, followed by a roar, as if it was rusty because the mechanism had not been activated for a long time.

Then, in the astonished eyes of everyone, the statue in the middle began to rise slowly.

As the statue rises, countless clouds of dust fall like a gray waterfall. The statue had risen a full two meters before it finally stopped, and behind the foundation of the statue, a swarthy hole was revealed, and a staircase descended from it. (To be continued.) )

PS: Today's 520, I won't say anything, only one sentence I want to say to you. …… I love you!!