Doomsday Pillars

Alex drove through a forested path to the west. It took him a few hours to arrive at the border between the east and central Bali. He went there to find one particular temple. 

There were hundreds of temples in Bali and the locals called them Pura. Most of the Puras was built by the locals hundreds of years ago to worship their gods but there were a few temples that had already been there for thousands of years. None of the locals knew who built them and how to differentiate these thousands of years old Puras.

There were similar ancient temples all around the world; these ruins were studied through its marks and writings. The oldest writings found from these ruins were found to be from the 5,000-6,000 BC, that's around 8,000 years from now. 

Even though there were many different writings from different continents and cultures, today's scholars came to the conclusion that the patterns and astronomical equations from the oldest writings actually came from the same source. For example, the Jiahu symbol from China, Vinca sign from central Europe, Indus script from India and the most famous hieroglyphs from Egypt. The scientist theorized these writings to be the Babel text. 

There's a story about how people all over the world once spoke only one language. They eventually became proud and tried to challenge God by building a tower in the city of Babel that could reach heaven. But in the end, God punished their treacherous actions and made them speak different languages causing them to not understand each other and split into different nations.

All over the world, some of these ancient locations with similar writings had already been found and studied by the world's top scientists and archeologists but most of them were still hidden. Once Doomsday Pillars drop, all of these hidden places would be suddenly activated and make themselves known to the people of the Earth. 

Each of these places housed different relics that humans could use to fight against monsters. Alex knew three places in Bali with such relics, but he could only access one of them right now.

It's already night and Alex finally arrived in front of an ordinary-looking temple. There were a few houses near it as well as some white-clad monks chanting in front of the other temples. Since Alex knew where to go, he didn't want to disturb them. 

Alex parked the car, took his gears and walked a few hundred meters until he reached a lake. It's such a big lake, 10 hectares square at least. 

It was already dark, but Alex didn't want to waste any time. After all, whether its day or night, it didn't matter to his destination. 

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 and dove right in. As he dove deeper into the lake, he kept using the flashlight until he finally found a small cave with an opening about 3 meters in size. He went inside, swam through a long corridor, and went deeper once more into the earth for about 500 meters. Finally, he reached a large chamber, not flooded with water, and started crouching. The chamber was low but its quite wide. 

While traversing the chamber, Alex found some human remains. This meant that other people had explored this area before. But Alex kept walking until he arrived at a steep cliff. He opened his bag and prepared a climbing gear. He securely tied the rope on one of the big stalagmites and slowly descended a few hundred meters. A pool of water showed itself and inside this pool, there should be another hidden hole. Again, he dove in and searched for a few minutes until he finally found the hidden chamber.

In his past life, the survivors had accessed this chamber directly from one of the temple's secret passages, but that wouldn't be accessible until the temple was activated by the Pillars. After they had found this hidden place, Alex did more exploration around the chamber and had found this alternative passage to go out of the cave, but now he was using it to get in.

The secret chamber was very small, about the size of a basketball court. There were some markings and engravings around the area and Alex took some pictures with his phone before finally walking to the center of the room. 

In the middle of the room lied a stone coffin, Alex pushed the lid open and saw the skeletal remains lying inside. The ancient-looking skeleton had both of its hands on its chest holding an ordinary-looking ring. A bronze ring with some little engravings on it.

Alex put on a big smile as he took the ring and washed it with the water nearby. He pulled out a knife and smeared his blood on it. He held the ring close and chanted, "Please work… Please be working… Please... Please..."

Alex was only half confident that this artifact would work before the temple's activation. But then, a small light shine from the ring marking its new owner. It worked!

Alex wore the ring and focused his mind. It''s a dimensional storage ring, an artifact that carried a small space, around 3 cubic meter, to store an item. Although it wasn't spacious, this artifact would be very useful. The ring itself was only a low-level artifact but what Alex needed was the item stored in it. He opened the ring and saw something 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 would be able to fight people with special abilities.

He summoned the golem and used his blood to gain ownership. Fortunately, he didn't have to smear it with blood all over. He wouldn't have enough, it's too big.

It's a 3-meter tall humanoid shaped golem. It had a hard black body and was rough as a rock. It had a wide upper body, a round head with two small shiny eyes. It had no mouth as it couldn't speak, but it could receive command telepathically. Both of its arms were muscular and very long, almost touching the ground. Its leg was very short making it look like a stunted human.

His first artifact and for it to be a medium level artifact, a rank 2 golem, he was truly fortunate. 

He then inspected the golem using his mind and just as he expected, unfortunately, the golem's energy was almost dead. If he doesn't charge it, with the current energy It would only be comparable to a rank 1 standard golem. It might even stop moving if he used it carelessly. 

He then continued for something else in the storage ring. There should be a box that aside from the golem. "Good, it's here."

The other item will be very useful for him, probably even more than this golem.

Alex opened the box with high expectations and inside there lay a couple of some small crystallize pebbles, the spirit stones.