The quest kit had instructions.

No one read them.

Kai put it in his pocket when Aldric handed it over.

Lira looked at it and decided instructions were for hunters who didn’t know what they were doing.

Serah didn’t touch it because Kai had already put it away.

They left Valdris at seven in the morning with the southern sector sun still low and the road empty except for a sign someone had nailed to the south entrance post with the words SECTOR CLOSED — MIGRATION.

Kai read it.

"When did they put this up?"

"Last night," Lira said. "Southern sector hunters are quick when they want to leave."

"Were you keeping watch?"

"I was bored and went out to hunt for a while... I mean, take a walk."

"Lira??"

"Relax, it was just a little sport to keep from getting cold." Besides.

"Remember I’m a vampire, I don’t need to sleep."

Serah was staring at the southern horizon with her nostrils slightly flared.

"I sense them," she said.

"How many?" Kai said.

"Many."

"How many is many?"

Serah considered.

"Many... Can I hunt them?"

Kai smiled at Serah’s question.

"Sure."

Lira heard that and got worked up.

"WHAT? WHEN I DO IT YOU WORRY AND QUESTION ME, AND WHEN SERAH DOES IT, YOU JUST SMILE AND SAY YES?"

---

[DraconicLegacy: "how many is many" "many" — SERAH HAS NO BETTER DESCRIPTION]

[Udo_Ehmen: the SECTOR CLOSED — MIGRATION sign gives me a bad feeling]

[Per_sudin: viewers: 7,200,000. more than yesterday. people know that when Kai takes a quest no one wants, something happens.]

[Jack_Moore: no one read the kit instructions. this is going to go well.]

[Warwolf: 🐂🐂🐂 how many oxen 🐂🐂🐂]

[Drakeking: Lira really is upset because Kai is very permissive with Serah while not with her Lol.]

---

The Crystal Oxen appeared on the southern horizon twenty minutes later.

Kai saw them first as a movement — something dense and collective advancing with the regularity of something in no hurry because it doesn’t need to be.

Then he saw them as individual shapes.

Then he understood the scale.

A Crystal Ox measured two meters tall at the shoulder and three meters long.

The body was exactly what the name suggested — a muscular mass covered in translucent plates that caught the sunlight and scattered it in patterns that in any other context would have been pretty.

Four legs like columns.

Small head in proportion to the body with tiny eyes on the sides — the eyes of something that evolved without natural predators and therefore never needed to develop useful vision.

Two hundred of them.

Moving in the same direction.

Toward the main road of Valdris.

"Alright," Kai said. "Serah."

---

Serah expanded her primordial aura.

Not to maximum — enough for any creature with prey instinct within a two-kilometer radius to receive the clear signal that there was something significantly higher on the food chain in front of them.

The Crystal Oxen kept walking.

The translucent plates catching the sun.

The tiny eyes looking approximately forward.

Serah increased the intensity.

The Oxen kept going.

"They have no prey instinct," Serah said.

"None?"

"None. They’ve never needed one." Her markings dropped in intensity. "They don’t know something exists that could hurt them because nothing can hurt them."

Kai looked at the two hundred Oxen advancing.

"Lira."

---

Lira extended currents of blood magic.

A long, continuous barrier perpendicular to the Oxen’s direction, high enough for the first ones to see it.

Or would have seen if they had useful vision.

The first one reached the barrier.

The barrier gave way.

It didn’t break — it gave way, the same fluid physics principle that makes water flow around an obstacle, except this fluid weighed three tons per unit and the barrier was magic and the three tons won without either party being aware there was a competition.

The first Ox passed through the barrier.

And in the process, it secreted.

A transparent liquid that Crystal Oxen produce during migration — a secretion from the translucent plates that serves to maintain group cohesion, which the Oxen detect by smell and use to know they’re still in formation — fell on Lira the moment the barrier gave way and the Ox passed through.

Lira was covered.

The smell reached Kai and Serah from five meters away.

"That’s disgusting, this smells terrible... The worst scent." She shook herself as best she could to try to get it off, and Serah and Kai stepped far enough away not to get splashed.

