Chapter 310: Parallels, parallels

"Waaah!"

"Ah! Looks like someone needs a diaper change. Thankfully I just gathered a lot of spider silk yesterday..."

"Wah!"

"Hungry? Okay, milk fruit or whatever the hell these freaky looking bees produce that look and smell like milk but I think might actually be blood? It cosgualtes like cheese though..."

"Waaah!"

"Cuddle time it is."

Rocko took to fatherhood surprisingly well for someone in his situation.

It’s bad enough being a single father of an adopted baby girl, it’s another to do all that while living in a murderous jungle full of giant insect-like monsters.

There were a few kinks at first, but Rocko eventual figured out how to regularly source the things a growing baby needs in order to not suddenly die on him.

Food from fruits and insects that produced milk...for some reason.

Baby clothes sourced from plant fibers...and giant insect webbings.

Toys made from...you get the idea at this point.

Rocko and +&+$;bh lived surprisingly well at the bottom of Insect Hell, moreso than others who attempted to visit the place.

Every now and then Rocko, would see other people come down here and try to explore the area or go to "that" place.

In the past, he had attempted to make contact with these visitors and see if he could get them to turn around, but they refused to do so many times over...that or they tried to kill him because they assumed he was a rival spy or some stupid shit like that.

At some low points in his care for the baby girl, Rocko had been tempted to give her to them so that she could have a safer life, but...the visitors of Insect Hell weren’t always on the up and up, especially the ones that came with "indentured servants".

Eventually, he thought it’d be safer to just not contact these people anymore.

And that’s how it was for a couple of years.

Rocko would gather stuff to raise the baby, the baby would be adorable, and they both stayed the hell away from both the people who would attempt to explore Insect Hell and...that place.

But change is inevitable as they say, and this status quo would soon take a shift...

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Art name: Mimick Song.

Classification: Utility Art.

Grade: Minor Corporeal.

Description: A fairly useless art that allows the user to perfectly copy any song they have heard recently...to the uninitiated.

To those who make use of music and sound based aether arts on the regular, this art is arguably the most useful art in their kit. Not only does it allows the user to mimic the song, but masterful users of the art can change the base anyway they wish.

There’s nothing more humiliating than having someone else use your own art against you, except for when they do it better than you.

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"Naaausica..."

"Naaausicaa..."

{NAUSICA!}

"Huh?! Wait? What?! What happened? Why am I back here?!," Nausicaa suddenly exclaimed as the spell upon her was broken. Shocked by the sudden change in tone, Nepherage released Nausicaa from her grasp.

"How’d you do that?"

"Hah! Phase cancellation, bitches!," Hurricroak proudly boasted.

Hurricroak had used [Mimick Song] to figure out the exact frequency and tune of the voice, figured out how to cancel it out, and timed her call at the exact same time as the creepy voice did.

Odysseus and his men may have used wax to ignore the siren’s call, but it takes a monster to outright beat a monster’s song. Granted, that didn’t stop the thing within from trying again.

"Nausic-"

{Nausicaa!}

"Naus-"

{Nausicaa!}

"Na.."

{Nausicaa!}

"Can you talk stop already?!"

Nausicaa was being ping-ponged between being under a spell and having it broken just as quickly, but it eventually stopped as both sides went silent...sorta. Only Zhen Liu could hear that behind the door he was trying to close, was a rather low growl.

’Oh no...that cannot be good..."

At this point, Zhen Liu realized it was rather fruitless to try and close the door via brute force pushing, so he decided to seal it a different way.

’Frosttusk, I’m gonna need your help here.’

[Of...course...!]

Zhen Liu began to channel his aether into the armor that was technically Frosttusk, causing the air around him to get colder and his armor to hum.

"Nausicaa!," Zhen Liu called out as he kept charging up,"It’s too dangerous here! Get out of here now!"

"I-wait...what?"

Unfortunately for him, he didn’t realize that his one little word of warning, was enough to set off a whole chain reaction of repressed memories suddenly coming back all at once.

