Doomsday Pillars

Alex pushed the pedal to the metal as he returned to Star Base with spirit enhancers: Rama and Sergei, in mind. These spirit enhancers were as rare as finding a needle in a haystack. Roughly only one in every ten thousand survivors were spirit enhancers and these spirit enhancers were the key to humanity's survival.

After he arrived, he rushed to the medical bay and found both of them on a medical bed recuperating.

"How are they, doc?"

"When they reached here, they were on their dying breath, especially Rama. He was poisoned by a strong toxin. Honestly, I had no idea how he had survived the hours of transit. But as per your order, I have injected them with the trial serum from the pill you gave. Their condition has stabilized. It's really a miraculous item."

Alex became much more relaxed after the report. "That's great to hear. How long do you think it'd take them before completely healed?"

"We're still monitoring the condition, but it should be safe to say that Sergei should be back in a day or two. As for Rama, however, the serum is fighting the poison, if things go well he would take at least a week."

Alex was glad to hear such news. He went forward to check on their condition personally and surprisingly, Sergei was already awake.

"Mr. Sergei, great news. The doc said you'll be healed in a few days."

Sergei looked at Doctor Rachel before switching back to Alex. He then said, "Can you please tell the doctor that you've promised me liquor and cigarettes every day?"

"..."

"Mr. Sergei, you better listen to the doc. If your health doesn't improve, you might not be able to smoke and drink for the rest of your life."

The doctor took Alex to the research lab and showed him her division's experiments and results.

First, the doctor showed Alex the shining pills from the amulet of the sun. The pill's essence had been extracted and diluted into many samples to analyze and test its potency. 

"Like I said before, this is a miraculous pill. I was hesitant in giving it to the patients before because we still hadn't completely analyzed half of its substance because they were things that don't exist within our periodic table. The other half filled with a high amount of Riboflavin, Acubin, Ascorbic-Acid, Apigenin, Baicalein, Benzoic-acid, Chlorogenic-acid, Citric-acid, Ferulic-acid, Oleanolic-acid, Salicylic-acid, and Ursolic-acid. These compounds are normally found in plants, fruits, vegetables, milk or any other substance that are well known to give positive effects to human bodies.

"The result we got from treating Sergei is amazing. His bones were crushed, but within hours we saw how the bones regenerated and started reconnecting with each other. As for Rama, his flesh wounds closed up within hours as well. The snake's toxin was quite unique and so powerful that it'll take time to neutralize. But because of that, we had an idea. We tried the serum against the world's most known viruses; Ebola, SARS, H1N1, Avian flu and many others. Within hours, the results were remarkable, it had destroyed the well-known viruses in seconds.

"I believe we have found the medical 'Panacea', Mr. Alex. The one that came from the Greek mythology's goddess of universal remedy. It's a name we scientists had used for the myth of a miraculous cure, but with everything we have seen so far, this substance is meant to cure all disease, it's worthy of its name.

"We also did a simple procedure to measure its concentration. We diluted it and finally find the most optimum results without losing its potency. The one pill you gave can be diluted into five serums. We used one for research, and two for Sergei and Rama. These are the last two, you can use it orally, but for faster effect, an injection through the veins is the best way."

Alex took the two serum, another life-saving item. The amulet of the sun would provide one shiny pill every two weeks. That meant Alex would've ten healing serums every month.

"What about the spirit stone research?"

"About the spirit stones… other than the research Mr. Randal's team of scientists did last month, we didn't find anything much. We're stuck. My team and I all agree that this spirit stone is a biogenetic form of pure energy. Its science is hundreds of years out of our reach.

"However, we've tried looking into the notes further and found something with our experiments on the mutated beasts and human bodies who had died from the disease. We've found out that the cause of mutation is due to a virus. We took the liberty of naming it the Doomsday Virus or the D-Virus. This virus causes an alteration in human DNA sequences and modifies its gene function. There were many other cases found and many studies of DNA sequence alteration. But this virus adapts with a speed which is at least a thousand times faster.

"Surprisingly, we found a large amount of the D-Virus genes within the mutated beast bodies. The bodies became the virus' vessels. This would basically mean that just by consuming the beast, it could fasten human mutation."

Alex already knew of this information. This was his reason for going to the monkey forest in the first place.

Later that day, the convoy from Ubud returned to the starbase. Alex ordered the supply division to butcher the monkeys and snake meat. Each monkey gave one-kilogram of boneless meat, which amounted to around 200-300 portions. That was a total of 130,000 portions of mutated monkey meat. The three snakes gave 3,000 portions, and the mother snake gave 2,000 portions. Alex ordered the steel workshop to create and can all this meat.

130,000 portions of high-level first stage beast meat.

3,000 portions of low-level second stage beast meat.

2,000 portions of high-level second stage beast meat.

The mutated beast meats weren't the same as a spirit stone if consumed. Because of the human body's metabolism, a person needed to consume a few portions before it'd show any effects of strengthening a human's body, which also differed depending on the human consuming it. 

Alex assigned the meats to be handed to each soldier type.

25,000 regular soldiers would each get 2 cans of high-level first stage meat.

7,500 city guards would each get 5 cans of high-level first stage meat.

3,000 elite soldiers each would each get 10 cans of high-level first stage meat.

500 special soldiers would each get 5 cans of low-level and 2 canned high-level second stage meat.

With these distributions, most elite soldiers should become middle stage mortal realm and the special soldiers should become high stage mortal realms in a few days. The whole star army would get an upgrade. 

At the current stage of mutation, these people would've a big advantage against any zombies or mutated beasts. Because of that, Alex felt much easier letting these soldiers go on an expedition to the islands west and east of Bali. The war preparations were completed, and soon it would be the time to set up the war council.

Alex returned to his family, seeing his blind daughter, Alex wished to try to give Tiffany one of the healing serums. But since Tiffany had taken one whole shiny pill before, he was concerned about potential side effects. Hence, he decided to wait until he received more results from the research department.

Thinking about the spirit stones and the meats collected, Alex felt much lighthearted. 

Due to all the fighting he had done in the past few days, he felt exhausted as he arrived home. So, for tonight, he shut off his mind from all the worries in the world and took a rest surrounded by his family, not even thinking that the three yellow he had stored in the warehouse would bring disaster to him and everyone around him.