I Didn’t Even Want to Live, But God Forced Me to Reincarnate!

At that time, even I thought it was over.
But before the conjured chimera could kill me, I quickly used my dark magic to restrain its movement, then I yanked the key dangling on its neck and immediately moved away from it.
It was as if time stopped at that moment.
I didn’t know how I did what I did, I guess it was my survival instinct taking over me.
But when I saw the conjured chimera’s sharp teeth and wide open mouth in front of me, I only had one thing in my mind.
‘
It was so different from my previous self that wished for such an opportunity to present itself in front of her so she could finally die.
This time, I was brimming with my will to live, something I used to not have.
“…”
I locked eyes with both Maiara and Ein. They seemed to be equally surprised as I did.
More like they—no, we—didn’t know how to process things that just happened.
I also felt like my magic was fading off, so I quickly turned to look at the direction of the conjured chimera—only to see it still frozen in the same uncomfortable position to be frozen at, as if it was frozen in time.
Just as I wondering what the heck was going on, suddenly a magical clock popped up from the conjuring’s body.
“A timer! Escha, let’s hurry and put the key before the timer’s up!” Ein suddenly shouted.
“What?! Put the key to
”
I knew we should probably do something before the timer’s up, and probably the conjured chimera would come attacking like crazy after the timer’s up, but what the heck should we be doing?
And there wasn’t even somewhere I could put the key to, even if I managed to get the key in my hands!
I thought that once we got it, the conjuring and this place would magically disappear and we would be transported to the open gate, but…
Nothing happened except for the frozen conjuring and the magical timer appearing… Eh?
I blinked several times when I noticed there was something that was originally not there.
Ein didn’t answer, he only raised one of his eyebrows as he noticed me noticing what he seemed want me to see.
Yes, I quickly shut my mouth up when I saw that there was some sort of a key slot that magically appeared on the wall that was just across the path where we came in just now.
At that moment, I felt like an idiot for even asking that question in the first place.
Someone like Ein wouldn’t blurt such a nonsense, especially not in this kind of situation.
I was the idiot for asking without observing or thinking!!
Ashamed, I quickly ran towards where the magical key slot appeared, and I felt like Ein and Maiara also followed suit.
Since I was the closest to the key slot, I arrived first and I was surprised when I managed to take a good look at the key slot.
Oddly enough, the key slot wasn’t meant to be used like the traditional, common key slots. Its mechanism wasn’t so that I could insert the key’s tip and wind it to unlock it. After all, the key slot’s hole was exactly the shape of the key I was currently holding!
There wasn’t any time left anyway, be as odd as it was, I put the key into the key slot. As it fit perfectly to the hole, it seemed to be pushed in…
At that time, Maiara and Ein were already next to me.
The next moment, the key slot shone and suddenly…
WHAAAAA?!
I couldn’t feel the ground on my feet anymore, and that was such a scary and awful sensation!!
By the time I noticed what was happening, I was falling from the heights once more…
Perhaps I was already getting desensitized to it as I didn’t feel as numb with fear as opposed to the first time we fell. I managed to think and act quickly this time, so I casually used my wind magic to help myself control the speed of my fall as well as readied my body to land safely.
Noticing that I had already taken the necessary measures to defend myself, Maiara didn’t put her magic on me. She put her previous magic on herself and Ein, before I could even react to put my magic on them first.
I felt an odd sense of rivalry at that very moment.
Maiara seemed to be able to control her magic quickly and simultaneously put the same magic to help all of us in one go.
Meanwhile, I had to calm myself first by stabilizing my body before my mind was calm enough to think of the next magic.
No longer afraid, my eyes were wide open now, taking note of my surrounding.
Actually, we fell from the heights but we didn’t seem to know where it was… The surrounding was also dark and—
Finally, I saw the ground and quickly adjusted the wind around me to support myself to land safely.
We all landed together safely to the ground, and suddenly, we could see our surrounding.
Right, we were now standing right in front of the same hidden entrance from where we entered this magical hidden basement. Don’t ask me how we managed to return here by falling when we got to the hidden labyrinth inside the hidden basement by falling too… I guess it all had something to do with magic…
Anyway, compared to the last time we were in front of this hidden entrance, this time, the hidden entrance seemed to emit a brighter glow that faded out and grew stronger in a fixed rhythm.
“Can we finally go out now?” I asked as I approached the odd-acting door.
