Creating an exit

Peridot decided to optimize the Warp Pad, but it wasn't an easy task. The technology was far ahead of her time.

She hadn't been a genius even in her previous world; she had average grades and had to work from a young age. But it wasn't like she had a choice in the first place.

There was no shortage of time, for better or worse.

Her hands touched the flat, cold surface once more.

There were many processes involved in making a Warp Pad functional, and this gave her almost unbearable headaches. Peridot couldn't understand all the principles, so she limited her analysis to the basic functions.

The device was divided into three basic functions: propagation, connection, and teleportation.

Propagation was the most energy-intensive process. It required a huge amount of dark substance to be sent out in all directions to find any available points, much like a wave signal.

After the dark substances of the two Warp Pads met, they would need to establish a connection. The dark substance would link the two points in the universe, creating something like a wormhole.

Finally, the gem would be drawn to the other point by the dense dark substance, with its physical body temporarily released. This step was the teleportation process.

This explained why gems seemed temporarily deformed when they teleported and why humans shouldn't be able to use a Warp Pad; only a gem could pass through or interact with the hole without being destroyed in the process.

"Steven is an anomaly, using it with a human body." she thought. Her mind, filled with curiosity, desperately wanted to study Steven's body.

A sinister smile spread across her face at the thought of the data she could collect.

"What must Steven be like inside?" When Peridot noticed the drool falling from her mouth, she snapped back to her senses.

"What am I thinking? I almost dissected Steven in my mind!" Goosebumps spread across her body at the thought.

"Is the gem's body influencing my mind, or am I just a crazy sociopath?" She never thought she had this sinister side.

She calmed her racing heart and redirected her focus to the blue object.

It would have been ideal if the Warp Pad were entirely intact, but that wasn't the case. The connection and propagation were in poor condition; she needed to fix them and, at the same time, find an alternative energy supply.

Peridot decided to fix the Warp Pad first before worrying about anything else.

She began collecting all the crystals scattered around the Warp Pad. The sight of a small green girl gathering crystals apathetically in an abandoned world was like a beautiful and pitiful portrait.

Peridot started infusing energy into the crystal in her hand. She tried to imagine a flat rectangular shape in her mind, and the crystal began to condense into that shape.

It wasn't a perfect rectangle; the borders were deformed and curved, with many irregular parts.

That was the first time she tried to use transmutation, and the results weren't optimistic.

Unlike before, her expression didn't show hope or fear. She knew that she must be calm to get out of this world.

"It's a process. I just need to get better at it." she thought, tightening her hands.

"I have all the time in the world to make it work." With her renewed determination, Peridot started to transmute the crystal again.

✦

Peridot kept practicing transmutation every day. In the beginning, she could just make the crystal resemble the shape she wanted, but now she could perfectly replicate a rectangle.

The key was the details. Peridot in the past had imagined an abstract image of a 2D rectangle, but this premise was wrong.

She needed to think about all the details in a 3D model.

The density of the material, the reactions to the dark substance, the shape it needed to have—all those pieces of information and more should be considered.

If she were a human, she wouldn't be able to imagine all those details in her mind. No, not even gems would be able to project mentally as well as she did.

This was the synergy of transmutation and appraisal; both were perfect for each other.

Using appraisal, she could understand all the details and reuse the image in her mind, changing just the necessary parts to make transmutation possible.

"It's a success. Well, half of it." She couldn't say that it was a total success because transmutation had a clear limit: herself.

The bigger the object, the harder the transmutation. It was because she should consider all the minor details and manipulate the amount of necessary energy for that.

The amount of energy was limited, but the way she manipulated it was not. If she kept practicing, she could eventually transmute whatever she wanted.

However, this level was enough for her now.

Peridot walked to the Warp Pad and touched the broken edge. The minor parts were fixed, leaving just a few empty spaces.

She had successfully fixed the connection. The only thing left was the propagation part.

She didn't have the necessary pieces to fix it, though.

She had explored the entire planet seeking Warp Pads, but besides the broken one from the beginning, she didn't have much luck.

Even the propagation was repurposed from the first Warp Pad she met.

She got goosebumps remembering all the processes to collect crystals with her childish body; if someone had seen her, they would definitely report child abuse.

The propagation needed to be managed manually; maybe she could delegate this function to her gem, which also could handle both energy and the dark substance.

Now, she just needed to find a good energy supply. But where could she find a good one?

Peridot, with her little body lying on the floor, looked apathetically at the walls with many holes attached to them.

"Energy supply, energy~ supply—" Peridot's eyes stared blankly in one direction.

