Chapter 3:

Subaru gasped deeply and fell to his knees. His heart was racing. He coughed and took more deep breaths.

He swallowed hard again and looked around. He was in the alleyway again. Still taking deep breaths, he said, "Why… again?" Subaru couldn't feel the burning pain on his leg anymore, and his lungs no longer were full of water.

He slowly reached down to his pocket to see if his phone was there again. It was, so Subaru took out his phone. It read 20:58.

"Huh…"

Subaru looked up at the sky, which was bright and had only a few clouds.

"What's… even happening?"

Then, Subaru's rising nausea and dizziness caused him to pass out. He fell on his face and dropped his open phone on the ground.

Subaru's eyes shot open as he felt a burning pain in his back, he tried to scream, but only spat out blood. Why? Why? Why?

He felt a pool of warm liquid forming around him.

Subaru forced his body to roll over, pain surging through him as his wound touched the ground., and he saw a familiar green-haired man standing above him. Subaru choked out, "W...why?"

The man took out a knife from a small sheath on his thigh and tossed it down into Subaru's belly. Subaru screamed in pain. He writhed in the pool of his blood.

The man grabbed the knife in his stomach and ripped it out. Subaru was already losing feeling in his limbs. The green-haired man flipped the bloody knife around and kneeled next to Subaru.

Subaru tried to spit out more blood that was pooling in the back of his throat.

The man stabbed his knife into Subaru's arm, severing veins and bouncing on his bone. Intense pain radiated from the stab. The area around the wound went numb with pain. Subaru tried to scream again, but the blood in his throat stopped him.

Then, the man smirked - it was the first time he showed any emotion - and plunged the knife into Subaru's throat.

Subaru writhed in pain again as blood filled his throat. The man ripped his knife out of his throat and wiped it clean on Subaru's tracksuit.

Subaru ended up on his side, with blood flooding out of himself. He was sputtering and trying to clear his airway of blood. His panicking eyes landed on his still open phone, which read 21:27.

He froze and his eyes widened.

He tried to reach out and grab it with his working arm, but his consciousness faded away before he could reach it.

Subaru screamed and fell over, landing on his knees again, grabbing at his throat and gasping for air. He took several deep breaths to calm his racing heart. He closed his eyes and rose to his shaky legs.

He pulled up his shirt to check that the wound on his abdomen wasn't there anymore. He also looked at his back to make sure the wound there was also gone, which it was. Subaru sighed. "Phew. A wound on his back is a warrior's greatest shame."

He looked up at the clear bright sky.

Subaru reached down to his pocket and pulled out his phone. He flipped it open. The time was 20:58. He opened the camera app again and opened the photos section. The picture of the river wasn't there.

Subaru sighed and sat down against the wall of the alley.

"So, that's what this is... It's hard to believe, though."

He looked over at the street, filled with humans and demihumans walking. He absent-mindedly felt his face, which was as smooth as it had been before he had left for the convenience store.

It was something that he had thought about while he was walking earlier.

He closed his eyes.

"So it's like that."

He pointed the hand that was touching his jaw forward snapped his fingers,

"―Looks like I return to my original state when I die."

And came to the conclusion he had previously dismissed as absurd.

"Return by death, huh…"

"To put it more directly… Isn't this something like time travel?"

It was limited, but this could be considered what one would call time travel. In short, Subaru had become a time traveler, something he could only dream of before.

To be honest, the possibility had been bouncing around his head until some minutes ago, but he shied away from it due to the harsh activation condition.

He also felt that it was more likely that there was some wandering super healer who happened to encounter him.

And most of all, the main reason he thought it unlikely,

"Generally speaking, temporal magic is considered to be the highest class of magic so it'd be strange for me to have it right from the start. To begin with, even though one may dream of going back in time, it'd be impossible to actually do it. Or so common sense would suggest."

Having said this, he cocked his head wondering what about a parallel world summoning adhered to any sort of common sense.

Thinking of it this way, his earlier feelings of obstinate rejection would also fade away.

"Moreover, if I actually am returning by death, all the strange stuff until now suddenly makes sense…"

His first death was when he was pushed down those stairs in that forest and something killed him in that dark room.

His second death was when that green-haired man attacked him on the bridge and he ended up drowning in the freezing river.

His third death was just now when the same green-haired man found him in this alley and stabbed him.

For him to have died all over like he had, it was like every single choice had a BAD END attached to it, and it kind of felt like a poorly designed adventure game.

"Wait, I've died three times in just half an hour…?"

Considering human life was generally considered to be something you only got one of, dying three times in the span of half an hour truly was nonsensical in every way.

