Hilbert and his two students quickly reached an agreement... at least to the ears of those listening in, this newly promoted Seventh-Tier Mage had finally settled on his attitude toward Sia Tower after encountering that inexplicable undead attack.
Indeed, no one could prove that the undead attack had anything to do with Sia Tower... but an ambush along this road, directly targeting a party led by a Ninth-Circle Archmage of the Black Mystery Tower, was hardly normal.
Either it involved Sia Tower, or it involved Sia Tower's enemies... but the common factor was that Sia Tower had allowed it to happen.
As Archmage Rute's student, Gilbert, famously aloof, somewhat short-tempered, and rather willful, was making the calmest, most reasonable choice available to him.
In short, he would follow closely in Rute's footsteps and never build a relationship with anyone outside their faction that went beyond "a familiar face."
Neither Rute, who might be trying to sound out Gilbert's intentions, nor Aislin, who could never quite forget about Gilbert, would find anything surprising about his approach... and both would be satisfied.
If even Rute had figured it out, Hill, who knew much more about Sia Tower, naturally understood it better still.
Whether it was Fengo or Glasya, playing the isolationist would only arouse greater interest in them.
Only by basing everything on normal logic and making the choices most intelligent people would make could he get those two to turn their attention away from him for a while.
Gilbert's little quirks barely counted for anything before those two Archdevils.
Or rather, unless a particularly interesting soul caught their attention, their internal struggle remained those two's top priority... the possibility that Aislin was something the Succubus Queen had created to deal with this world had rapidly dropped to zero once she followed