This was...
Had it taken effect? He slowly opened his eyes, only to find darkness as far as he could see. The sensation of floating in midair filled his senses.
It was just like when he had died after the Battle of Kannabi Bridge.
There was no time, no space, no light—only darkness that seemed like nothingness.
Just moments ago, at his request, Doctor Watanabe had agreed to perform CPR on him and keep it a secret.
Then, without hesitation, he had swallowed Higan.
When he opened his eyes again, he was here. None of the agony he had imagined—burning flames, icy needles, and the like—had come.
He had simply entered this state.
There was no pain, no itch. Chiba was even somewhat confused now.
But after looking around for a while, Chiba knew that he had truly entered a state of suspended death. He even realized that during those six months of unconsciousness, he had also been in a state of suspended death.
And this black space was the embodiment of the consciousness of his suspended-death state.
Had he succeeded? Or failed?
Once he understood the situation, Chiba frowned. His heart skipped a beat, and he began to feel nervous.
He was now in a pitch-black space, not that Sealed Space. When the thoughts of success and failure had arisen, he had clearly meant that entering suspended death had succeeded, but entering the Sealed Space had failed.
Obviously, that was not the outcome he wanted.
The ultimate—or rather, true—purpose of this drug trial was not to enter suspended death, but to use that state to enter the Sealed Space. If this was the suspended-death space, then this drug trial had naturally failed.
Even his plan to use suspended death to enter the Sealed Space would have failed.
Then all