At the Elder’s command, the tribe surged into motion, racing to prepare themselves before the boiling rain broke over them. Truthfully, there wasn’t much they could do that would help. After shifting around some debris to reinforce the web-walls, the lemurs moved to huddle against the steel frame of the gate, using the dome of force capping the summit to shield them from the brunt of the rising gale.

Nick didn’t have many resources left in his pack, but he did have a decent number of vines that he’d gathered over the past few days. He took them out of his bag, spent a few minutes deciding where they would do the most good, then went to work. He looped the vines around the logs that formed the framework of the shelter, reinforcing the webbing that ran between them, then tying them off as tight as he could. It made the structure a bit sturdier than before. Hopefully, it would be strong enough to last until the portal opened.

He wracked his brain, trying to come up with anything else that would improve the tribe’s odds of survival, or failing that, at least bolster his own. Nick invented and discarded a dozen plans out of hand while watching the storm close its fist around the isle, crossing the sky faster by the heartbeat.

There aren’t enough resources up here to further reinforce our shelter. Even if there were, there isn’t time to build anything substantial. Not that I have the tools I’d need regardless. When the rain starts to fall, most of us are going to be dead within minutes.

It was, in short, a bad situation. One that was becoming more hopeless by the heartbeat as the massive weather system streaked across the sky. The best plan that he’d been able to come up with was to prop his back against the gate, angle his bag over his head, then drape his cloak across the top. So far, Nick’s backpack had proven to be even more resilient than his Toughness-modified armor. With any luck, it wouldn’t get hot either, and the cloak could help cool the air that blew through the gaps.

Maybe, just maybe, there would be enough room for Bandit too, but Nick couldn’t come up with any way to save the rest. A few lemurs might survive by hiding under the bodies of the fallen, but even that seemed like a slim hope at best. In the end, most of the tribe would have died without question if the spiders hadn’t decided to lend their assistance yet again.

Because that was when six arachnids that were built differently from the others he had seen arrived, guarded by the massive Bulwark. Strangely, the lemur tribe didn’t seem too alarmed by their presence, although some cast uneasy glances in the direction of the powerful warrior. Nick wondered if the beasts had a rudimentary means of communicating with one another beyond his ability to understand. It would explain several interactions that had mystified him until that moment. But there wasn’t time for speculation now. The storm was fast approaching.

Thinking back to their prior encounter, he turned and bowed to the Bulwark. The spider had saved his life during his run in with the Cruncher Alpha. Nick had returned the favor in kind, cementing their alliance in the process. The powerful arachnid bowed back, then went to work alongside the smaller spiders, who revealed themselves to be weaving specialists—the spider colony’s version of combat engineers, who had been responsible for erecting their various web-forts and other defenses.

As the dark legion of clouds surged across the roiling skies, the weavers built a waterproof sheet over the top of the circular barricade. It was strange to watch the gigantic spiders spin a web from up close, like Nick was looking up from a fly’s perspective.

He was in awe of the colony’s proficiency. In addition to being fearsome fighters, the spiders were expert craftsmen. Their silk was such a versatile tool, serving as both a building material and a direct threat on the battlefield. It let the spiders fortify any position they desired within a matter of minutes and likely had myriad other uses beyond his understanding, in addition to the traps laid by ordinary spiders.

Nick was doubtful that the sheet of webbing over his head would be sufficient to shield them from a storm of that magnitude. But it turned out that the first layer was only the initial step because the spiders continued to weave at a frantic pace when the primary barrier was finished.

Moments before the first boiling drops fell from the inky skies above, the weavers completed laying down the final swath, reinforced a few joints in the walls, then retreated to bunker down inside their own fortification. Nick was so tense that he couldn’t stop shaking, but at least his death now seemed probable instead of certain. Over his head stretched a triple-layer waterproof dome, and the walls of the fort were twice as thick as before.

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Despite the seriousness of his situation, he found himself curious as to whether the spiders would offer the lurk the same courtesy and whether the hulking beast would tolerate their presence in order to receive it. However, the lurk required no further charity.

As Nick watched on, the powerful predator used its intact talons to cut half of the fort’s walls into segments, then wrapped them tight around its body before ducking beneath the rest of the silk. The furry lurk now looked like a giant wearing a raincoat who was standing beneath a tarp.

