Chapter 141: 141
"Immortal. You have thoroughly disrupted the balance of my world."
When Zeke heard those words, something lit up inside him. It wasn’t a spark of righteous indignation or a surge of heroic fervor.
It was his renowned, utterly untamable pettiness.
For a fleeting second, he wanted nothing more than to go tit for tat with the Emperor, trading sharp-tongued barbs just to see who would blink first. But he caught himself, exhaling a quiet, internal breath.
If he were being honest with himself, pride was a luxury he possessed in abundance, but pride did not necessarily equate to foolishness.
He simply did not have the qualifications to flaunt his pride in the presence of an Emperor, regardless of his actual strength.
When in Rome, do as the Romans do, as the saying went. And right now? He was undeniably the weaker party.
He wasn’t terrified, but that didn’t mean he needed to brazenly put his balls on show just to prove a point. What real capacity did he have to demand an audience as an equal? He was weaker in raw power; the only true card he held was his immortality.
In the grand scheme of this world, he was essentially just a highly resilient cockroach.
Well now, let’s not demean ourselves too much, Zeke thought, quickly pulling the reins on his self-deprecation. I’m just trying to beat a little rational behavior into my own head.
Locking eyes with the ruler of the empire, Zeke offered a perfectly practiced, easygoing smile.
"Greetings, Your Majesty. It is an absolute pleasure to meet you."
He had encountered more than his fair share of Emperors across his countless "simulated" lives.
He knew the steps to this dance, and he knew exactly how to carry himself.
"’Disrupted’ is a heavy word," Zeke continued, his tone light but deliberate. "One might say it’s even heavier when you add an adverb like ’thoroughly.’ But I’ll gladly take that as praise coming from the Emperor himself. However..."
The smile vanished. Zeke’s expression turned utterly emotionless, a blank slate that mirrored the cold calculating nature of the tower itself.
"...don’t you think it’s a bit undeserved? From what I’ve pieced together from your little chess game with the Demon Emperor, and what the old man so graciously ’allowed to slip,’ this clash was an inevitable factor. In fact, one could infer that the Administrator only approached us in the first place because of this exact inevitability."
Zeke let a playful, knowing smirk tug at the corner of his lips. "Sure, I might have introduced an unexpected twist or two—the pills from both myself and the angel, or my friend casually slaughtering one of Heaven’s own. But you entertained it all. And you did it for this exact reason, did you not?"
He didn’t wait for the monarch to answer, forging ahead with practiced audacity. "Not that it matters. Do you wish for my friends and my students to devote their lives to your empire now that the difficulty has spiked thanks to us?"
Again, he pushed past the silence. "Then you have no reason to probe me. I would have joined your war anyway; it’s the very reason the Administrator tracked me down. I love chaos. So, your empire is in safe hands until you’re ready to make your move."
He gave a slight, mock-courteous nod. "And that is how you establish a partnership with me."
Polite enough, right? Zeke thought, mentally patting himself on the back.
A suffocating silence ensued.
Behind him, the class of weirdos and his closest friends stared at the back of his head as if his mind had completely fractured. Only Nox stood to the side, wearing a quiet, entertained smile.
The Emperor held Zeke’s gaze, unblinking, until a small, gravelly chuckle escaped his throat. The chuckle quickly evolved into a full-blown, booming laugh. The monarch tilted his head backward, covering his face with a hand as the deep sound echoed through the grand space.
"The absolute balls on this child," the Emperor muttered, his laughter tapering off as he lowered his hand. His gaze sharpened. "Well, you’re not entirely wrong. You could call it a partnership."
Leaning back lazily into his throne, the Emperor stared down at Zeke. "I actually don’t have a problem with what you’ve said. Yes, let’s be partners. You take care of the weaklings. Let me see what seventeen of you can achieve that my thirty-six Saints cannot. Let me see what you can do that the legions of other Worlders taking their trials cannot."
The Emperor’s voice began to drop, carrying a heavy, oppressive weight. "Let me see what your little group—which possesses a grand total of three Saints—can do against a demonic horde where the base stats of an actual demon are comparable to a human Saint wrapped in the allure of an S-Rank. Let me see what you can do against Demon Kings and Generals whose stats rank within the second tier of sainthood, or a Demon Emperor possessing the raw power of a third-tier Saint. And that’s assuming Ruarc were just a normal Demon Emperor."
He leaned forward, his eyes boring into Zeke’s soul. "Potential this, potential that. Tell me, Immortal, what qualifications do you hold right now to actually stand as my partner?"
"I harbored your students," the Emperor continued, his voice calm, cool, and chillingly conversational. "Two Nephilims—children of the very race playing the cosmic game that caused the endless suffering of my people. A Celestial—the child of two entities who play with mortal lives as if they are cheap toys. I protected two of your people when you brought things into my world that should never have existed here. I entertained your group breaking my laws, slaying my Saints, draining my resources, seizing a massive merchant organization within my borders, and executing my nobles."
