After Spike connected to the delivery station in his home, he dropped the leystone onto the ground and pushed his head into it. His body slowly disappeared, little by little, into the leystone.
It took him nearly two hours to get into the leystone. It will take him even longer to get home.
It will take him one week to get home since he is so small and weak. To him, time will be stagnant and will seem as if the transportation only took a few seconds. But time will be flowing in the world, and during this time, his transportation can be interfered with or interrupted.
This possibility of being interrupted is why he didn't tell the Sun King that he was leaving. He didn't want the Sun King leaking the news or doing something to interfere with his escape.
Sabotaging the escape of Spike was something that the Sun King was truly capable of. This was because the Sun King was bitter about his doomed situation and would have done anything to force Spike to come up with a solution for his predicament.
Making sure that Spike couldn't leave him and escape is one of the things that the Sun King would have done to solve his problems. Even if Spike can't find a solution, the Sun King will still be content with sabotaging his escape as long as both of them get to die.
Currently, the Sun King is getting ready for one last fight. According to him, "If I'm going to die, then I must be like the previous Snow King. I must bring down one of my enemies with me and die a glorious death."
On the other side, in the North Pole, Sword Flash was examining one of the large leystones that they had captured. He was really intrigued by the leystones because they represent a previously unknown way of transportation.
Sword Flash has a lot to do and is usually busy with work, but he likes to set aside time to examine the leystones. This time, Lady Evergreen and Thunder Drake were flanking him as they examined it.
The three of them know how to operate leystones thanks to the memories of the gem people that they gained through the generous use of the Soul Searching technique. But they have never been able to use the leystones in their possession to connect to the leystone network of the gem world.
They have even improved on the activation process. Instead of using energy stones to activate it, Sword Flash drew a formation around the leystone that allows it to use mana.
After the leystone is saturated with energy, it becomes completely transparent like glass. Then Sword Flash operated it with his mind and connected it to the other large leystone nearby.
He can't operate it with his body because he doesn't have a heart core that can resonate with the leystone. Only his mind can control the frequency of the leystone, so only cultivators with divine sense can operate leystones.
With the connection secure, he began sending stuff into the leystone. He and the other two patriarchs watched as the things they sent into one leystone came out from the other side.
Lady Evergreen wasn't impressed with the sight. She said, "It only seems fast because the distance is short."
Thunder Drake retorted, "But it is better than nothing. It is surely better than flying through the void with our body, and it is faster than the mothership."
She shrugged and said, "Be that as it may, it is not useful to us since we already have a teleportation gate."
What she said and how she said it made Thunder Drake snort and say, "So now you're proud of our teleportation gate? I thought you didn't care for it before? I thought you felt that it was not worthy of being a bribe for your life."
She insisted, "Worthy or not, it doesn't change the fact that the teleportation gate is more powerful than these leystones."
Thunder Drake also insisted, "And it doesn't change the fact that if we didn't have a teleportation gate, we wouldn't have the right to look down on leystones. Without the teleportation gate, leystones will be a godsend to us."
Sword Flash nodded in agreement and said, "Leystones shouldn't be underestimated. They have areas where they beat the teleportation gate. For one, they are incredibly energy efficient."
"The energy efficiency of leystones is about 95% compared to the energy efficiency of 36% of the teleportation gate. Of course, this is also because the teleportation gate has to overcome a lot of spatial friction, and a lot of its energy leaks through space during the process."
"Secondly, leystones require very little energy to use. Compared to the energy requirements of a single use of the teleportation gate, leystones consume a drop in a bucket."
"Thirdly, leystones can be used for communication across worlds. The teleportation gate is not capable of that at all. Teleportation gates can only transport matter, not energy and information."
"Fourthly, leystones come in various sizes, are portable, and can be combined into various sizes based on our needs. This makes them more versatile than the immobile and cumbersome teleportation gate."
"The fifth advantage of leystones is that they can be used to fish for worlds and invade them. We can just drop them into the void and they will automatically find the nearest large object, so we use them to find worlds to invade."
"This is one of the most important uses of leystones for gem people. They throw leystones out into the void and wait for it to fall on a world. Then they connect to the leystone and use it to try to convince them to build a channel for them to invade the world."
At this point, Sword Flash became excited. His eyes were bright and full of anticipation as he said, "Once I improve the process, we won't need the cooperation of the inhabitants of the world to invade them. All we will need are the spatial coordinates of the world. Then we will be able to invade them with our mothership and teleportation gate."