Chapter 360: 360. Yusefka
Their actions were cautious, maintaining silence and speed.
Along the way, Lann swiftly dealt with all the scattered beastified patients.
Under such a mode of operation, the Gascoigne family managed to cover a distance of nearly five hundred meters smoothly.
This five hundred meters was within Yan City, winding and rugged, with huge differences in altitude, incomparable to distances on flat land.
If it were an ordinary Yan Nan person, hardly anyone could run this far under the watch of so many beastified patients.
After passing a ’bonfire party’ of mildly beastified patients, according to Viola, Dr. Yusefka’s clinic was not far away.
After descending a metal ladder, the number of beastified patients indeed decreased sharply.
They were only mildly deformed, and Lann easily dealt with them using the Lady of the Lake’s Sword.
Then Viola and her two daughters climbed down the ladder rung by rung.
Lann, despite having seen it before, still felt a desire to make a sarcastic remark.
Sick people in Yan Nan Center needing to climb a long vertical ladder just to reach the clinic... Luckily, Yan Nan people are used to living in the Mountain City, otherwise, they probably couldn’t bear it.
The two little girls breathed a sigh of relief after descending the ladder, as if the Yusefka Clinic had already started giving them a sense of security.
Their little leather shoes pattered on the road, quickly arriving at one of the many Gothic buildings.
Lann saw a thick and sturdy solid wood door without obvious damage and nodded to the two little girls.
So they naturally started knocking on the door, lowering their voices and speaking happily inside.
"Dr. Yusefka! Dr. Yusefka, are you okay?"
The little girl’s voice soon brought a sound from inside the house.
In Lann’s hearing, footsteps came gently from afar to the door.
Someone leaned against the door.
"Victoria? And Ovilia?! How can you be out on the Night of the Hunt? Does your mother know?"
The voice from behind the thick wooden door sounded a bit muffled, yet one could still hear the gentle and calm tone of the speaker.
She didn’t open the door immediately, seeming to hesitate for a moment, but just a tiny moment that even Viola and Lann didn’t have time to speak before the door to the clinic creaked open a crack.
A hand wearing a white glove reached out, beckoning the two little girls in front of the door to get inside quickly.
Lann understood the mindset revealed by such an action—she herself was uncertain, but she still went ahead and did it.
Viola promptly stepped out from behind the little girls, startling the owner of the hand, but a housewife without any signs of beastification wasn’t enough to cause panic to immediately shut the door.
"Yusefka, I brought them here."
Viola waved familiarly to the inside, forcing a smile.
Seeing a completely normal person standing at the door, Yusefka relaxed a bit, opening the clinic’s thick wooden door enough for Lann to see her whole body.
She was a perceptive woman of about twenty-five or six, with a gentle and elegant appearance, just like her voice. Her flaxen hair was tied in a simple ponytail, and she wore a doctor’s robe.
"Come in! Come in and talk about other things; it’s dangerous outside!"
She stepped aside from the door, looked curiously at the unfamiliar Demon Hunter, but did not ask much, only urging everyone to get inside quickly.
Dim candlelight illuminated the entrance hall, with brown hardwood floors, bookshelves stacked with books, and some scattered marks and bloodstains on the ground, seemingly not yet cleaned.
Yusefka slowly and with effort shut the door again, carefully bolting it one by one.
Then she grabbed a lamp, leading the group from the entrance hall upstairs.
"Please stay quiet, okay? There are quite a few patients here already, and the Night of the Hunt came too suddenly... they’ve also become a bit... anyway, please forgive them."
The smell of formalin, blood-stained bandages, empty blood bottles, and the most common scent in Yan’an, fresh blood.
This was the impression Yusefka Clinic gave Lann.
As someone with extensive biochemical knowledge, he worried about this clinic’s blood hygiene.
But for a town that revered blood, perhaps this clinic was the norm.
And now it’s the Night of the Hunt, equivalent to wartime, who could expect a clinic in wartime to be very clean?
"Viola, you haven’t introduced, this is...?"
During the climb up the stairs, Yusefka hesitated as she asked.
Viola, too, sighed in relief once back inside a solid building.
"This is Mr. Lann, a friend of Gascoigne’s and a... Hunter, a kind-hearted Hunter. He promised Gascogne to protect us."
Lann, after entering, sheathed Aron Dite again, showing no hostility.
"Hello, Dr. Yusefka. I judged from the Gascoigne’s home that their incense reserves were insufficient to last the night, so I brought them here. They said there would be a large supply of incense here."
"They’ve brought food and some supplies themselves, along with their remaining incense, so they won’t need to use up the clinic’s resources. Please save them a place to rest, can you?"
"Hello, Mr. Lann."
Yusefka first responded politely to the greeting, then agreed in a gentle yet firm tone.
"With Viola and her children already in my clinic, I can’t possibly send them back out to the streets on the Night of the Hunt, rest assured."
"But... Mr. Lann, you keep saying ’they’... what about you? This place can also serve as your refuge, I have plenty of incense saved up, there’s no need to..."
"I will come back to rest, Doctor. But on this Night of the Hunt, I still have many tasks to complete. There must always be Hunters working, right?"
Facing Lann’s insistence, Yusefka did not persuade further.
Because of regained security, the two lively little girls quickly ran far up the stairs, but just as they went up, the sound of their voices immediately quieted down.
In the hall of Yusefka Clinic, there were about ten or so scattered patients.
Most of them wore clothes similar to the beastified patients outside, yellowed vests, worn wide-brimmed hats...
However, the sparse facial hair and distinct pupils indicated they were common patients.
After briefly settling the Gascoigne family of three, Yusefka immediately went back to her busy work.
She moved between the beds, or went to comfort patients cowering in the corners of rooms out of fear.
Even during the Night of the Hunt, it seemed she had not abandoned her duty as a doctor.