Johan choked on his grass as the unfortunate animal slumped to the ground, letting out a low moan. Bright blood jetted high in the air. Hrothkar raised his axe again.

The herd burst into milling confusion. They bellowed, eyes rolling, making short dashes back and forth, but seemingly incapable of organizing themselves to actually run away. If this was paradise for herbivores, that must mean there were no predators on the Range, and they had no experience to cope with what was happening.

Finishing off his first victim, Hrothkar jogged up to small brown cow, who sank to her knees in the long grass, trembling with abject terror.

"Please," she begged. Her telepathic voice sounded high and sweet, a young girl’s. "Why must you do this – "

The axe flashed through the air, and Johan looked away, sickened.

He didn't even think Hrothkar realized what he was doing. He'd probably assumed Necantis teleported elsewhere, and was simply taking the opportunity to do some grinding, offing the cows for a few measly XP.

Dodging the other cows, Johan trotted towards the forest. Could he outrun Hrothkar? How fast were cows, anyways? Hrothkar probably wouldn't be motivated to follow a single cow very far, if at all.

The axe swung up and down again. Another cow thudded to the ground in a hideous welter of blood.

Johan braced all four legs, skidding to a halt. No. He couldn't just allow Hrothkar to slaughter these poor animals. In the real world, he was certainly no vegetarian, and he'd killed hundreds of monsters in the virtual realm, but something about this struck him as different. Sentient cows must have some form of AI, and they were so innocent, so friendly, so helpless. Shadowlord Necantis might be a grizzled veteran of war, but Johan had always tried to follow the path of good. Abandoning them to their fate wouldn't just violate his chosen alignment, it would violate his principles.

Or maybe being a cow made him more sympathetic to their plight? Johan shoved that thought aside – no time to worry about going native. Sooner or later Hrothkar would work his way through the herd to Johan, and that would be that.

He suddenly became aware of a flickering in the lower left corner of his vision. His HUD indicator!

Johan had assumed he'd lost it along with everything else in his transformation. The game engine adapted the indicator to various situations so it was always visible but not intrusive, but it must have taken a while to configure itself for the bovine visual range.

He brought up his HUD and skimmed through his altered stats.

Weight, 800 kgs, about 1,750 pounds. Top speed, 25 miles per hour. Not fantastically fast, but faster than human average. Come to think of it, those bulls from the running of the bulls were pretty destructive . . . OK. Mass times acceleration . . . passive defense somewhat higher than a human in padded leather armor, active defenses: trample, kick, head-butt, flinging victim into air, hooking with horns . . . think matadors, Think rodeos. Cows weren’t entirely helpless . . . something about his basic stats struck him as a bit off for a bog-standard cow. His armor class and passive defense were far too good.

Hello! What do we have here? Johan flicked open his inventory. He expected it to be empty . . .

Yes, there we go. Apparently the game, confused by the weird transmogrification effect, hadn't simply made most of his items unavailable as per a standard spell, but had translated them into his cow form. His left forehoof acted as a Quickstab Dagger, his right as a platinum Gladius. His horns carried the same enchantment as his Ancient War God's Thunderhelm, and his skull dealt damage equivalent to a Skymetal hammer. There was more, but Johan got the drift.

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He was far from defenseless.

With a bellow, he turned and charged Hrothkar, head lowered and trying desperately to ignore the ridiculous udder swinging under his belly.

Hrothkar crouched over a fallen cow, trying to free the axe an over-enthusiastic swing had left embedded in its flesh. With his peripheral vision limited by his helmet, the raider chief couldn’t see what was coming behind him.

Johan slammed into the murderer. At about half the weight of a small car and traveling at a school zone safe top speed, the impact wasn't enough to kill Hrothkar, but it knocked the wind out of him, cracked two ribs and sent him tumbling away from his weapon.

Hrothkar regained his feet almost immediately. Unable to slow down or turn sharply, Johan barreled past him and was forced to take a wide turn to come back around.

Clutching his ribs, Hrothkar stumbled back to the dead cow and wrenched his axe loose, but pain from his ribs left him unable to lift it high enough for his blow to be maximally effective. The butchery-dulled blade sliced through the hide of Johan's shoulder – tough as the cured and reinforced leather armor he'd worn as a human – but wasn't able to do more than sink a few inches into the muscle. Johan lashed out with one hoof, denting Hrothkar's metal greaves so deeply it shattered the man's lower leg bone.

With a despairing yell, Hrothkar staggered backwards, lifting his blood-beslimed axe. Sparks crackled around Johan’s horns, sizzling strands of spellfire arcing between them as if they were Tesla coils. With a great deal of satisfaction, the cow-warrior bashed his head into his enemy, knocking him to the ground and triggering his built-in organic Thunderhelm.

Fire and lightning damage, doubled by a critical hit!

Hrothkar convulsed, twitching and gurgling, then lay still. A stench of death rose from him, and Johan backed away, snorting and frothing at the mouth. He pawed the ground, still buzzing with the cow equivalent of an adrenaline rush.

When he caught his breath, he realized the other cows had calmed down and gathered into a tight huddle, staring at him with awe. The Queen, Keroessa, approached him and then bowed down on her fore knees.

"Never have I seen such battle prowess! Truly, you have saved the herd and preserved our beloved range from this fearful intruder. We owe you our lives. How can we possibly repay you?"

What on earth could cattle pay him with? A golden bale of hay? An enchanted cow pat?

"Actually, your Highness, all I really want is the wand this, uh, creature was waving around."

"Wand?" She blinked her long-lashed eyes.

"Yes, a little stick sort of thing? About as long as your horn, but straight. Carved with mystic symbols? I think he might have dropped it . . . uh."

Keroessa turned her placid gaze at the field, and so did Johan, groaning. The panicked galloping of the cattle had trampled the sod into a wreckage of mud. If the wand hadn't been splintered under a hoof, it would still take hours or even days of careful, intense searching to uncover it.

Keroessa nuzzled him comfortingly and licked behind his ear with her broad, rough tongue.

"We will find your stick, great champion, do not fret. But first, we must bury the lost and succor the wounded, yourself included. Follow me back to the barn where we may tend to your wounds, get you a pail of fresh water and a pan of oats, and have you properly groomed and milked."

Milked!?? Oh dear lord . . . he needed to get that wand and fast, before the virtual realm became far too realistic for comfort.