"Pa...pa...no..."

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About a decade and a half ago...

In a little hut, covered in the shells of brightly colored poinosous insects, a father and daughter share a short conversation.

"Alright, little grub, I’m gonna go hunting for supper tonight," Rocko told his growing toddler as he strapped his bow and arrows to his back and his saber to his hip, "make sure to not cause too much trouble while I’m gone."

"Okay, papa! I love you!"

"Love you too, little grub."

Now, normally leaving a toddler alone in a house is a bad idea.

Sometimes they hurt themselves and no one can help them, sometimes they get kidnapped and sometimes they just get lonely.

In this particular instance though...it was a little of all three.

"Papa is out longer than usual...I’m lonely," the toddler thought to herself as she stared at the window.

She didn’t feel like playing at this point and had long since eaten the lunch prepares for her (two beetle eggs and some grilled mushrooms) and was now starting to get very bored and a tad lonely.

’I won’t get into...too much trouble if I go outside for a bit, right?"

Compelled by childish desire, the toddler left the safety of the hut to go to a little clearing that papa and her would train and play in.

"Maybe something interesting will...huh?"

Before she could reach the little clearing however, the child was soon distracted by the sight of a colorful butterfly with bright red and purple wings, shining like a gemstone.

"Oooooh! Pretty!"

The girl watched the butterfly flap it’s wings about, floating gently in the jungle breeze before lightly flying away.

Entranced by the colors and it’s lazy pattern, the girl chased the butterfly, not caring where it may lead.

Whether by coincidence, or fate, the girl and the butterfly continued on their path undeterred by the residents of the jungle.

Perhaps they thought she wasn’t worth the effort of eating?

Regardless, the girl and butterfly continued their little chase until the butterfly landed on a rather peculiar looking tree.

"Caught you! Bah!"

in a very unceremonious manner, the girl ran headfirst into the butterfly’s landing spot, bonking her head as the butterfly flew away, looking for somewhere else to rest.

"Ouchie...huh? Not...a tree? A...spider leg?"

The girl looked up at the towering object before her, realizing that it wasn’t a tree she just bonked her head against, by a massive spider leg that seemed to pierce the heavens.

"Whoa...big..."

Curious about the leg’s existence, she walked around it’s perimeter, her imagination running wild as she tried to imagine what kind of spider would leave a shell leg so big. In her own childish way, she tried to count the number of steps it took to walk around the leg.

"That was one...two...huh?"

Before she could reach the third step however, she noticed that on the side of the spider’s leg, was a little opening.

If she had been a bit older, or more observant, she would have realized it wasn’t there when she got there.

"Dark...scary..."

As if hearing her words, the inside of the leg suddenly lit up as ghostly flames appeared like torches. This didn’t really assure the little girl though.

"Su...sus...bad. Something’s bad in there. I need papa."

She was just about to leave behind this weird door, find her father and figure out what was going on...but then she heard singing.

"Hush...little one...don’t...you...cry..."

"Huh?"

She didn’t know who or what that voice was, but it captured the small girl’s attention.

"Not...papa...but...close?"

As that thought entered her mind, the girl’s eyes went blank as she entered through the door...

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"No...please...don’t...papa..."

’Dammit, she’s frozen! Nepherage!’

[On it, milord!]

Nepherage attempted to grab Nausicaa and dragged her in the opposite direction of this accursed door, while at the same time, Zhen Liu had just about finished charging up and was going to flash freeze the door shutnand hopefully cause a cave in or something.

But then, everything went to shit.

[Frozen -]

"NOoo©0! I w|ll n•t be deniiiied agaaaaiinnnn!!"

"What the fuck?"

Faster than anyone could react to, a demented hand that looked like insects stitched together shot out of the doorway and grabbed Nausicaa like she was a ragdoll and knocked away the kaijin like it was nothing.

In this moment, Zhen Liu realized why this place gave him a bad feeling.

’Is...is this what an abomination is?!’