Ship In A Bottle (A Monkie Kid Reader Insert)

Chapter 43: In For A Pound

Yes, the Leopard King of the Southern Hill was once a frightening rival of the Stag. But all that remains of his kingdom was his descendants. Leopards and lynxes, children of the king and Queen Emerald, leaving them as orphans after the king's death and the queen's imprisonment. So no reason to fret now.

Regardless, the Elk saw why it was necessary to keep them captured for now. If they were to interfere with Cervidae's plans as some form of revenge, or maybe even form an alliance with the Serpent Insurgency...But the latter was the Python council member's headache, not his.

So the Elk was still puzzled. What was he supposed to do with all of this information he was given? Scrolling through the projected screens, he found an audio file. Out of all of the things here in the source code, this seemed to be the most recent, as if added in a hurry. He could tell because although the other files were renamed to be more secretive, this one's file name was untouched. And according to the name...

It was converted from a recorder.

The Elk opened the file...

And clicked play.

--

The leopard panted, resting against a tall rock and dropping himself on the flower bed of saffrons. Bruised and battered from the heist he pulled back at the Gingko Gourd Kingdom, he took the opportunity to rest after being chased by the guards. What mattered to him was that he was now holding the artifact you asked for. The Golden Cloth Rope.

Leaning his head against the rock, he let the rain fall on him. Trickling down his soaked fur after days of tracking down the item's location, planning his little stunt, and finally putting it into action. Finally paying off. He could worry about being soaked under the rain later. What matters was that the hard part was over.

"You there!"

"Buddha almighty!-"

The leopard backed himself away from the sudden voice, wet grass staining his fur. He was so ready to summon his claws, glowing a bright white along with his markings. But instead of the armor he was used to seeing from the kingdom's guards, he relaxed at the sight of a spider demon with lime hair.

"Is that how you greet people sitting in the rain?!" Barked the two-tailed leopard, not appreciating this stranger interrupting his well-deserved moment of peace. "You see some guy resting, and your first instinct is to shout 'you there'?"

"My shallowest apologies for catching you off-guard, then." Syntax snarked back, already irritated enough by the rain ruining his coat, along with his hair that he worked hard to groom and spray. "But it seems that both of us have more pressing matters to attend to."

"Oh yeah, you're one of those spider goons, huh?" Picking the golden rope up, he dusted off any stray blades of grass from his fur and clothing. "Beat it, the deal's off. I don't want anything to do with your little errand girl-"

"And neither do I." The spider demon clarified. Walking out of a gingko tree's shade, he forced himself to step into the rain once again. He carefully observed the leopard as his aggressive expression changed into a confused one. "As long as that girl is there, my queen and my clanmates are in danger."

"Took you long enough to realize, huh?" The leopard growled, his grip tightening on the rope. Skepticism was still evident within him. Once, he was fooled into thinking that girl had his best interest in mind. He wasn't going to let this spider do the same. "Well, it was nice chatting, but I got places to be-"

But before he could leave, a mechanical spider arm stabbed the rock behind him, barely missing a whisker. Leopard snarled at the unsmiling scientist. "Of course you have to be difficult."