After a few hours of non-descript cow hustle and bustle, Kalon opened his eyes, feeling fresh as the cabbage he had been born from. Immediately, even before opening his eyes, he felt the oppressive presence of the Bodiceattva enveloping him. Kalon had not felt such a powerful aura in his whole life, not even when Cutbastra had invaded his town during the Great Dejaggerization Event. He opened his eyes, stood down —he had accidentally turned and flown to the ceiling during his nap— and properly fell to the floor, landing upon a mound of straw that had been carefully placed there by a bored Samari. She crossed her arms as indignation crossed her face: he expected him to land anywhere but right below where he was resting, and that straw castle was a true work of art. Was.

As Kalon acquired his present-continuous ursids, the Bodiceattva floated off from the throne. “You will be tested, boy. In battle, and against a powerful enemy. We may begin whenever you are ready, for said adversary was picked up while you slept. “

The Bodiceattva remained looming ominously in place for a few seconds. Kalon blinked and scratched his head.

“I need some modification to make pointing at things more obvious,” the powerful leader conceded. “Would you be so kind to look to the right?”

Kalon turned his head to his right.

“My right,” the Bodiceattva clarified.

Kalon’s hand shoot from his side, disappeared midair, and reappeared with a saliva-covered handbook. He promptly checked this manual for clothing pieces’ rights and obligations under Ilurian law. He was not great at reading but it had drawings, as it was thought as a cultivator’s tool.

“Your left…”

“I am left to what?”

The bodice groaned disembodingly, “How did you manage to avoid dying as a baby?”

Kalon raised his eyebrows and smiled. He knew this one. “Mom says I am a prodigy among the children of Valelike Vale. It only took me seven months after birth to take my first breath.”

Kalon’s avatar was carefully considered looking for a new job.

The Bodiceattva didn’t look at Samari, but pretended to. “I am pretending to look at you, girl.” He xianxiaed, repeating known information redundantly.

“What do you expect his body to need high amounts of oxygen for? Slow diffusion through mucosae or a well-innervated cloaca probably sustained him until he left the larval stage,” she argued, gesturing with her hands to try and distance Kalon from her, at least taxonomically.

“Did she say I had a lure bar stage?”

Jagger gave him the thousand-yard stare and wished his brain began to drip out of his ears. “Can we get the lethal test out of the way first? A failing grade would be sweet.”

The Bodiceattva stood still. It was getting really frustrating to not have some clothes to control and make others understand. “I am snapping the fingers I don’t have,” he informed, not dead inside but only because there was nothing inside. Not even Intel.

The barn doors flew open and a bull that muscles upon muscles upon some bodily fat upon muscles entered the scene, dragging his venomous (and therefore male) sword along the dirt. His eyes were injected in blood, his nostrils flared with passion and wrath. His fur, slick and soft, glimmered under the moon’s tired gaze. Samari ran to hide behind the nearest friendly male with a bite.

Jagger, in turn, tried to hide behind Samari, so they began circling each other, gaze’s fixated on each other’s posterior, putting on a show that mildly amused the Bodiceattva.

“Alright, alright, come here, Mootador.”

Mootador faced the throne and bulltowed in front of the first step.

Kalon cracked his knuckles as liquid puppies flowed around his arms and legs, like an armor of petrol being born, and immediately evolving eyes to avoid being hunted down by ambush predators. He opened his hand and dragged Jagger out of the loop he had been trapped into, wielding him by the tail, pointing at the bull defiantly. “So, you and your duck are the ones I have to beat to enter the sect?”

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The sudden movement of the bull’s neck to look at Kalon caused a static discharge that travelled to the ceiling, found it was made of wood, insulted minorities and, like a good future husband, went on to hit the nearest human female, spiking her short hairs and causing her to tingle all over. Samari was not going to laugh: indignation was stronger than the tingling.

A smile gradually appeared in mootador’s face, revealing his yellowish teeth as they held his weapon by it’s flat, hairy tail. “Indeed. I come here to kill those who dare enter the sect by insulting the Faceless One.

“I think Kalon never insulted the leader, but I am not opposed to dying,” Kalon’s sword stated.

Mootador’s weapon growled in the least menacing way possible.

“Vacate the building, everyone who doesn’t want to die. The door should remain open and whomever feels like it may watch from a safe distance.”

The idle cows and bulls stampeded out of the building, moo’ing in panic as they did. Hooves placed carelessly over legs, backs, buttocks. A calf ascended to a bloody collection of mats of fur and wounds, or maybe a rug. Samari had to hop over it as she gracefully made her way out the barn, giving Kalon a thumbs up.