Subaru had certainly lived a mediocre life these past seventeen years, but if one considered that he had avoided death 17 x 365 x 3 times thus far, it was rather moving.

"Or I'm just really bad at staying alive."

He was too used to the comfort of his old world, due to which he could not keep up with the rapid-fire instant death events this one kept throwing at him.

The second and third deaths were probably from the same person - that green-haired man - unless there were multiple murderous green-haired people around here. He could assume that it was probably the same green-haired guy that pushed him down those stairs.

But then who killed him down in that dark room? Though the moments before his death were fuzzy, he could remember that something had pierced through his chest and that there was someone down there. The voice was feminine and probably came from whoever those glowing blue eyes belonged to.

Subaru sighed and stood up.

"If I go back to that room I might be able to get some clue but… I don't want to risk dying..."

That pain and fear wasn't something he wanted to experience again.

He flipped open his phone, it read 21:20. He only had about ten minutes before that man would probably attack. It would probably be best if he stayed around here where lots of people were.

And so, he did just that. He left the dark alleyway and he loitered around the street, on edge and watching for anyone with green hair.

For a while, nothing happened. Though his eyes did fall on a yellow-haired man, he was dressed in light armor and had a sword in a sheath on his waist. He thought about asking him for help.

Though, before Subaru was able to call out to the man, he heard a noise come from above him - from the roof of the building behind him. He spun around and looked up, and saw the green-haired man wielding two knives, mid-air, failing towards him.

Subaru jumped away from the man, who touched down just after. The man lunged at Subaru, slashing with his knives. Subaru just barely dodged the man and grabbed his arm. Subaru yelled and threw the man down to the ground.

The man got to his feet less than a second later and lunged towards Subaru again, slashing with his knife. Subaru ducked to the side, avoiding his blade, and putting his leg in front of the man, tripping him. The man fell to the ground with a quiet thud.

"Why-"

Subaru yelled at the man who had killed him twice.

"Do you want to kill me!"

The man squinted and quickly stood up.

"I-" he said, "Am Hans Albertstein."

Hans placed a hand to his chest as he introduced himself.

"And I simply cannot stand you."

His words shocked Subaru, who gritted his teeth. Had this guy really killed him just because he didn't like him?

Hans grinned, and said, "Shamak."

Subaru's vision went black. Subaru took a few steps back, he was worried to move because of the possibility of being injured. Subaru looked left and right, up and down. It was just pitch black. Panic filled him. Am I dead? For real this time?

Subaru wandered around, all the while panic slowly but surely built up inside of him. He began yelling for help.

This went on for an incomprehensible length of time. He wandered around, desperately trying to escape this black void. All-of-a-sudden, all of his senses were returned to him. He gasped and blinked as light surrounded him again.

He was a few meters away from where he stood before. He heard someone screaming in pain. He turned back around towards where Hans should have been, but instead, his eyes landed upon a terrifying sight.

Blood stained the snow and ran down the street. Hans stood in front of a yellow-haired man with cuts and gashes all over his body. The man's own sword was plunged into his back. It was the man Subaru was going to ask for help.

Hans didn't have a single cut.

Hans made eye contact with Subaru. "Oh, how annoying. They bought you enough time to escape my spell."

Subaru only then noticed that two other people also lay dead nearby.

One, a young man had a dagger stuck into the back of his neck, and the other, a woman, had an arm missing. A bow laid near her.

Subaru's eyes widened. Guilt crawled up his back. Subaru turned tail and ran. He ducked in and out of alleyways and just ran in a panic. They died because of me.

Subaru ran and ran, bumping into people along one of the main streets, not entirely sure where he was going.

He only stopped once he couldn't run any longer. He leaned over with his hands on his knees and gasped for air. He looked around, and Subaru found himself in a forest. A forest with glowing blue crystals.

Subaru looked behind himself, wondering how close Hans was.

How…? How am I supposed to survive against that guy?

"If... if I'm going to die..."

"I might as well check something out."

And so, Subaru began running towards the staircase he had found in his first loop.

After not too long he found it. He stood in front of a stone staircase leading deep into the ground. The stairs were nearly vertical. Fear bubbled up inside of him as he remembered falling down it. He pushed it down and took his phone out of his pocket. He flipped it open and used the screen's light to see.

Then, he carefully went down the staircase and into the darkness.

A green-haired man walked up to a staircase deep within a crystal forest. He looked down the steep staircase, and said, "So you've fled to my sister..." His grip on his dagger tightened.

The man hesitated for a moment before he began walking down the stairs.