"Thank you," she whispered. She spun around and pushed the door open. She paused for a moment and she turned back to face me. "And Melas," she added, as I gave her a sidelong glance, "I may not have had any reason to dislike the Elise before, but know that I do have one now. Take that as you may."
"I will."
And with that, Lisa left.
I waited for a few moments, as the footsteps on the wooden floor slowly got further and further away until I heard nothing. Then I sighed.
"Now, what do I do with this information?"
I had not learned what I wanted to about Ginah’s Crew, and that might have been a good thing; however, the fact that Lisa was a liar and opportunist did not alleviate any of the concerns I had. And even if I was glad that I caught a liar in the act, I really wish I didn’t have, as that would not help me sleep any easier than I did last night.
Chapter 29: Next Step
Shortly after Lisa left, I had someone direct me to where Gennady was staying; he slept in one of the communal dormitories, just like Lisa and Jack did, but he was kept in a separate building from Jack to keep the two bickering. The Dwarf still seemed down, but he immediately brightened when I handed him back his gold.
"Here," I said. "Since we’re obviously not in Jahar’taw right now, I got our money back. This is yours."
"Oh." He blinked. He seemed to hesitate for a moment, before he snatched the gold off my hand. "Glad ya upped and did it for me. I probably would’ve ended up getting into a fight with that Jack if I tried to get it back from him."
I paused, scrutinizing his face; indecision kept me from saying anything for a moment, but I finally managed to muster up the courage to speak. "Do you think that’s enough?" I asked.
"Enough?"
"For the parts to make you a new bike." I waited to see if he would visibly react, and when he did not, I continued. "You didn’t lose anything else that was important, right? You’ve got your bag with you, and that’s got all your personal items… right?" I felt stupid for repeating myself like that, but I wanted to tread lightly considering the way he was the night before.
Gennady paused to stare at me, then sighed. "I’m fine, Melas— and I’m sorry for revealing your name the other day. But there’s no need to be concerned. I don’t have any sentimental attachments to that bike, and this is probably more than enough to buy everything I need to make a new one."
I found myself nodding along as he spoke, then glanced heavenward at the rock ceiling above, before looking back down and facing him. "Why were you so…" I trailed off, leaving the words unsaid but the implication hanging in the air.
"So depressed?" He cocked a brow.
"Uh, yes."
He took a deep breath, leaning his back on the cold, stone surface of the cave wall. "I was just upset. It’s something I spent a lot of time designing. And while I do have the blueprints necessary to build a new bike from scratch, I had planned to simply show the finished product to a friend back in Taw."
"Why’s that?" I looked at the Dwarf inquisitively. "What were you planning to do?"
"Revolutionize transportation, of course," he snorted. He wagged a finger in the air as he explained. "Right now, the mana cars, bikes, and ships you see all rely on expensive, large mana crystals to function. If not those, they typically require dozens of smaller ones, which doesn’t make it any more efficient or cheaper. And what happens when a mana crystal of a car is tapped out?"
"You have to buy another one."
"Exactly."
He pushed himself off the wall and straightened; he took on a lecturing tone almost reminiscent to the professors I had met when I attended summer college classes back on Earth.
"What I did was reconcile mana tech with steam technology to make this hybrid form of technology that would be a cheaper and better alternative to what is available right now. People still ride horses and carts because they can’t afford mana crystals, but what about liquid mana? Or as I’m calling it— mana fuel."
"Won’t the cost of liquid mana just go up then?" I asked, frowning. "Since more people want to buy it?"
"Yes," Gennady agreed, stroking his beard. "But so would the supply of liquid mana since people would then capitalize on all the untouched mana wells. Maybe it’d become more expensive than it is now, but it’ll never reach the prices of mana crystals. They just don’t have as much utility as those.
"My friend owns many large factories throughout the country. He’d be able to mass produce these vehicles of mine at such a scale, it’d be used in all of Taw within a decade. Us Dwarves, unlike you Humans— no offense— aren’t as close minded to new ideas. That’s why we’re known as inventors and innovators. When the Mana Revolution came about, we didn’t just give up on every industry we had before. We understood we could combine both to reach peak efficiency!"
"That’s a very Dwarf thing for you to say." I grinned, forgetting for a second that I still had my mask on.
"Oh shut it," he said, waving a hand dismissively. "It would’ve been easier to simply show how superior my mana bike is to the regular ones out there, since many of the Engineer-Tinkerers there wouldn’t be able to graph my