The monarch’s eyes narrowed slightly. "So, if I decide to use a little emotional manipulation to get you to do what you ought to do, child... I earned it."
Zeke stood his ground, meeting the lazy, imposing glare of the Emperor.
"If you were all to pack up and return to your respective worlds today, it wouldn’t matter," the Emperor stated plainly. "You vastly overestimate your own importance. The old man wants his intricate schemes; he wants to fight for the concept of Providence. But I? I want to destroy Heaven—at least, this world’s Heaven—and then I want to completely raze Hell. And I intend to do it all with my own strength. Looking at you, you simply have no strength to help me."
The Emperor paused, his eyes briefly flicking toward Micheal before drifting back to Zeke.
"Perhaps he does. But do you honestly think I care about you? The old man wanted you to try and wrest my child away from the angels who wish to win him over. An entirely unnecessary, tedious scheme—especially now that the storyline has completely deviated from the norm."
"Well, if I’m really not needed, then I suppose I should just take my leave," Zeke said, shrugging his shoulders with practiced indifference.
Then, he let out a soft sigh. "But I won’t. So, I apologize for my tone. I truly look forward to working with you. What is it you need us to do?"
Zeke had been incredibly tempted to do his classic, chaotic ’Zeke things,’ but looking at the man before him, he just couldn’t bring himself to do it.
Staring at the Emperor, he didn’t just see a tyrant; he saw a man desperately, violently fighting against the cruel fate the Tower had handed him.
This is the textbook storyline of an epic webnovel, Zeke thought, a tiny spark of excitement lighting up inside him. There is absolutely no way I’m missing out on this.
Oh, and the emotional part as well.
Besides, looking at it objectively, the current mess was technically his fault anyway.
But were the demons truly that terrifying?
A normal Demon Emperor possessed stats equivalent to the third tier of sainthood, yet the absolute power limit imposed on this world was capped at the first tier.
How exactly did the Tower expect humans to win?
More importantly, how had the Emperor managed to survive the last war, considering Ruarc was explicitly stated to be far from a normal Demon Emperor?
"Fight demons," the Emperor replied flatly, staring at Zeke as if the boy were an utter fool. "What else would you do?"
The look plain as day: Was the objective not blindingly obvious?
I just told you there’s no need to win over my son.
The plan is to win through overwhelming strength, and you’re asking me what to do?
Did you not just arrogantly declare you would protect my empire until I can act?
Nox stepped forward, letting out a dry cough to break the tension.
"Your delegation’s collective strength is far too low to actually influence anything right now," Nox explained,"Well, that is if we are going strictly by their raw stats and not their hidden combat potential. For the time being, anyone who hasn’t reached SS-Rank will pivot entirely toward achieving it, after which they will begin their ascent to Sainthood. The ones who are already SS-Rank will begin their ascent immediately. All of this must happen within the next year."
"Next year?" Zeke repeated, raising an eyebrow.
"Yes," Nox confirmed. "As it stands, they are too weak to affect the frontlines. A base demon possesses 2,000 points across all stats—that is the baseline for Saint tier. For your SS-Ranked companions, when they have officially begun their ascent, they will be pushed into the fray as the second wave. Hopefully, the sheer brutality of the war will stimulate their growth and force them into Sainthood."
Nox gestured lightly with his hand. "The first wave, naturally, will consist of the actual Saints in your group. They will immediately integrate with the empire’s existing forces—thirty-six Saints from the empire and ten from the academy, totaling forty-six. Your Saints will either take command of separate units or be placed under the charge of our veteran Saints."
He paused, ensuring the weight of his words sank in. "The war has no need for the rest of your students at this exact moment. Because they possess the rare potential to battle above their numerical ranks, they must be at least peak SS-Rank to have any tangible effect on the battlefield. And no matter how drastically the main storyline has deviated, a war of this scale is never concluded in a single year. It is a deeply drawn-out, grueling debacle."
"If every single true demon is at the Saint tier," Zeke questioned, crossing his arms, "then your forty-six Saints—even adding our three to make it forty-nine—are nowhere near enough. And that’s completely ignoring the existence of their Generals and Kings."
"The main storyline is, after all, a playground designed for the growth and development of Tower climbers," Nox replied smoothly. "So, yes, we are banking heavily on the influx of climbers. Once the main storyline officially commences, the Tower will broadcast an irresistible allure to climbers across various regions. We will gain a massive influx of them, alongside the ones already scattered throughout the empire. To put it bluntly: the Tower climbers are the main characters of this war, just as they are its primary fodder."
Zeke frowned slightly, catching a flaw in the timeline. "In that case, your plans should technically count as trials. But that shouldn’t be possible yet, considering the trio and I haven’t even finished our current trials. Our advancement rests entirely on the academy’s final assessment."
"The board of judges is tallying the results as we speak," Nox countered with a knowing smile. "By the end of the day, your trials will be officially tagged as complete. The trio and your students will receive their formal assessment ranks. It is a necessary administrative act to allow them to legally join the war effort."
