Hill's eyes could not leave Rute on the giant screen.
Neither Toril nor Oaises had ever made him understand the nature of the world he inhabited as clearly as Rute did.
Even though he had long understood that there was no absolutely fair world and no absolutely safe place, fantasy worlds laid that rule bare far too nakedly.
If he had watched Edna's story, and even Oaises's, with a smile from beginning to end... then in this world, even though the Undead had played all sorts of tricks, he simply could not smile.
His good fortune and exceptional talent had indeed been the tools that carried him this far... but what allowed Hill to travel the Multiverse so calmly was the power standing behind him.
Otherwise, even if he stayed inside his own Mage Tower and influenced nothing at all, he could still have faced everything Rute had encountered.
Had Telashir truly been so safe for him and his grandfather Falan back then?
In truth, Hill knew perfectly well that the Half-Elf Queen of that time—the grandmother he had been unwilling to acknowledge—had been a tremendous threat.
If he and Falan had not possessed enough strength, then once William had been unwilling to protect them, Viole might very well have dragged them back to the Half-Elf Kingdom.
Hill would naturally have become a prince in public and a target in private.
And Falan, with his outstanding alchemy, would naturally have become the "pride" of the Half-Elf Kingdom as well.
By now, Hill could already guess who supported Viole from behind the scenes... Teks, the God of Archery and Rangers who had appeared in Telashir alongside the Elven God-King, and son of Shanlandri, the Elven God of Hunting.
Though Hill did not know much about that family, he knew that Teks's