The tension hung in the air like one of those extinct giant crinoids hung from driftwood. Gay and submissive driftwood. The kind that loves catching the attention of shipworms, males or females. And you know what shipworms do. One day you are a proud fallen seed fern or conifer sailing the Jurassic seas and the next you are behind a considerably clean glass, being watched by dumb children in a museum, and what does your tag say? Does it talk about your glorious, long gone species? Hell no! it says “Teredolites: the fossil trace shipworms leave on woody substrates.”!

The Bodiceattva gestured for the contenders to put distance between them before beginning, one on the rightmost corner of the barn, other on the leftmost. Then he waited for them to notice he had gestured. In vain. Then The Bodiceattva told them what they had to do. Then he explained it to Kalon with a couple of plums. And finally, separated by a couple dozen meters, the boy and the bull were ready to clash.

The bull parted from his resting position, muscles pumping and rippling under the mass of shiny leather, eyes unblinking, head turned to the side, funneling vital energy into the surly platypus to enhance his war-waging capabilities. If Kalon didn’t act soon, this wave of brutality would crash onto him and answer his Avatar’s questions about how it felt when your host died.

So Kalon simply flared up his vital energy, raising his armor of liquid puppies, covering every centimeter of himself, except for his eyes, with it. Then he raised his guard and awaited the impact.

“There’s no need to deviate or dodge the platypus, focus on the bull,” the avatar told him.

Jagger, part-time sword, noticed the bull was pumping more and more vital energy into the monotreme. “Is that a hat forming on the platypus head?”

Instants before the impact, the avatar gasped inside Kalon’s head, “Parry the platypus!”

Jagger took the brunt of the impact, strengthened by his wielders vital aura, that surged through him and caused him a slight nausea. His edge-fur had collided by the platypus’s, and one of his eyes met that of the other swordified creature. With their sole gaze they told each other “It is what it is” and accepted their imposed rivalry.

Trying to break the clash, Kalon lost his footing, which caused Mootador to create a new entrance on the side of the barn with his charge. Tearing through the wood and nails and dung with ease.

Kalon turned midair, landing on a beam, put Jagger back into his sheath despite the dog’s complaints, and Gathered the liquid puppies into his hands, fingers curled into the form of claws. It gathered in a circular fashion, like water down the drain.

“You are dropping your defenses, moron!” the avatar criticized, preparing a suitcase for his eventual moving after Kalon’s imminent decommission from life.

“I need no low grade fences,” Kalon quipped, eliciting a grunt from Jagger.

“Enough!” The Bodiceattva said, a wave of his vital energy rippling through the barn, making Kalon drop to the floor and Mootador to turn like a scared puppy, letting go of the angry platypus. “I am pleased by your control of your Road, young one. I have no need for further demonstration…. Nor destruction.”

Kalon’s expression brightened up. “Then… I am in?”

“Sodomized heavens, he’s in,” Jagger cursed under his breath.

The bodiceattba nodded unnoticeably.

“I am in?” Kalon insisted, his face contorting due to his confusion.

“Yes… yes you are in. The Sect of the Many Guts welcomes you, honorable bovine!”

Samari approached with an index raised, dissimulating her mirth due to Kalon’s acceptance. “What is the correct name of the sect? Sect of Many guts or Sect of the Many Guts?” She inquired, forgetting the fact that cows were not beings of coherence.

“I have no fucking idea; the cattle have trouble settling on a definitive name,” The Bodiceattva admitted.

So Samari accepted that as yet another dumb fact of the world, and jumped to Kalon’s shoulders, her arms closing around his neck, his strong hands reflexively grappling her right arm and the rest of his body effortlessly following, flipping her over his shoulder leaving a sore Samari sobbing, on the ground, like a murdered starfish. “I was trying to hug you!”

“Sorry, force of habit.” He said, helping hand unoffered to this day.

“Girl, you cannot be here long.” Mootador politely offered a Hoof to help samari stand up. “Your friend is now a member of the sect. You are not, nor his weapon, nor… the floating presence that follows you two.”

“Burr,” said the floating presence, conveying the information about Samari’s triple acceptance into the sect.

“That’s Brunhilda, my teacher.”

The Bodiceattva didn’t react. “I am going pale.” He informed after a few seconds.

And so Samari left her grumpy sobs aside and decided life was too short to not laugh at the disgrace of others.