"Alright, finally done!" I said, stretching thoroughly and feeling my hard-light joints thank me after such a brutal shift.
It had been nearly three months of pure, non-stop grinding to finish this massive injector, designed specifically to house and process my gem. It was no walk in the park, but thanks to the exhaustive analysis I ran on Rose Quartz's gem (aka Pink Diamond), I was able to reverse-engineer, deduce, and finally map out the exact matrix structure of a Diamond-tier gem.
The technical report Yarbis and I compiled made it crystal clear:
Unlike common quartz soldiers, whose molecular structure consists of silicon dioxide ($SiO_2$) with standard packing, Rose's gem hid a crystallized carbon lattice of the highest cubic purity. Its dense covalent bonds don't just make it indestructible against conventional weapons—it acts as a quantum superconductor for gem energy.
Diamonds don't generate their light bodies like ordinary soldiers. Their gems possess an incredibly high internal refractive index, allowing them to project colossal mass (size alteration) without losing structural stability or draining their energy reserves.
The scans revealed that Rose's gem constantly emits a low-frequency wavelength capable of altering the molecular structure of lower-tier gems, which explains her healing powers and organic matter manipulation.
Basically, the injector I built would replicate that exact extreme pressure and molecular heat on this mineral planet. It would modify my structure to give me the same density, endurance, and power scaling of a Diamond, but entirely on my own technological terms. The blueprint was set, the machine was assembled, and my gem was about to take the ultimate evolutionary leap.
Plus, since I found this planet incredibly rich in heavy minerals, I was just going to drain it to fuel my upgrade. Obviously, I had to give a heads-up before going off the grid; I wanted to get this over with as fast as possible.
I walked over to the lunar base's central console and patched through a direct comms channel. The signal shot all the way to Earth, linking instantly with Blue Pearl and Sapphire's visors. Their holographic faces flickered to life, floating right in front of me.
"Silica? Is something wrong?" Blue Pearl asked, adjusting her tactical glasses.
"Hey, girls. Just calling to let you know I'm going to be out of pocket for a while," I said completely casually, crossing my arms. "I found a remote planet that has the exact components for a special project I've been working on. It's going to take me a good bit to process everything and finish the trial runs, so don't expect me back anytime soon. If anything urgent pops up on Earth, Yarbis will keep me posted."
Blue Pearl and Sapphire traded glances for a second. They were so used to my scientific getaways and high-tech projects that they didn't find it weird at all.
"Understood, Silica. Be careful in that sector. We'll make sure to keep the beach base running smoothly," Blue Pearl replied with a nod.
Sapphire also nodded silently with a slight smile, trusting my capabilities completely.
"Alright, see ya later. Catch you on the flip side," I said, cutting the transmission.
The video call vanished from my tactical visor screens. I took a deep breath, feeling the rush of the moment, and turned toward the scout ship's navigation console. I punched in the coordinates for the mineral planet Yarbis had pre-mapped.
With the massive Injector docked and ready for deployment, I fired up the thrusters to maximum capacity. The ship vibrated violently before tearing out of the moon's orbit at hyperspeed, breaking through the vacuum of space toward the world that would serve as the cradle for my ultimate upgrade.
I hopped into the ship—the same old ride—but this time with a massive technical advantage: I managed to dismantle the gigantic injector into components and stashed every single piece inside my own gem's storage space. A super practical and efficient workaround, honestly, though I won't lie—cramming that massive heap of parts and nanotechnology into my gem is way more exhausting than carrying it by hand. My gem felt heavy, like I had just done some serious mental heavy lifting to reconfigure my internal storage pocket.
I quickly settled into the pilot's seat while punching the exact coordinates into the main console.
"Yarbis, open the bay doors and prep the thrusters," I commanded.
"Understood, Creator. Hangar doors open. Warp drives at one hundred percent," the AI replied in his usual efficient tone.
With a single punch of the throttle, the ship shot out into the deep void of outer space, leaving the Moon behind in a blur of cyan light.
As I piloted the ship—which, naturally, I had also tweaked and tuned up with the latest of my cutting-edge tech—a wave of happiness and pure satisfaction washed over me. I was in a fantastic mood. My key projects were finally in their endgame; the house on Earth was finished, the girls were safe, and the only missing variable in this entire equation was me. By upgrading myself with the mineral essence of this planet, I would stop being just an ordinary gem and become something beyond perfect. A fully optimized, Diamond-level being, completely untethered from Homeworld's control.
