The wide bridge was formed from gray stone blocks, connecting the hilltop to the face of the mountain. It was anchored into the dirt by long pillars of rock, studded by what appeared to be solid steel beams.
Nick turned to examine the other bridge that was visible from this angle, rubbing at the stubble on his chin with a frown on his face. As he had expected, it was barred by a gate that was identical to the one looming in front of him.
The gates and bridges were the first man-made objects that he had seen on the island, other than the shipwreck and the obelisk. Manmade? Wouldn’t alien-made be more accurate? Wait, I’m the alien here. Let’s just go with manufactured. He took a long look at the gateway in front of him, taking in every detail he could identify while considering the layout as a whole.
Spanning the bridge and blocking the pass leading to the summit was a twenty-foot-tall gate that barred access to the mountainside. Its face had no obvious handholds, and its borders ran all the way out to the edges of the bridge. There was no way that Nick could scale the obstruction unless he found a chest containing climbing gear in the little time he had left. Scowling at the unwelcome presence of the unexpected blockade, he walked out over the bridge. He took a long look while considering the barrier’s construction, on the lookout for a hidden switch or anything that even remotely resembled a puzzle.
After discovering nothing of the sort, Nick decided that the gate was intended to keep him from inspecting the summit before the tutorial’s final phase began. He wondered why there were three hilltops and three gates, since, as far as he knew, he was the only contestant on the island. Maybe they use this place for larger groups sometimes. As interesting as it was to examine his first piece of otherworldly architecture, it paled in comparison to what he saw when he drew close enough to inspect the face of the gateway.
Painted on the surface was a massive metallic mural. An intricately detailed rendition of the starry heavens, with vibrant lines in burnished bronze that suggested a vast network woven between the stars. Some of the planets had auras that reminded Nick of that strange dream the night before the System arrived. He wondered if the luminescent latticework was intended to represent the System, binding inhabited worlds together like the stitching of a patchwork quilt.
It was a gorgeous, awe-inspiring piece, but he felt that something was missing. That the masterwork painted onto the surface of the gate was missing a major element. The cruel, pitiless nature of the System, which was willing to slaughter billions of innocent lives to enable the advancement of the rest.
After committing the image to memory, Nick walked back across the bridge and found the best spot to examine the mountain passes on the far side of the gate. As he had suspected, there was a series of switchbacks leading from this elevation all the way up to the summit.
While each path started off wide and straight, they soon began to fork. Each twisting branch was narrower than the last, merging with one another as they wrapped their way around the mountain. Judging by what he could see from this angle, the situation was the same behind the other gates, a symmetrical design dividing the highlands into three identical slices.
He had already learned a great deal. But in the hour or so he had left until he needed to head back, there was something else that he wanted to check, although doing so would be harder without being able to climb the mountain. Nick had a working theory regarding the nature of the Searing Isle as it related to the tutorial’s final phase, but he wouldn’t know for certain until he was able to take a closer look at the slope.
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He reached into his belt pouch and pulled out his spyglass, then started combing over every inch of the mountainside visible from the hilltop, occasionally walking one way or another to switch up the angle of his view. His thorough survey was, in part, to search for any new beasts that inhabited the region. But his true purpose led Nick to take a closer look at the top of the cliffs that loomed over the valleys, where the stone formed a series of natural shelves. Along the flat sections, the clifftops had collected piles of loose rock and other debris that had tumbled down the slope. He had to pan over the area closely to make out what lay beneath.
Eventually, he found what he was looking for—the gleaming white of bone contrasting against the dark stone surrounding it on all sides. I knew it. Shattered piles of shell were scattered across the ground, although those could have been carried here by the birds. What Nick was quite certain had not been dropped here by birds was the intact skeleton of a dolphin, seemingly the same variety that he had seen the first time that he had caught sight of the thing in the sea.
Volcanic activity, rising water, searstorms. The final pieces of the puzzle fell together within Nick’s mind. At last, he knew what variables would comprise the endgame of the tutorial, although he had the feeling there was still something missing. Following that train of thought, Nick looked to the summit for the telltale sign of smoke. As usual, the air above the mountain was clean and clear. The magma must vent through subterranean channels, like the ones that came out onto the beach. Hopefully, that means the volcano isn’t ready to blow anytime soon.
Taken together, these features combined to grant Nick the rudimentary framework of a plan, but there was still one more thing that he wanted to check. Just in case the dolphin had been dropped on the cliffside by something beyond his understanding instead of the mechanism he imagined.
With nothing to use as a shovel, he took out a spear and started to dig, pulling out clods of raw earth with his hands until he had a towering mound of topsoil looming in front of him. Judging that he still had a few minutes before he needed to head back, he began sifting through the dirt, seeking confirmation of his theory.
Ten minutes later, he found it. As Nick wiped the mud from his hands and started poking through the mound with his spear, he became increasingly certain that the island sank on a regular basis, judging from the shells and fishbones embedded throughout the soil. The water is going to rise again all right. It’s time to head back and start preparing for what happens after.
Mind whirling with variables, forming and discarding dozens of potential plans out of hand, he made his way back down to the valley floor, passing through the other basin this time. There, he found something that he hadn’t been expecting, a few fragmented skeletons that belonged to toadlike creatures that were roughly the size of dairy cows.
From this discovery, Nick deduced that there had been another species of beast living in the foothills at the start of the tutorial. The lurk had either slaughtered them all or driven them out of the highlands and into the northern forest, which he had been unable to explore due to the swampy terrain. He added their presence to his calculations as he walked down from the highlands, summarizing what he had learned as he went.
The center of the island has three distinct elevations. The valley floors, the top of the foothills, and the mountain itself. Each time the water rises, the total surface area of the region will shrink. Over time, there won’t be enough dry land for all the beasts on the isle, assuming that most of them survive the initial flood. It will be even worse when you add all the regular animals.
In short, the tutorial’s final phase was going to be an all-out war between the beasts, and Nick needed to find a way to survive the conflict in the little time he had left. It was a delicate, deadly situation. One that would become even more complex if the System decided to throw additional challenges into the mix, which he thought was more likely than not considering everything he had been through so far. Mulling over his options, he climbed back down to the level of the forest, making it back to his cave as the light began to fade with the end of the day.
Nick ate a quick dinner and then went to sleep behind his barrier, planning to use the final hours of this phase as wisely as he could.