Doomsday Pillars

Alex and his six comrades arrived at Antiga City, which was now a fighters training base. The reason why this location was chosen as the training base was because this city was strategically located between the Bay City and Star Base. 

Antiga provided ready built houses for the fighters to stay and enough erected walls for protection. The workers had diligently upgraded these walls in the past couple of days and they now also had watchtowers around the city. It was a simple small city with traditional Balinese houses and temples all over the place.

Before Doomsday, this city had around 50,000 inhabitants, which already made it crowded. And with the population of fighters and workers reaching almost 60,000, the city had reached its optimal capacity so they had some large tents set up as temporary accommodation for the fighters.

In the city's outskirts, multiple training sessions were being held. Thousands of fighters keen to learn the art of combat and although most had no combat experience, these people joined as fighters by choice for pretty much the same reason. They had lost their loved ones when Doomsday had started. Many were still traumatized, however, the physical training with the goal of fighting back either served as a therapy or maybe some sort of distraction from their misery.

Around 5,000 people were chosen to be firearms specialists. They would receive a more focused shooting program taught by the army marksman experts. Most of these people were previous police officers, ex-army, animal poachers or experienced people in playing arcade shooting games.

The remaining 50,000 fighters had a more diverse training. In order to train such big numbers effectively, training committees were separated into ten divisions. Each division consisted of 100 instructors that handled 50 men each. So, in total 1,000 instructors were formed. Suddenly, almost all the special forces and army turned into temporary instructors.

The following was the fast training course designed by Captain Farell, an Oxford graduate with a degree in Military Intelligence.

10 Basic Training Session Within 10 Days

1. Introductions to weapons and guns

2. Basic spear and shield combat

3. Basic saber combat

4. Weapons sparring test

5. Formation training

6. Basic outdoor survival

7. Pencak silat forms and movement techniques

8. Pencak silat art basic defense

9. Pencak silat art basic offense

10. Hand-to-Hand sparring test

The aim of these courses wasn't to build up their stamina and physical strength, the spirit stones would handle that. Rather, it was a foundation to find talented fighters so they could transition smoothly to advanced training in accordance to their aptitude. And only those who had passed basic training could join advanced training. The instructors themselves could also choose up to five men from each unit to be recommended into the elite forces.

The advanced training would place the fighter into its real unit. They would train in real combat situations such as fighting zombies or mutated animals while still being guided by the instructors. Leadership and teamwork would also be built in the advanced training.

Alex went inside the command center and met with Major Sandi, Mahaguru Indra, Colonel Jaka, Captain Farell, Commander Karra and a few of the instructors.

"How many out of the 50,000 passed basic training?" Alex asked.

"Barely half," Captain Farell said.

"I see. That's still a good conversation rate. These trainees were mostly civilians who had never handled a weapon before. Having half of them pass basic training in 10 days, I'll consider that as good. Keep up the strict selection. And I don't wish these survivors to die on the first day out. Repeated training will give them more confidence. If they still failed after their training, just tell them to join the workers group instead," Alex said. He then turned around and said, "How about the elite units?"

"Out of the half that passed, we, the instructors, have chosen 3,000 elite fighters. These people are the combination of those who have experience in martial arts or have shown great promise in a particular field. We also enlisted some law enforcement officers," Captain Farell said.

Major Sandi said, "We have a total of 320 special forces unit combined from death squads, Densus 88, Frog commandos and Red Barret. There are also 120 red belts from the Pencak Silat society."

Alex thought for a while, there were 25,000 inexperienced fighters, 3,000 elite fighters, and 500 special fighters. He wondered if this number would be enough to help the survivors from the Java Islands. There were also 15 million people combined from the islands east of Bali.

"Grandmaster, what do you think? Is it wise to send them to fight now? Are they ready?"

Mahaguru Indra wasn't sure how to answer. 10 days for him was too short of a time. 

Alex understood the Grandmaster's concern. He thought if these people weren't ready and he sent them to fight actual battles, one would wonder how many would return. On the other hand, however, if he sent them too late, millions more of people would survive. These people really needed to be ready for battle as soon as possible. Then, Alex thought of the fastest way to get them ready. Spirit stones.

"How many spirit stones have we gathered so far?" Alex asked.

"About 700," Colonel Jaka said.

Alex himself had collected about 300 spirit stones. It wasn't enough. And because this was the early stage of the Doomsday, there weren't enough spirit stones around for everyone. The mutated rats and cats meat weren't high-level mutated animals, so it'd take too long to get stronger by eating that meat.

Still, Alex thought of a way, however, it was a very risky way to solve this problem. He wondered if it would be necessary, but considering what was at stake, Alex nevertheless decided to do it. He suggested a dangerous expedition to a village called Ubud up in the mountain at the central section of Bali.

He ranked the difficulty of this mission as very dangerous, so he also needed to be prepared. He checked out the new list of names provided by Benny and the list of special fighters, and fortunately, Alex recognized a few more spirit enhancers' names from his previous life.

Raisa, a famous beautiful Indonesian singer. She came to Bali for an end of year concert. This girl had the voice of an angel, making her a superstar. In fact, she was also a psychic spirit enhancer. Her singing could unconsciously mesmerize people's hearts. Too bad she wasn't one of those fighting types, at least not yet. Alex couldn't bring her to a dangerous mission, not every girl was as strong as Aria or as crazy as Cindy.

Oscar and Oliver, the Lightning Twins. Both were, in Alex's previous life, deemed as few of strongest survivors from West Bali. They had never worked with anyone and were actually troublesome in his previous life. However, in this life, both of them moved to Star Base and later to Antiga. They had experience in fighting zombies, hence both were now high-rank mortal realm.

Darius, a guy in his 40's, was once a rich and well-known businessman in Bali, many of the locals, and even the government knew him. Unfortunately, he lost all his family and friends in the disaster. So, he became one of those survivors who crazily fought at the front looking for death, someone whom Alex could relate to in his past life. Darius also had already eaten a few spirit stones these last few days from hunting mutated zombies. He was a spirit enhancer talented in gravity, and in the previous life he created and led the strongest survival group in Bali.

Four more spirit enhancers, plus Jerry, Aria, Rama, Sergei, Theo, and Jane, Alex would have ten spirit enhancers in his base. There should still be some more, but Alex would only know after the Doomsday Pillars arrived.

Excluding Raisa and Jane, Alex gathered the eight, including Cindy and four white sash 'pendekar' from pencak silat society. 

Alex gave each person enough spirit stones to reach the peak stage of the mortal realm and consume them immediately so they could digest it overnight and go out of Antiga the first thing in the morning for a very special mission.

The next morning arrived and Alex chose a platoon of ten squads with ten men each from the special forces to go with him. Everyone prepared their equipment, Alex stored some into his storage rings. 

Once everything was set, a total 114 men fully armed, got on ten APVs and drove to Ubud village, a place in the mountains surrounded by forest and well-known for its 'monkey forest'.