The Emperor sighed, rubbing his temples. "Do you truly possess a requirement to be an absolute bastard every single second of your pitiful existence?"
"Says the guy whose entire life purpose is to play monarch over a glorified simulation designed to be a playground for Tower climbers," Zeke shot back smoothly. "So, how did you even manage to find a loophole out of the Tower? And how does that even work practically? You sound exactly like the protagonist of a deeply generic, trashy webnovel."
"A real man never casually surrenders his deepest secrets."
"Really? A secret?" Zeke let out a mocking chuckle. "Because from where I'm sitting, it sounds to me like the exact reason the gods are desperately targeting this specific floor is the precise fact that you can leave. And going by standard narrative tropes, you definitely went out into the outer worlds and pissed them off."
"They pissed me off," the Emperor corrected sharply. "Not the other way around."