Serah had a slight mocking smile on her face.

---

[Dr_snow: (°ロ°) (°ロ°) (°ロ°)]

[Chris_Murray: THE LIQUID FELL ON LIRA]

[DraconicLegacy: "the worst scent" — Lira said it. she’s living it.]

[Udo_Ehmen: Serah’s face smelling that from five meters with primordial wolf senses]

[Per_sudin: 😂😂😂😂😂]

[Jack_Moore: Kai and Serah stepped back at the same time without saying a word. involuntary coordination.]

---

Lira didn’t move.

She looked at her own hands covered in transparent liquid.

Looked at the Ox still walking oblivious to everything.

"The worst scent," Lira said, her voice completely flat, processing something on multiple levels simultaneously, "that I’ve registered in eight hundred years."

Pause.

"Including the catacombs."

Longer pause.

"Including the thirty vampires in the catacombs after six hours in there."

Kai opened his mouth.

"Don’t say anything," Lira said.

Kai closed his mouth.

---

The two hundred Oxen kept advancing.

The second had reached where the barrier had been — which no longer existed because the first had dissolved it when passing — and still didn’t deviate.

Kai looked at the two hundred Oxen.

Looked at the main road of Valdris one kilometer away.

Looked at the nearest Ox — which was now the first of the two hundred and was thirty meters from him.

He set his stance.

"I’m going to try to stop the first one."

Serah looked at him.

"Kai."

"Just the first one. If I can divert it, the rest will follow."

"Kai, they weigh three—"

Kai lunged at the first Ox.

---

The first Ox didn’t see him coming because the first Ox didn’t have the vision for that.

What it did have was mass.

Kai reached the Ox’s right flank with his shoulder and all the force that active Qi could generate — the same move he’d used against the administrator, against the S-rank vampires, against the labyrinth boss.

The Ox continued walking.

Kai continued with the Ox — literally, his feet lifted off the ground, his body being dragged by the Ox’s movement like a bird that lands on the flank of something and discovers that something keeps walking regardless of the bird.

The Ox advanced eight meters with Kai on its flank before Kai could find the angle to separate and land on the ground.

The Ox kept going.

Kai stared at it, stupefied, not understanding anything.

"What... just happened...?"

’They look like manga characters... They have no logic.’

---

[Warwolf: HAHAHAHAHAHA]

[Drakeking: THE OX DRAGGED HIM EIGHT METERS WITHOUT NOTICING]

[Dr_snow: without the Ox noticing — literally. the Ox doesn’t know Kai existed.]

[Chris_Murray: Serah and Lira watching this. describe their faces.]

[DraconicLegacy: 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂]

[Udo_Ehmen: Kai dragged eight meters and doesn’t understand how it’s possible... Now he knows how his opponents feel with him. incredible.]

---

Kai brushed the dirt off his knees.

Looked at Serah.

Looked at Lira.

"I hope now you know how I felt when you faced me when we first met."

The two hundred Oxen kept advancing.

The main road of Valdris at nine hundred meters.

"The kit," Kai said.

He pulled the kit out of his pocket.

Opened it.

Instructions. Four pages. With diagrams.

He read them in forty seconds.

"There are redirecting signals." He pulled from the kit three folded posts and seven flags of a specific color — red with a gold border, the color that Crystal Oxen use as a danger signal because it’s the only color their tiny eyes can process.

"They’re placed at a twenty-degree angle to the right of the migration direction. The Oxen detect them peripherally and divert."

Serah looked at the flags.

"Why didn’t Aldric say so?"

"It’s in the kit."

"Why didn’t you read it when he gave us the kit?"

Kai looked at the instructions.

"Next question."

---

[Per_sudin: "NEXT QUESTION" — KAI CLOSING THE TOPIC]

[Jack_Moore: there were instructions. there were signals. there was a system that works. no one read it.]

[Warwolf: viewers: 10,100,000. went up while Kai was being dragged by the Ox.]