The flight was going to be an absolute breeze. Under normal conditions, traveling to such a remote quadrant would have taken days or weeks for standard Era 1 ships. But thanks to the brutal upgrades I slapped onto my ship's hyperdrive, and the fact that I was in a massive rush to start the process, the timer on my visor showed it would only take us 4 hours to reach our destination. The antimatter engine roared in perfect cosmic silence while the stars around me distorted into white streaks.
Four hours separated me from my definitive evolution. I crossed my arms, kicked back in my seat, and let Yarbis handle the autopilot while I savored my last moments in my current form.
The hours flew by as I kept myself busy composing songs in my head; I hummed them to a rhythm in the cockpit and played trivia and tactical simulations with Yarbis to kill time in the most magnificent way possible. Honestly, traveling alone with an advanced AI that gets your sense of humor is a whole different level of comfort.
After exactly four hours of transit, the hyperdrive engines decelerated with a soft whine, and a voice broke the cockpit's silence.
"We have arrived, Creator," Yarbis announced, bringing up the main display screens.
I quickly hopped out of my seat, leaned against the viewport glass, and looked down. My only reaction was a flat, genuine:
"Wow..."
The planet unfolding before my eyes was an absolute stunner—something straight out of a geometric dream. It wasn't some dead, gray hunk of rock; it was a gorgeous, vibrant world covered in colossal mountain ranges and natural structures that gleamed with every color of the spectrum, thanks to being composed of 90% pure diamond. As it refracted the light from the nearby star, the entire planet's surface sparkled as if it were made of frozen stardust.
But the most mind-blowing part—the thing that genuinely threw me for a loop—was seeing that the planet actually had life. It wasn't soft, carbon-based organic life like Earth's, but a magnificent mineral flora and fauna: crystal trees with translucent leaves that chimed in the cosmic wind, and tiny crystalline creatures moving through the valleys, glowing with their own light. The entire ecosystem functioned in a flawless, wild, and pristine harmony.
I stood there contemplating it in silence for a few seconds, arms crossed. A part of me felt a twinge of guilt. It was such a goddamn beautiful and unique place... and I was about to drop a massive injector to drain its prime mineral reserves just to upgrade my gem. The process would inevitably mess with the tectonic and energetic balance of the area.
"What a shame I have to use this place to upgrade myself..." I muttered with a sigh, adjusting my tactical glasses. "But the Empire isn't going to wait around for me to get ready, and I need this power to protect what's mine. Sorry, cool planet, but your sacrifice will be worth it."
I rested my hands on the console and prepped the ship for our final descent toward the zone with the highest concentration of diamond.
I took the ship's controls and initiated descent maneuvers, plunging into the atmosphere of that shimmering world. The thermal friction made the ship's energy shields flare in shades of crimson and gold, but the modified hull took the re-entry without a single scratch. As we got closer to the ground, the view became a thousand times more breathtaking: the valleys looked like gigantic mirrors, and the chiming of the crystal trees could faintly be heard through the external audio sensors.
"Yarbis, find the coordinates with the highest density of pure carbon and tectonic stability. I need the exact sweet spot so the injector can operate at a hundred percent without collapsing the terrain right off the bat," I ordered, keeping the ship steady as we flew over a canyon made entirely of floating diamonds.
"Scanning surface, Creator..." the AI's voice echoed in the cockpit while several 3D holographic maps flashed on my visor. "Located. Three kilometers ahead lies a plateau of solid diamond. The subsuelo holds the richest mineral veins on the planet, and the crust pressure will facilitate the anchoring of the probes."
"Perfect. Direct course," I replied with a grin.
I steered the ship toward the massive crystalline plateau. Upon landing, the hydraulic landing gear touched the diamond ground with a dull thud that echoed through the valley. I powered down the main propulsion systems but left the quantum cloaking turned all the way up; I didn't want any space surprises while I was vulnerable.
I got up from my seat, walked to the hatch, and before opening it, I touched the gem on my chest. I could feel the weight of the dismantled injector pressing inside me, ready to be deployed. I took a long breath, adjusted my gravity gloves, and clicked on my tactical visor. It was time to step down into this perfect world and start assembling my engineering masterpiece.