Before her eyes were several injectors that she had neglected until now.

"Energy supply? Heh... hehehe..." said Peridot with a distorted face and Machiavellian laughter.

"Maybe I had already found a good one~"

✦

In a wide and cold kindergarten, a small figure was staring excitedly at a bunch of destroyed machines similar to viruses with a huge gem embedded on the top and metal legs on the bottom.

"Four, five... no, seven." counted Peridot with her small hands.

Those babies were the fruit of her hard work.

"I almost died when one of them fell on my body, but who cares? Am I not a gem? Is there something a gem couldn't do?" Peridot laughed with joy. Her sanity? Questionable.

Her hands touched one of the injectors; she could analyze even if she didn't touch, but the data she felt through the direct touch was more accurate than through a wireless service.

Her headache was severe, but she bit her lips and kept analyzing until the end.

"This is probably less than 15%." she thought with a pitiful face.

Like the Warp Pad, there were many functions she didn't know exactly how they worked. However, she knew that most of the process wasn't really necessary to be known.

"I just need to understand the principle." She closed her eyes to improve her focus and tried to associate the information.

Analyzing the principle of a machine was not an easy task; appraisal just provided her with information but didn't bother to organize them. This part was her work.

Hours repeated this way, Peridot analyzed until her mind almost collapsed. She felt that each time she tried to analyze again, she was becoming better at it.

Something peculiar about the injector was its behavior similar to a gem; injectors also were able to interact with dark substance.

The bottom drill was programmed to absorb and eject things into the planet's surface. All the absorbed energy was converted into something similar to dark substance but also similar to energy; it was like a state of physical and intangible. This contradiction twisted her mind.

It was a strange jelly forming the shape of a gem using data she didn't know where it came from.

Peridot felt regret; chemistry and biology were her worst subjects at school. She would have studied more if she knew her life would depend on it.

She gave up trying to understand the principles of the injector converter. She only needed one thing: energy. And she had already discovered the parts responsible for extracting energy.

Peridot stared fixedly at the 7 injectors scattered on the floor.

Today would be another day without sleep. At some point, it wasn't so different from her past life.

✦

"This is a true drill, you clods!" said Peridot, lifting her chin with crossed arms in an upright posture.

Before her little body, a huge injector was there. The shape was completely different from its previous one.

Peridot had focused just on absorbing and ejecting energy. She worked for days to condense all the drills into a single huge one. There were gems attached to the top and strange tubes connected to the Warp Pad.

She was proud of her new creation. With this drill, she could provide enough energy to the Warp Pad for hours nonstop.

The planet couldn't generate any gems, but it didn't mean the core was absent. She just needed a huge drill to extract the energy and direct it to the Warp Pad.

She remembered all the explosions she needed to handle in the process because of the injectors' unstable energy.

There were marks of dirt around her body and her once light green hair had become darker and pitiful.

She was like a child who accidentally fell into the sewer after jumping from a plane without a parachute.

"I will call you super-drill-X23. You will be my sweaty pass to Earth." With her hands filled with energy, she hit the injector.

The metal legs fixed into the ground and the drills penetrated the earth. The energy filled the Warp Pad and a light came from everywhere.

"It's working!!" Peridot screamed with all her strength.

She hurriedly ran to the Warp Pad and touched it with both hands.

She was trying to define a direction for the propagation using her own gem. She felt a huge amount of information filling her head.

All the information about all the spatial routes. Concepts she couldn't understand and the laws of space-time, all filled her head at once.

She had never felt such great pain; the pain was so much that she was left speechless.

She couldn't even come to her senses to notice that the floor was trembling terribly.

The drill was becoming unstable and the planet's core was losing its external energy.

Instinctively Peridot started to organize all the endless information in her head. She was trying to restrict the information to recognize only dark energy.

Her attempts were futile and she failed repetitively. She had no choice; the only thing she could do was swallow her pain.

Instead of reducing, she increased the signal. She didn't know how she did it but she kept increasing the amount more and more.

"Crack—"

The sound of something breaking appeared in her ears, but she wasn't in her normal senses to notice.

She watched for any turbulence in the signal. Her body convulsing, fainting, and having spasms over and over again.

She kept in this terrible state until a weak signal appeared.

But it was too weak, almost like the propagation was deliberately weakened to be undetectable.

She needed a stronger wave to connect.

"Just—a bit... more!"

"CRACK!"

With the sound of something breaking, the little body was covered by light and levitated in the air.

The floor around had become darker, completely drained. The drill was overloading, there wasn't more time.

"Baamm!"

A huge explosion came, but Peridot couldn't know.

She had already left the planet.