"Ah... no wonder you trust Gilbert so much." Nicholson laughed.
If Gilbert had merely been exceptionally skilled with Standard Runes, then given Rute's usual nature, even if there had been no issue with his soul imprint, he would have checked again and again... and remained suspicious of Gilbert at all times.
But what that child had clearly mastered more deeply were the original runes of their world!
After all, if Gilbert had truly been replaced, it could only have happened in recent years... especially after he suddenly accomplished the most difficult thing with the lowest possible odds: repairing his Mental Sea.
Although Gilbert had always kept to himself and rarely interacted with outsiders, Rute had actually arranged for him, along with some people knowledgeable about spiritual spells, to examine Gilbert from time to time.
It was not as though they had truly been unable to help at all. Otherwise, Gilbert would never have advanced to the Fifth Circle... but that method of treating the pain wherever it appeared gradually became more and more useless with time.
In the end, Rute could only give up helplessly.
If this had been... heh... a normal world, then someone as unlucky as Gilbert would actually still have had one path to take: becoming a necromancer.
Although necromancers also relied heavily on the Mental Sea, that required a transformation from a living being into something between life and death.
When that transformation occurred, the energy of the Mental Sea could practically be considered completely remade... it needed to connect to the River Styx, and the power of the River Styx naturally could not be affected by such a minor disturbance.
Yet in the era Gilbert lived in, necromancers were the unluckiest of all.
Rute would rather have let him take a risk and drink that