"Drug residue... 90%... drug residue 80%... drug residue..."
In Konoha Hospital's analysis room, Chiba kept changing slides as he murmured softly. About seven blood sample slides lay beside him.
With his other hand, he recorded the data shown through the microscope.
It had been over two hours since he left the camp. Including travel time, it was now past ten-thirty in the morning, nearly eleven—almost lunchtime.
Yet Chiba showed no sign of wanting to eat. For the past two hours, he had repeated the process of preparing slides, observing, and recording, along with the blood sample analysis he had finished an hour earlier. He was so absorbed that he had forgotten food and rest.
"10%, 0?"
Another half hour later, he finally finished observing the last slide. After a series of calculations combined with the previous blood sample analysis data, he organized the complete drug residue figures.
What he held now was the amount of Higan remaining in his body each minute.
This...
Could this be...?
As he looked at the data, Chiba's face filled with shock, as though he had seen something utterly unbelievable.
What happened to my body...? Why? Why did this result appear? After the initial, incomprehensible shock, Chiba slowly furrowed his brow, and his eyes took on a deep, seven-part worry.
The conclusion he drew from the data was not that there had been some subtle error in Higan's preparation that had changed its effects. Rather, Higan's remaining time in his body had shortened—from half an hour to ten minutes!
At the same time, after ten minutes, Higan had been naturally metabolized by his body. That was why he had awakened on his own after ten minutes.
It was not that the poison's effects had become unstable and changed!
His body had directly metabolized that violent