Chef in the Apocalypse

By the time Jayce stirred awake, it was already dark outside.

The moment his consciousness returned, he jolted up, looking around the room in confusion. His eyes were wide and his heart was beating out of his chest.

"J-Jayce what’s wrong?" Lianna murmured.

He looked over at Lianna who seemed to have been startled awake by him.

It took a few moments for his brain to catch up, having been subjected to the vision from the sword. Out of reflex, he reached out with his right hand, searching for the sword which he was gripping earlier.

"Where is the sword?" He asked, with a hint of panic in his voice.

"Is it not in your spatial ring?" She replied, rubbing her tired eyes.

Jayce quickly sent his consciousness into the spatial ring, only to cry out in panic a moment later.

"It’s gone!" he exclaimed, feeling his stomach drop.

He had already seen how powerful the sword was, therefore it would be a tragic loss to not only himself, but also humanity if he could not find it.

However, it was only now that he had noticed an anomaly within his body. His Dantian seemed full, despite the sword having almost sucked him dry earlier.

If he had only been unconscious for a few hours, there was no way that his Qi would have been replenished in that amount of time unless he absorbed heaps of Mana Stones.

Jayce quickly sent his consciousness into his Dantian to inspect the changes. Only then did he suddenly relax.

Situated in the middle of his Dantian was the sword he moments ago thought was lost. It was sitting stationary in the center of the platform, looking almost like a ceremonial sword.

The Qi surrounding it floated in and out of the sword, giving off a sense of harmony in addition to its majestic presence. Jayce could instinctively feel that he could summon the sword into his hand with a thought, filling him with confidence.

Just to be sure, he took back his consciousness and tried to summon the sword. Like he had expected, he suddenly felt a weight in his right hand as it appeared abruptly in his raised hand.

The sword let out a hum as if to announce its reappearance into the world.

Jayce couldn’t help but let out a contented smile, seeing the powerful sword within his possession. While he was not as strong as Rubick, he was hoping to unlock the secrets of this heavenly treasure in time.

Just the fact that the sword had shown him a vision of the past gave him an indication of how mysterious and powerful this sword would be. Not to mention the fact that it was wielded by Rubick himself, who Jayce found to be unfathomable.

"See, I told you." Lianna murmured while still half asleep, before rolling back over.

Jayce was going to explain further, however he decided to leave it be and let his woman sleep. Clearly she had stayed by his side the entire time that he was unconscious, so he didn’t have the heart to take her away from her rest.

’I will tell her about it in the morning.’ He vowed, staring at the sword with bright eyes.

The vision had been an eye opening one. Could it be possible that Rubick had wanted to show him this battle to prepare him for the upcoming invasion? Or could there be another reason?

Now that he was back in the real world, it was now time to digest the battle. He was so engrossed in the sheer scale and destructiveness of the battle to properly understand what he was seeing at the time.

There were a lot of things to unpack.

Firstly, his eyes had been opened to the potential of Qi and the Laws. Just regular soldiers were able to wield their Qi and elemental laws with such power and precision that it made him seem like a toddler in comparison.

Hopefully Rubick had provided manuals and instructions on how best to move forward, as humanity clearly had this kind of capability at one point.

He had surmised that the battle had taken place on Earth, mainly because of what Rubick and the golden-haired General had said aloud.

[Earth will rise again. When that time comes, you will all pay dearly.]

These words from Rubick all but confirmed that not only was he a human from Earth, but he was also part of the generation when it was a higher plain.

There was also talk about sealing the Earth’s core, which had the effect of regressing the planet back into a Mortal Plane. Unfortunately, he did not know enough about the Evolution of worlds to fully digest the true ramifications of this situation.

’Wait, don’t I have a full bookshelf full of books and manuals?’ While he was deeply pondering, Jayce suddenly had an epiphany.

Rubick had left him the sword, so it would be logical to assume he would have given him some additional information even if he didn’t explicitly say it in front of him. Well, knowing how much the mysterious man loved mystery and flair, that may not be the case.

Jayce quickly sent his consciousness into his spatial ring and began to browse the stacked bookshelf.

"Divergent Fist, Phoenix Flight Steps, Void Palm... These are all techniques." He read the top two shelves and his eyes almost popped out of his skull. Jayce’s ears began to ring as his heart almost beat out of his chest.

These sounded extremely powerful, much like the martial arts manuals he had read about in his favorite cultivation novels. However, he shook his head in the next moment. Now was not the time to look at techniques.

He continued down the shelf, reading aloud the titles and trying to find something that may give him the answers that he sought. It wasn’t until he reached the bottom shelf that he finally saw something that caught his eye.

The book was plain looking and not well taken care of, almost as if it was thrown around or stowed away with haste.

He retrieved the book and opened the first page.

"Earth’s final hope, I pray this reaches you in time."