you send him once in the valley, you are rail roaded to the ruthless route. i don't know what you think is "not true", the ruthless route doesn't start then and there, that's not what i said. but when it's time for the route split, you will be sent down the ruthless route. the time jump i refered to is just how i interpreted the 1st ruthless chapter, seeing as it felt like mc was being abusive for way longer than we see play out.
there were implications of a neutral route but with build 0.5 when the split was first implemented, it simply wasn't there. if you were on the neutral route you would be switched around to the good one. a difference of dialogue is not an indication of a different route. there'd be inumerable routes if we considered each slight variation, and that's simply not useful.