"Hadn't he long since prepared himself to be put through the wringer?" Naven said softly. "The last time we met, he was still beating around the bush, asking whether Hill had made any new gains over on Toril!
This should still be within the range he prepared for, shouldn't it?
Didn't he start crying on the day Alice ascended to godhood in Quins...?"
Faced with his cousin's barbed mockery, William could only laugh helplessly.
Although William bore considerable responsibility for what happened to Alice, in protective Naven's eyes, if Arturas had not egged him on, William's Faith Poison might have flared up somewhere else.
He would certainly have offended someone anyway, but that would still have been better than making William lose a friend who had once treated him with genuine sincerity.
Sometimes, as long as harm done to strangers did not strike at the root of things—especially not their lives—once several times, or even dozens of times, the compensation had been paid, the matter could be smoothed over.
Besides, at most William had been overly suspicious and excessively guarded... perhaps he might even have stumbled right into a real enemy by accident.
For example, if not for the Magical Beasts incident, the first thing William would have done after gaining a passage to the outside world would have been to swiftly clear out the hidden dangers around Telashir.
Especially after the connection between that Twin-Core World and the nearby Devil worlds had been exposed, Naven, who clearly understood all the future plans William had once devised, became even more furious.
Naven had always trusted William. He believed that, when faced with a potential crisis and an existing danger, William would certainly choose to deal with the enemy already before him first.
If that had happened, his Faith Poison might