[Drakeking: Lira still covered in liquid processing that there were instructions the whole time]

[Dr_snow: 😤😤😤 THERE WERE INSTRUCTIONS 😤😤😤]

[Chris_Murray: @Dr_snow there’s a lesson here for all of us.]

---

They ran.

Not toward the Oxen.

Ahead of the Oxen, at the twenty-degree angle the instructions specified, placing the posts in the ground and the flags on the posts while the two hundred Oxen advanced behind them with incredible perfection.

Kai placed the first.

Serah the second — claws partially out to dig the post faster.

Lira the third — covered in transparent liquid, the smell traveling with her, the Oxen behind at a hundred meters.

The fourth.

The fifth.

The sixth.

The first Oxen reached the line of flags.

Their tiny eyes caught the red with gold border in their periphery.

They diverted.

Twenty degrees to the left — exactly as the instructions specified.

The second followed the first.

The third followed the second.

Two hundred Crystal Oxen diverting in sequence, their translucent plates catching the morning sun at the new angle, moving toward the open southern sector where there was nothing to crush.

Kai placed the seventh post.

He stopped.

He watched the Oxen pass.

---

[DraconicLegacy: IT WORKED]

[Udo_Ehmen: THE SOLUTION WAS IN THE KIT THE WHOLE TIME]

[Per_sudin: viewers: 10,400,000. the best quest in this stream’s history.]

[Jack_Moore: 🐂➡️🚩↙️ — exact simulation of what happened]

[Warwolf: 🎉🎉🎉 MISSION COMPLETE 🎉🎉🎉]

---

[Gift received: Umbrella x3 — Drakeking]

[Drakeking: for next time.]

[Gift received: Umbrella x5 — Dr_snow]

[Dr_snow: 🌂🌂🌂🌂🌂 just in case it’s worse]

[Gift received: Illustrated instruction kit — Chris_Murray]

[Chris_Murray: read it before heading out, I worked hard to create it in the best possible format to send it.]

---

The last Ox passed through the flags and diverted.

The two hundred continued on their way toward the open southern sector, the translucent plates shining in the sun, unaware they had been nine hundred meters from crushing the main road of Valdris.

Kai watched them go. 𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖

Serah was at his side with dirt on her knees from digging the posts.

Lira was on the other side still covered in transparent liquid.

The three in silence.

"Mission complete," Kai said.

No one answered.

The Oxen disappeared toward the southern horizon.

Lira looked at her own hands.

Looked at Kai.

"Next time," she said, taking the illustrated kit from Kai’s hands as he held the huge stack of umbrellas they’d sent him, establishing a principle she’ll uphold even if it costs her, "I read the kit before heading out."

Kai nodded.

"Good."

"The first two pages at least."

"Good."

"All four if Aldric says it’s migration."

"Good."

Serah was watching the southern horizon where the Oxen had disappeared.

"How long does that smell take to go away?"

Lira looked at her.

"I don’t know." A pause. "I’ve never been covered in Crystal Ox secretion before."

"Is there anything in the kit?"

Lira looked at the kit Kai was still holding.

Kai opened the kit.

He read the last page.

"Cold water and northern resin soap. Three washes."

They closed it.

They started walking toward Valdris.

Lira three steps behind — not by preference this time, out of consideration for Serah’s senses.

---

[DraconicLegacy: "THREE WASHES" — it was in the kit]

[Udo_Ehmen: EVERYTHING WAS IN THE KIT]

[Per_sudin: Lira walking three steps behind so as not to torture Serah’s wolf senses. involuntary consideration.]

[Jack_Moore: that detail. Lira adjusted her position without anyone telling her.]

[Warwolf: 😂 the trip back to Valdris covered in Ox liquid 😂]

[Drakeking: Aldric is going to see them arrive. Aldric is going to drink his coffee. Aldric is not going to say a thing.]

[System — notification]

[Quest completed: Crystal Oxen Migration — southern sector]

[Result: successful]

[Method: redirecting signals from the quest kit]

[The system does not judge]

[The system logs it anyway]

[Current viewers: 10,400,000]