Respected Teacher Ivanova

"Clang... clang..."

Nick pulled an extremely crudely made little cart along the narrow walkway on the western side of the canyon.

The cart held box after box of 7.62 mm ammunition. It looked piled to capacity, but even a whole cartload was not enough to refill a single automated turret.

A Gatling Minigun six-barrel rotary machine gun had a theoretical maximum rate of fire of 6,000 rounds per minute. A simple conversion meant that this thing could fire over 200 kilograms of 7.62 mm ammunition in a minute, including the casings and ammunition belts.

Of course, these automated turrets converted from close-in weapon systems had their actual firing rates reduced to under 3,000 rounds per minute, and they did not fire continuously. Even so, that "brief" battle of nearly ten minutes had almost exhausted their entire stockpile.

By the time Nick finished replenishing all six automated turrets activated the night before, most of the day had passed.

Because Dahlia was injured, she worked nearly half as fast as he did. Fortunately, only four turrets on her side had been activated the night before, and she just managed to finish before dark.

Neither of them had much interest in continuing their conversation across the gap that evening. Nick reminded her not to forget to change the dressing on her wound, then dragged his utterly exhausted body back to bed.

Over the following days, Dahlia provided cover from the other side with an AXMC sniper rifle manufactured by Accuracy International, while Nick secured himself to a safety rope and descended over the cliff edge to begin repairing the metal fence and rehanging the proximity mines.

The reason this work required them to cover each other was that these proximity mines had been converted from naval mines. Once the firing pins sticking out in every direction like a hedgehog's spines were activated, even the slightest touch could set them off.

If a "hollow person" climbed out of the canyon at a time like that, it would be a deadly problem.

So, after discussing it, they decided that Nick would undertake this fairly dangerous work at height first, while Dahlia covered him from the other side.

Once the wound on the girl's shoulder had mostly healed, they would switch roles.

Nick had no trouble with either welding or hanging proximity mines on the chains. The only thing that still left him somewhat apprehensive was being suspended in midair.

His mild fear of heights was not something he had been born with, but a lingering consequence of falling to his death in his previous life.

It was not particularly serious, and he could overcome it with a little effort, but hanging off a cliff like this all the time inevitably left him sweating with nerves.

Whenever he felt he could barely hold on any longer, Nick would turn to glance at the East Tower. Although he could see nothing, he knew Dahlia was there, and an inexplicable sense of reassurance would well up inside him.

After installing the final proximity mine, Nick wiped the cold sweat from his forehead and was about to activate his powered rope ascender to pull himself up when a strange whistling sound suddenly came from beside him.

An oddly shaped drone slowly rose out of the canyon and hovered before Nick, propelled by blue exhaust flames. Before he could work out what was happening, the unmanned turret above him activated on its own and aimed at the thing.

"Holy shit!"

Nick broke out in a cold sweat. If the turret opened fire now and a fragment of the drone happened to hit one of the nearby proximity mines, he would be done for.

Although he could not die in this world, failing the mission and being sent back immediately would be a certainty.

Fortunately, the unmanned turret did not fire after taking aim, and returned to standby a moment later. After adjusting its heading, the small jet-powered drone also sped away to the north.

"Have you seen that model of military drone before? Is it one of yours, from Russia?"

"Never. It doesn't even look like something from this era. The design looks like science fiction."

That evening, they discussed it across the gap using their writing boards, but neither had any idea.

A "tower defense game" lasting less than ten minutes had taken the two people in the eastern and western towers nearly half a month to clean up after, leaving them exhausted in both body and mind.

Fortunately, those "Hollow Men" did not seem particularly active, and none climbed up the cliffs in the time that followed.

Nick reported the attack in his regular report at the end of November, but the other party merely asked whether he needed more supplies and ammunition. After receiving his reply that supplies were sufficient, they said nothing further.

With December's arrival, the rain around the canyon gradually turned to light snow, and by the end of the month, heavy flakes were falling.

Amid the howling north wind, the room at the top of the tower remained very warm. Nick sat beside the stove, waiting for the potato mash in the pot, which had already fermented for twenty days, to warm slowly over low heat.

With nothing much to do lately, he had already worked his way through nearly all of the hundred-odd jin of potatoes JD had left behind. Not only had he become thoroughly familiar with the entire process of making liquor, he had even made a few improvements.

Roughly every twenty jin of potatoes, after fermenting for over twenty days, undergoing an initial distillation and two redistillations, and having the headache-inducing, toxic fusel alcohols adsorbed and filtered out with plant ash, yielded close to 1,000 milliliters of liquor.

Nick had no alcohol meter on hand and was no liquor connoisseur, so he could only estimate that its alcohol content was somewhere between forty and fifty percent. The taste could only be called barely passable, worse even than erguotou.

He was hardly a drunkard. He brewed this low-grade vodka purely because he had nothing to do, while also tempting a certain Russian girl in the opposite tower who was feeling a little down about her dwindling liquor supply.

Their relationship had progressed rapidly during this time, and they had already developed the habit of greeting each other at a fixed time every day.

Dahlia began very earnestly teaching Nick advanced ballistics, such as the Earth's curvature and the Coriolis effect, as well as the Magnus effect produced by crosswinds acting on a rapidly spinning bullet.

There was also a whole body of systematic, complex knowledge covering air density, temperature, humidity and atmospheric pressure, shooting platform stability, ammunition consistency, and firearm handling.

Fortunately, Nick had not suffered much from "happy education" in this life, and his grasp of the mathematics he had learned in his previous life was quite solid. Although communication was difficult-after all, a writing board could only hold so much at a time-he still made rapid progress, despite the stumbling along the way.

In just over a month, Nick had acquired the ability to use that Barrett M107 to accurately hit a soccer-ball-sized target at around 1,500 meters under various weather conditions.

Of course, to humor the girl, he had also started addressing Dahlia as "Respected Teacher Ivanova."

Dahlia's full name was Dahlia Ivanovna Ivanova. In fact, Nick more often called her Dasha, a common Russian nickname for Dahlia, much like Nick was for Nicholas.

By comparison, however, there was very little Nick could do for Dahlia.

Since winter had already arrived, teaching her how to tend a vegetable garden would have to wait until spring at the earliest, when temperatures rose above zero.

As for cooking and such, he had no way to make a convincing case until she could taste his food herself. Dahlia even claimed that her rabbit pie was incredibly delicious, and Nick could not imagine what that stuff would taste like, no matter how hard he thought.

So, over the past few days, Nick had been pondering how to give her a surprise gift. He could not get the liquor over to her for now, but making a Christmas tree might be a good idea.