While the spiders had saved the lemurs and the lurk, the rest of the beasts on the summit were not so fortunate. Although they had survived the brutal free-for-all the night before, now, only two hours before the end of the tutorial, their luck had finally run out.

Nick put his hands over his ears to shut out the screams when the first drops of searing rain struck the summit. The panicked cries fell silent fifteen minutes later, when the true stormfront broke over the mountain and a steaming deluge poured from the sky.

Although the beasts that perished would have been more than happy to end his life, he couldn’t help feeling sorry for them. Even the brutal komos, who had harassed him relentlessly since his first day on the island, didn’t deserve to meet such a grisly end. A cruel twist of fate by any accounting. He wondered if he was witnessing the extinction of a species before turning his thoughts aside from such morbid topics. He prayed that the grim event wasn’t foreshadowing the fate of humanity as well.

But that was all the time for reflection that Nick was given. Because that was when a fierce, all-consuming struggle for survival began. As the storm intensified, promising that the worst was yet to come, the wind began to howl, shrieking as it pummeled the summit.

The gusts were so intense that he was terrified the webbing would break, despite its incredible resilience. He wouldn’t survive five minutes past that point. The wind would pick him up and send him flying, crashing into the ocean after being flung for miles. Not that he would live long enough for the fall to end him—the boiling rain would see to that.

While Nick was watching the storm overhead, the lemurs had stationed themselves beside the wooden beams reinforcing the web-walls, holding the bracings in place every time they shifted in the storm winds.

The gale was a lethal threat, but the purple lightning was equally bad news. This close, the incessant booms were deafening, and the panoply of bolts were blinding. Electric afterimages were seared into his retinas every time he looked up to track the searstorm’s advance. Within a few short minutes, the ringing in his ears made it hard to hear anything else. His heartbeat came fast and wild as he gazed upon the full fury of nature’s wrath, alien planet style.

As bad as the wind and lightning were, it wouldn’t have been a searstorm if the water wasn’t hot enough to reduce Nick to stew. Early on, the summit had been buffered by pockets of intermingling air, where the pressure zones converged. But this close to the stormfront, the sea breeze no longer provided any relief.

It was already hot as hell, and the temperature was climbing by the minute. What had started off as a sauna soon became a suffocating, searing veil that threatened to scorch his lungs before he thought to try breathing through his cloak as a filter, which reduced the blistering heat from unbearable to merely painful.

This ordeal gave Nick a renewed appreciation for the resilience of the surviving beasts. Even with his heavy investment into Toughness, he wouldn’t have been able to endure the storm without the aid of his cloak, keeping his flesh from cooking and his organs from shutting down. Peering past the blinding rain, he looked through the forcefield and saw that there were just fifty-two minutes left on the clock. The portal beckoned to him like a beacon of salvation along a deadly, desolate shore.

As tough as they were, the lemurs looked absolutely miserable, and several of their wounded had succumbed to their injuries and perished since the storm began. The final trial of the tutorial was less combat-oriented than Nick had expected. He had also been wrong about the volcano playing a role, due to the unusual situation inside the crater.

While the battles that had taken place over the last two days had been brutal, terrifying, and chaotic, this final trial of endurance was even worse. With every breath he took, Nick fought against the urge to break down completely. Knowing that at any moment, the wind might carry away their silken shield and let the full fury of the storm engulf him.

The ordeal would have been unbearable if it wasn’t for the countdown clock hovering over the portal. It let him know that time was still passing; that if he could hold out for just a little longer, he would have a chance to escape from this place once and for all.

He sat there, shaking beneath the storm-wracked skies, as the clock finally hit the half-hour mark. It was a much-needed boost to Nick’s morale. At long last, the tutorial was nearing its end. Not long after, he noticed that the wind was dying down, although the raging storm was still right on top of the isle.

He was foolish enough to sigh and say, “I think the worst is finally over.” He immediately realized that this was a blatant death flag. “Just kidding,” he added.

While Nick doubted that the System was responding to his thoughts, his prediction was as premature as it was unwise. As it happened, the worst was far from over. The worst was yet to come.

It was a fact he would come to fully appreciate only seven seconds later. Because that was when Nick looked out over the ocean, where a cyclone the size of a small continent was tearing its way across the waves like destruction incarnate.

It was, of course, heading right toward him.