Chapter 26: The Solo Adventurer

The next morning, Zion noticed two familiar groups enter the dungeon within a short span of one another.

The first was Gareth’s party.

He recognized them immediately as they crossed the entrance and disappeared into their own Floor 1 instance, with Gareth leading as usual and June walking near the rear while Mara and Elias argued quietly about something behind them.

A second notification appeared soon after.

[Visitor has entered the dungeon.]

[New Party Instance created.]

[Party Size: 1]

Zion paused at the last line and shifted his attention toward the new instance.

One?

The young man standing near the entrance looked familiar, and he recognized him almost immediately.

It was the blond one from before.

Zion remembered the ridiculous golden curls first. The young man had entered the dungeon once with an older man, though neither of them had actually fought anything.

At the time, he had mostly remembered him because his hair made him look strangely appropriate standing in the middle of a pasture full of sheep. Apparently, he had come back except this time, he was alone.

Zion had watched dozens of parties move through Floor 1 over the last few days, but this was the first person he’d seen willingly enter without anyone beside him.

Even more surprising was the old, rusted sword hanging at the young man’s side. He definitely hadn’t brought that the first time.

The young man looked delighted simply to be there. He stood near the entrance with one hand around the sword hilt and looked across the pasture with so much barely contained excitement that Zion became curious almost immediately.

Then he drew the sword and headed straight toward the nearest sheep. Apparently, there would be no scouting.

The sheep stood halfway up a grassy slope with its head lowered, calmly eating.

The young man climbed toward it with both hands wrapped around the sword, his stance deliberate enough that Zion assumed he had at least practiced with the weapon before.

Whether that would help him against the sheep remained to be seen.

The young man reached the top of the slope and lifted his sword. But before he could do anything with it, the sheep shifted slightly and raised one hind leg.

Its hoof struck him directly in the stomach.

The young man left the ground, landed several feet lower on the hill, and immediately began rolling backward through the grass until he finally came to a stop near the bottom.

Zion stared at him for a split second before he erupted into laughter.

He had watched adventurers get launched by the Horned Ram, seen entire parties collapse after triggering Pack Mentality, and witnessed people make decisions that cost them all of their equipment.

Somehow, none of it compared to watching someone confidently approach a grazing sheep only to get kicked down a hill before managing a single attack.

"This is incredible."

The young man sat up and looked toward the sheep as though trying to understand what had just happened.

The sheep had already gone back to eating. That made it even funnier.

It hadn’t chased him down the hill, and none of the nearby sheep had responded to the encounter.

Zion checked the floor behavior out of curiosity.

[Pack Mentality: Inactive]

Apparently, even the system didn’t consider what had just happened enough of a threat to alert the flock.

The young man got back to his feet.

Zion expected him to reconsider his approach, choose another target, or possibly decide that fighting sheep alone had been a poor idea.

Instead, he walked straight back up the hill.

Zion immediately focused more of his attention on the instance. The second attempt ended much like the first.

The young man tried to swing before the sheep could react, but the animal shifted just far enough to avoid the blade before kicking him back down the slope.

He climbed up again.

On the third attempt, he approached from the side. The sheep adjusted its position, kept him near its rear quarter, and kicked him anyway.

The fourth time, he rushed, which only made the impact worse.

By the sixth attempt, Zion had stopped paying much attention to the other active instances.

Gareth’s party was somewhere else on Floor 1, and several more groups had entered since then, but none of them were doing anything remotely as entertaining as this.

The young man kept climbing.

Sometimes he swung too early. Once he slipped on the slope before the sheep even touched him. Another time he managed to bring the blade close enough to brush through the animal’s wool before a hoof caught him in the thigh and sent him tumbling sideways.

Through all of it, the sheep barely stopped grazing for more than a few seconds.

That might’ve been Zion’s favorite part.

The young man was treating the encounter like a battle for his life, while the sheep seemed to regard him as a recurring inconvenience.

By the tenth attempt, Zion was completely invested.

The young man reached the top of the hill again and stopped several steps away. He was breathing heavily now. Dirt covered his clothes, grass had worked its way into his curls, and several fresh scrapes marked his arms.

Still, he hadn’t left. Zion found himself almost impressed by the persistence, even if the results had been terrible.

This time, the young man didn’t charge immediately.

He tightened his grip around the sword and stared at the sheep for several seconds as though finally thinking through the problem.

Zion’s amusement shifted into curiosity. "Okay. What are you going to do this time?"

The young man adjusted his position slowly, and Zion wondered whether he intended to flank around the sheep, distract it first, or simply wait until it moved away from the slope.

Instead, he lifted his sword and threw it.

Zion mind stopped working for a moment. He simply watched the scene in front of him.

The rusty weapon spun wildly through the air, completing several uneven rotations as it sailed toward the sheep.

For one brief moment, he wondered whether the young man had somehow been hiding a talent for throwing weapons. Then the sword completed one final rotation and struck the sheep directly in the head with the handle.

Bonk.

The sheep stopped chewing.

Zion stared.

The young man stared.

Slowly, the sheep raised its head and turned toward him. For the first time all morning, it looked genuinely angry.

"Oh, you made it mad."

The sheep turned fully toward the now weaponless adventurer and scraped one hoof through the grass.

The young man’s expression changed as he seemed to realize what he’d done.

Then the sheep charged. He raised both arms as though they might somehow replace the sword he’d just thrown away.

The sheep hit him squarely in the chest and launched him across the pasture.

He landed hard on his back and skidded through the grass before coming to a stop several meters away.

Pale light appeared around his body almost immediately.

[Adventurer defeated.]

[Defeat Essence acquired: 25]

[Protected Floor conditions active.]

[Defeated adventurer expelled from dungeon.]

The young man disappeared.

Zion remained focused on the empty patch of grass where he’d landed for several seconds before looking back toward the hill.

The rusty sword was still there. The sheep walked over to it, sniffed the blade once, then lowered its head and returned to grazing.

Zion started laughing again. He couldn’t believe what he’d just witnessed.

The man had spent ten attempts climbing the same hill, finally stopped long enough to reconsider his strategy, and somehow concluded that the best possible decision was to throw away the only weapon he owned.

Even worse, he hadn’t hit the sheep with the blade.

He’d hit it with the handle.

Zion opened the dungeon inventory and found the sword near the top of the list.

[Old Iron Sword]

[Condition: Poor]

[Durability: Low]

[Value: Minimal]

He had never seen the weapon before today, but the condition explained a great deal about why it looked like it might fall apart at any moment.

Zion looked back toward the now-empty instance and imagined the young adventurer sitting outside the dungeon with scraped knees, dirty clothes, and no sword after losing a fight to a sheep.

He had earned Zion twenty-five essence, donated a weapon to the dungeon, and provided the funniest ten minutes he had experienced since waking up as a skull.

He decided he liked him.