Doomsday Pillars

Alex drove by himself into the forest path to the west. He went to the border between east Bali and central Bali, it took him a few hours. He went there to find one particular temple. There are hundreds of temples in Bali, in here the locals called them Pura. Most of the Puras were built by the locals hundreds years ago to worship their gods. But there a few that were already there for thousands of year. It was there since many generations before. Nowadays, none of the locals know who built them and to differentiate between them.

There are similar ancients temples all around the world, these ruins normally are being identified through its marks or writings. The oldest writings that can be found from these ruins, recognized as old as 5000-6000 BC, that's around 8000 years ago. Even though there are many different writings from different continents and cultures, today's scholars believe from patterns and astronomical equations that the oldest writing actually came from the same source. Jiahu symbols from China, Vinca signs from central Europe, Indus script from India and the most well know hieroglyphs from Egypt. This is the theory that scientist today believe as the Babel text, the name come from the myth story about the people of the world that once spoke one language, got really proud and built the tower of Babel to challenge God. In the end, God's punishment came and separated them into many different nations and languages.

All over the world, some of these places with such writings have already been found and studied by the world's brightest people, but most of them are still hidden. When the Doomsday Pillars dropped, all of these hidden places were suddenly activated and shown to the people. Each of these places had different relics that the human could use to help against the monsters. Alex knew 3 locations in Bali with such relics. But only one of them he knew that he could access right now.

It was already night. Alex just arrived at one of the temples. It's an ordinary looking temple. There are only a few small houses nearby. Alex could see some monks still chanting in front of the temples wearing white robes. He didn't want to disturb them and he already knew his destination.

Alex parked the car, took his gear and walked a few hundred meters until he reached the lake. It's a very big lake, 10 hectares squared at least. It was dark, but Alex didn't want to waste any time, after all at the place where he's going to go, it won't matter if it's day or night. He walked around the lake until he was sure that he found the right spot. He wore the diving gear and brought his bag of equipment with him. Using the flashlight he dove deeper into the lake until he found what he was looking for, a small cave opening only the size of 3 meters. He went inside and dove into a long corridor, going deeper into the earth for about 500 meters, emerge out of the water where he reached a large chamber. He started to walk slowly, the chamber hat a low ceiling but it was quite wide. He could find some remains that showed other people explored this area before. He kept walking until after one of the corners, there was a steep cliff. Alex opened up his bags and prepared his climbing gear. He took a rope and slowly pulled himself down a few hundred meters, and finally there was another pool, inside this pool there was a hidden hole. Again, he dove for another few minutes until he found the hidden chamber.

In his past life, the survivors accessed this chamber directly from the temple's secret passage, but it won't be accessible until the temple is activated by the pillars. At that time after finding the chamber, Alex did more exploration around the chamber and finally found this alternative passage to go out of the cave. Which he is currently now using to get in.

The secret chamber was very small, it was about the size of a basketball court. There were some markings and gravings on the walls. Alex took some pictures with his phone, then he walked into the center of a room. There was a stone coffin, he pushed open the lid, and there he saw skeletal remains. The ancient looking skeleton placed both hands on its c.h.e.s.t holding an ordinary looking ring. It's a bronze colored ring with some little writings on it.

Alex put a big smile on his face, he took the ring, cleaned it up with some water from the cave, pulled a knife out of his bag and smeared his blood on it. In his mind, he kept repeating the same phrase:

"Please be working ..please be working.. please... please"

Currently, he was only 50% sure that this artifact would work before the temples activated.

And fortunately, it really did work. There was a little shine just a moment after coming from the ring, marking the blood as its new owner. Alex wore the ring and activated it with his mind. It's a dimensional storage ring, an artifact that creates a small space to store an item. The size is only 3 cubic meter, but it will be very useful to him. The ring itself is only a low-level artifact but what Alex needed is the one stored in it. He opened up the ring and there he saw it covering more than half of the space.

It's a Golem, precisely it's a Rank 2 Golem, a medium level artifact, who will heed his every command. With this, he finally will be able to compete with the one with special abilities. He took the Golem out and also activated it with his blood. Fortunately, it didn't require him to splash his blood all over it.. he wouldn't have enough ..it's too big. It's a 3-meter tall humanoid shaped Golem. Its black body is as hard and rough as a rock. It has a wide upper body, rounded head, 2 small shiny eyes. It has no mouth so it cannot speak, it only listens telepathically. Its both arms are muscular and very long and almost touch the ground. It makes the Golem's legs look very short.

Finally, his first artifact and it's a medium artifact, a Rank 2 golem. He then analyzed the Golem using his mind. Just as he expected, unfortunately, this golem has almost zero energy left. If he didn't charge it, with the current energy, it will only be comparable to a Rank 1 standard golem. It might even stop moving altogether if he used it carelessly. He then searched for something else. In the storage ring, there was supposed to be a box that came with the golem.

"Yes, it's there."

This thing will be very useful for him, probably even more than this Golem.

Alex opened the box full of expectations.

Inside there were some small crystallized pebbles.

.

It were the spirit stones.