As I thought of that, for some reason, I was drawn strongly to put my hand on the glowing pattern in front of me and before I could even reason, I already put my hand there.
I snapped out of the haze right when my hand touched the cold glowing wall, whose light shone even brighter and—
The hidden path was opened again, revealing the temple’s library in front of me and—
I was met with the illusion of Maiara, me, and Ein diligently searching around and reading the books.
I quickly severed the illusion with a shudder.
“Oh, we’re out?” Ein’s voice could be heard as I sensed that the two people behind me were already by my left and right side.
We all looked at the empty temple’s library and heaved a sigh of relief.
“Let’s go out now, it’s been a long time,” Maiara said as she walked to the temple’s library.
Ein and I nodded and followed suit.
After I was already back in the temple’s library, I turned around to the direction of the hidden path that we just came out of, only to see that the hidden entrance had already disappeared without any sign, as if what just happened to us before was nothing but our imagination.
“We weren’t just imagining things, right?” I blinked in disbelief.
“Absolutely not. I still have the book we agreed to take a closer look at,” Maiara said as she suddenly took out a familiar dusty old book that I had even forgotten due to all the adventure we had in the labyrinth.
Perhaps she had stored it in her magical storage that I didn’t know where.
After showing the book for a moment, Maiara quickly put the book back to… the pocket that was in her clothes?!
“Let’s go out of the library now. We’ve been taking too long,” Ein said.
We then went out of the library and just as we were about to go to our assigned room or to find Carbuncle and Clavis, we actually bumped into Carbuncle and Clavis.
“Kuu-chan! Ralph! Sorry for taking too long—”
“What?”
I quickly apologized for disappearing for quite some time, perhaps we had made them worried. That could explain why we could bump into them as soon as we went out of the library.
But I was met with Carbuncle’s questioning look and word.
“Where have you been? And what do you mean by taking too long?” Carbuncle asked again, as if interrogating us.
“There was this hidden path we discovered and…,” I narrated what we had encountered in a quick recount to explain to Carbuncle and Clavis.
“What? I’d like to go there!” Carbuncle got excited and wanted to quickly rush off to the hidden path I mentioned.
“No, let’s go to our room to discuss more about it. We had taken too long, it won’t be good if—”
Before Ein could finish his words, Clavis already interrupted him.
“What do you mean by taking too long? It’s not that long, you know?”
“What?”
We were all surprised to hear that.
After all, the investigation and the adventure that we had in the underground path—it would have taken two to three hours at the very least!!
I turned to look towards the clock that was pasted on the wall, only to be stunned.
If I remember correctly, it was around 10.30 PM when we found the hidden path.
At the very least, it should be past midnight already by this time—HUH?!
To say I was shocked would be an understatement, since the clock seemed to be running just alright and indicated that it was now 11.00 PM.
“…”
Ein and Maiara also noticed what I was looking at, and they turned quiet when they noticed the same thing that I had noticed.
“What happened?” Clavis noticed that the three of us had been real quiet, so he asked.
“Let me enter the path!” Carbuncle demanded.
“No, let’s retreat to our room. We need to talk,” Maiara said sternly, without any leeway for us to negotiate.
“Whaa? Why not now, then? Just talk,” Carbuncle looked impatient.
Ein beckoned Carbuncle to come closer to her as he whispered, “What if we’re being monitored?”
“Tch,” Carbuncle clicked her tongue but conceded as she seemed like there was the possibility that we were being monitored or that someone might eavesdropped on us.
We quickly traced the path to our designated room.
Amidst our return journey, we encountered some of the priests that were either on the patrol or were still awake as well.
Luckily, they didn’t seem to be questioning why we were still wandering around at this hour.
Perhaps they understood that we were only allowed to be here for a short time, hence it was natural for us not to waste any time…?
At least that was the impression that I got from our brief conversation with the priests we encountered.
As soon as we entered our guest room and locked the door, Maiara applied a protective magic preventing anyone from eavesdropping on us before we shared our findings in full details.
Again, all of us agreed that we probably shouldn’t share our finding or even ask about it with the people of the temple, as we couldn’t say with certainty that they were truly our ally or were merely pretending to be one.
I kind of expected Carbuncle to be really talkative and even still insisting on investigating herself (though she said investigating, I am 100% certain that she is just curious), but surprisingly, she was kind of quiet.
Luckily for her, and for me who was actually tired, our conversation ended at that time.
“Now, let’s sleep.”