I quickly started discharging the materials stored inside my gem, materializing them onto the shimmering surface of the plateau. Right away, I deployed a fleet of drones and flying robots that I had specifically programmed to serve as my heavy labor in this ultra-dense environment.
The process demanded millimeter-precision and took us a full day of uninterrupted work, broken down into several critical phases:
The flying robots used high-frequency laser cutters to level the surface of the diamond plateau. We cleared out the more fragile crystal formations and relocated the small local crystalline creatures outside the perimeter to prevent any accidents during excavation.
To ensure Homeworld wouldn't catch the massive energy signature we were about to unleash, the drones installed generator pylons all around the plateau. We activated a quantum distortion cloaking dome that completely erased us from the intergalactic map, spoofing a dead reading of empty terrain.
With the zone locked down, I materialized the injector's core structural blocks. I injected millions of nanobots into the assembly joints; these micro-machines worked at a molecular level, welding my armor's diamond alloys directly into the machine's power grids. The nanobots methodically connected every injection pipe, essence condenser, and deep-drilling probe with a precision no manual labor could ever match.
By the end of those grueling 24 hours, the imposing silhouette of the massive injector towered over the center of the plateau, flawlessly anchored into the deep-underground diamond veins. The touch panels glowed with a soft cyan light, and the nanobots returned to my containment units, logging all systems at one hundred percent capacity.
I wiped non-existent sweat from my forehead, admiring the towering machine in front of me. Everything was completely locked and loaded. The injector's central incubation pod slowly hissed open, inviting me to take the step that would alter my existence forever.
I looked around one last time, making sure absolutely nothing was left to chance. I deployed the perimeter defenses I had mechanically engineered: automated laser turrets and independent force fields that fortified the zone against any external threats. I didn't have to worry about "what-ifs"; the plateau was now an impenetrable fortress.
With slow but steady steps, I walked toward the core of the machine—the exact spot where my gem... meaning I... would be secured.
"Yarbis, everything ready?" I asked with a nervous smile, feeling the sheer weight of the moment.
"All systems go, my lord," Yarbis replied through the injector's built-in speakers.
"You know what to do... let it take as long as necessary to achieve the absolute highest perfection," I said in a serious tone, locking my eyes onto the cold puncture mechanism looming right in front of me.
"Understood, sir."
A few seconds ticked by that felt like an eternity. The silence of the crystalline planet was broken only by the low hum of the generators.
"Are you ready, sir?" the AI asked.
I took one last deep breath and exhaled, staring dead at the needle ahead.
"Ready."
The needle didn't waste time. It drove forward with surgical precision and pierced right through my head—a clean, blunt strike specifically engineered to poof my physical form without damaging my core conductor. Instantly, I felt my gem violently retract the light that formed my body, sucking it right back into the center of my molecular matrix. My surroundings began to dissolve into a cyan flash, and the last thing my virtual eyes managed to register was Yarbis deploying the assistance robots to catch my gem, right before I blacked out completely.
With Silica's light body dissolved, her gem—a unique piece of tactical engineering—lay resting on the reception platform.
Yarbis took absolute control of the laboratory. Using high-precision mechanical arms, the robots secured the gem with extreme delicacy, as if handling the most fragile crystal in the universe. The first step was a deep purge: a micro-plasma torch blasted away any surface impurities, sweeping off the remnants of magnetic dust and static from the trip. With utmost care, the gem was extracted and temporarily submerged in a chamber of synthesized fluids—rare, ultra-dense chemical compounds engineered specifically for Project Diamond, designed to open up the quantum pores of Silica's matrix without tampering with her data memory.
Once the structure was perfectly prepped and saturated by the project's fluids, the mechanical arms transferred it to the very heart of the massive injector.
Silica's gem was gently deposited into the main incubation capsule, which immediately began filling with a dense, ionized water of a glowing cyan hue. This special liquid concentrated the purest diamond minerals harvested from the planet's veins down to a nanometric scale. The water enveloped the gem completely, creating a massive hydrostatic pressure that funneled the mineral nutrients directly into its core, ready to kick off the most ambitious molecular reconfiguration in the galaxy.
The perfect incubation process had officially begun, and Yarbis would watch over every single millisecond.
END OF CHAPTER 29