You carefully plodded along the twisting passages of the barn. It was a challenge to tell the difference between the moos, so you avoided them all while checking the rooms. This strategy hadn’t revealed any more bonus rooms yet, but you did manage to find and milk 3 more cows, thanks to your outfit. Only 6 more and you’d get another perk.
As you rounded another corner, you found yourself directly across from one of the milk machines. The device was a huge canister, surrounded by a mass of tubular tentacles in the basic shape of a spider. The container looked big enough to fit an entire human and made up the rear of the mechanical beast. Eight tubes ending in suction cups made up its legs, while another eight red suction cups with their tubes wrapped around the intake formed the head and eyes. It glowed a faint blue from unseen lights within its body, until it noticed you.
The beast flared a crimson red, and began to hobble in your direction. It wasn’t nearly as fast as the cow had been, giving you ample time to consider whether to duck into a room or try to outrun it. You doubted any of the wooden doors would stand up to the creature as it looked really heavy, so you opted to outrun it.
As you ran down the hallway, you turned to see if the machine had already given up. The clanking continued until several tubes wrapped themselves around the corner, and the beast moved with shocking speed toward you. It had managed to slingshot itself when it hit a corner! Its speed quickly dissipated, but you determined that this enemy is probably the opposite of the cows. Slow naturally, but they gain a bunch of speed at corners instead of losing speed.
You internally curse, then set about trying to go around enough corners and multiple choice pathways to shake the monstrosity, all the while trying to avoid any more milk machines or bulls. Dashing from one corridor to the next, you’re quickly losing track of which pathways you’ve already been down and which had possible enemies.
Unfortunately, this process of random guessing and running placed you at another dead end, and you could still hear the clanking sounds of the machine chasing after you, and they seemed to get louder. What if the creature knew exactly where you were? It’d only be a matter of time before it caught you. You backtrack, then head down the second to last path. You avoided it the first time because you saw a bovine shadow, but a 50% chance of it being a cow is better than a 100% chance of you getting destroyed at a dead end.
Rounding the corner, you’re ecstatic to see a cow passively pacing the hallway. “Thank god!” You slip past the cow as the sound of your pursuer continues to rise. The machine was too large to get past the cow, so surely it’d need to find a new path or it would de-aggro. You duck into an empty side-room, close the door. With that done, you do what you can to conceal yourself using the hay, though it was a bit bothersome due to your unclothed lower half.
The clanking got louder and louder, until it came to an abrupt stop and the cow gave a surprised moo. After that, you could hear more mooing, and the sound of a pump. Wait, was the milk machine on the cow?
You jump out of your hiding place, then peek out of the room. The creature had wrapped its frontmost pair of tube-legs around the cow to prevent its escape, its second and third pairs were each attached to the cow’s udder, and its backmost pair was keeping the cylindrical container from rolling. It was now glowing green, rather than red.
How long was this going to last? Would it begin chasing you again once it finished? Stepping out, you realize it was focused entirely on the cow. You considered it a shame that you couldn’t receive milking progress for your perk, but at least you now knew of a way to stop the machines from chasing you.