As Gennady had said, we were traveling at a moderate pace: the wind was gently blowing against my clothes, my purple pointed hat fluttering on my head. I grasped onto it, slightly worried that it would be stolen by the breeze, although I highly doubted that would actually happen.
"So," I called out to Gennady, much louder than I should have. "How does this thing work?"
"Sacred piss, lass!" The Dwarf brought a hand up to his ear. "I can hear you just fine, you don’t need to yell!"
"Oops, sorry." I overestimated the force of the headwind; I had expected this to be like riding in a convertible with its top down, but this was no different than talking to someone while you were both riding a bicycle. I repeated myself. "Uh, how does the bike—"
"I heard you the first time," he snorted.
"Oh, of course."
Gennady sighed, quite audibly to my ears if I might add, which was a testament to how loud I must have been when I shouted at him. "It uses mana just like almost everything else in this world. However, unlike most guns which simply creates pure mana energy, it uses it to generate motion."
I raised an eyebrow. "But this,"— I gestured at the white gas being emitted from the bike— "it’s steam, no?"
"Yeah, what of it?"
"Most mana tech don’t release steam, do they?" I asked, slightly confused.
"They don't, although many of them still radiate excess energy— that’s why you see smoke coming out of the barrel of a gun after you fire it," Gennady explained. "But in the case of this bike, it was an experiment. I realized it would be more economical to power something through raw, liquid mana. Taking in inspiration from the Gnomes, I created a pseudo steam engine— except instead of burning some fuel source, I simply have to convert the mana into the gas. It’s much more efficient this way."
"Wait, why is that cheaper? I asked, frowning. "And why steam?"
"Don’t ya know anything about how much mana crystals cost, lass?"
"I do."
Mana crystals were expensive. They were made from raw mana such as mana stones or liquid mana. It was like the difference between iron and iron ore. Except, you did not have to melt it down. You simply had to refine a mana stone into a mana crystal.
On the other hand, liquid mana would then have to be converted to a mana stone before it could even be made into a mana crystal; with such a tedious and expensive process to create mana crystals from liquid mana, it only made liquid mana that much cheaper.
It was also an issue of simple supply and demand: there was an abundant supply of liquid mana— just as much as mana stones— but much less a demand for it. So…
"So of course liquid mana would be cheaper!" Gennady finished my thought for me. His loud voice startled a family walking down the road ahead of us, and he waved unapologetically at them.
"Why steam then? Why can’t you make something more… less gassy?"
"I told you, I was experimenting. I would love to actually invent something that makes liquid mana useful— maybe some kind of machine that just converts the mana straight into mechanical energy. No engine or anything attached to do the job for it."
"I see," I said, nodding at the family as we passed them. "Well, as long as it doesn’t produce all this steam with a boiler or something, I’ll be fine with it."
"What’s wrong with it?" the Dwarf asked. "Hate the smell?"
"Mhm, something like that," I mumbled a reply. "Let’s just say I find it very… polluting."
I opted not to say anything else on the subject; pollution was bad and all, but it was not much of a problem in this world with how everything ran on mana power. If liquid mana was being turned to steam, it probably wasn't an issue. And how the depletion of raw mana sources affected the world at large was not something I was an expert on.
Plus, I was a magic user. It would have been hypocritical of me to criticize mana waste, when I literally destroyed the mana in the air with every spell I cast. Allegedly.
I was not sure if I fully believed what the Church said about Hell. My mom seemed to believe that the mana used in spellcasting would return slowly over time. And yet, why was Hell the barren, desolate landscape that it was supposed to be?
It was not something I knew the answer to; in the meantime, however, I pulled a grimoire out of my bag and began studying.
Gennady glanced back at me for a quick moment. "Uh, are you sure you should be doing that?"
"Don’t worry," I said, pointing at the leather bound book. "It’s got a fake cover so no one would know what’s actually in it unless they actually look inside of it."
"Inside of it? What do you— oh, right. Spells." The Dwarf shook his head. "I meant you shouldn’t be reading. You’ll get motion sickness if you do."
"I’ll be fine," I said, waving a hand dismissively. "I used to read on the back of horses or on carts, and I never had a problem."
That was a lie. What I really meant was I used to browse through social media while on the passenger seat of cars and busses. But, there could not have been too much difference, right?
Oh my God, I should not have done that.
"Told you, lass," Gennady snorted, as I leaned over to puke once more.
"Ugh," I groaned, straightening. "I know,
