Back to the main activity in the clinic, the trio of bloodied young men were treated quickly by the doctors there. They didn't have EMTs and there was no stretcher so when they were transferred there, everyone had to make do with several people carrying the young men to minimize the movements.
The worst of them all was Tacky, a curly-haired blonde. His body was now filled with bandages and he looked incredibly pitiful. He also had a cast on his arm made of wood and wrapped with some rough bandage they made from the leaves of some plants doused with some ointments Vanessa sent.
It was very inconvenient and had limited effectivity, but it was much better than just covering it up with leftover cloth.
Next to him were his very injured friends, Juan, who had very short hair but had a tiny tail-hair behind his head. He mostly had bandages from minor wounds and he also needed a stitch on the side of his head.
And there was Baka, a pale-skinned brunette with one hand. Fortunately, his other hand remained attached in this ordeal otherwise it'd be a real tragedy.
At first, one would think they were injured from a hunting accident. Judging from their faces it seemed that there was more to this story.
They happened to be acquaintances of one of the doctors there—Dr. Lu—and he knew this because he was quite familiar with their usual personalities.
Dr. Lu looked at his neighbors who looked at their poor states in pity.
They were a group of friends who had transferred all the way from Terran. He heard they were a group of 10 when this all started, and there were only 3 of them left now.
He had known them as lively young men, and they were very friendly to him as well. Occasionally, they would send him excess from the meat they captured, saying it'd just go bad. However, Dr. Lu still knew there was no lack of a market to sell these things. He never embarrassed them by pointing this out, of course, though he silently swore to help them when he could.
So when they arrived here, he led their treatment himself.
Another reason he remembered them well was because, despite all the suffering, they always found something to laugh about.
For instance, when one of them—Baka, was his name—lost an arm, after the initial mourning, they could make jokes about it. Baka himself would joke and do a one-hand stand, saying he was a tree trunk. He would also say that he'd make a bionic arm one day.
Now though, there was little to no sign of that optimism.
They were already awake at this time. They had no anesthesia and no one would be able to sleep peacefully with those wounds for a long time.
Dr. Lu heaved a sigh as he looked at the boys. "What happened to you?" he asked and the boys' faces turned even darker at the question.
"GRRR—Those bastards!!" Tacky cursed outright. If he could move his arm, he had no doubt loudly hit a surface by now. "How could they!"
Seeing as Tacky couldn't answer properly, it was Baka who did it for him. "We say his sister today."
"Sister?" The doctor blinked. He didn't remember any of the trio had family members in the territory.
"She was captured as a slave," Juan added, eyes twitching a bit from the pain of the stitches. "They were using her as bait!" What made everything worse was that the men were stronger than the monsters, they didn't even need bait!
"You see Doc, we were on one of our hunting trips, right? Then somewhere along the way, we encountered some of the guards with slaves.
"We saw Tacky's sister there—being one of the many used as baits." They would order them to lead monsters in certain areas to kill. Sadly, most couldn't run faster than the monsters and, more often than not, they would succumb.
The three of them didn't hesitate to attack the jerks, of course. While it seemed to have saved Tacky's sister from getting eaten somehow, the guards beat them up good and threw the three of them to the mob, leaving them there to die.
"Our levels were decent and the mobs were relatively weak so we survived."
Tacky cursed again, eyes turning red. "I don't even know how my sister is doing now!"
A doctor sighed, "Calm down. Being more injured isn't going to help your sister. Is it possible to check up on the slaves?" At the very least, they could check on the remaining slaves and see if the sister was there.
"We will probably pay a hefty fine—we… we can't afford that now…"
"I can lend you some money," Dr. Lu said and the boys looked at him as if he was a messiah.
"I heard we can send food for a price," Tacky said, "Can we—"
"THANK YOU DOC!" They said, with Tacky going an extreme mile, "I promise I'll do errands for you for a month—no, a year!"
Dr. Lu laughed awkwardly and shook his head.
Their conversation though was loud and there were plenty of other nurses as well as a small audience around who overheard. The topic soon shifted to the slaves and everyone had deep frowns on their faces.
"But didn't you hear? Sometimes they play with people as well."
"I think I saw my nephew there…" Another one whispered.
"Someone… someone even saw them violating the women…" Another said, whispering, but everyone's hearing was sharper now and they heard it. "Sometimes they would force them to do the most humiliating thing—"
Like the three, a lot of them had seen family and friends among the slaves. After all, there were thousands of them who came in. However, while they didn't seem to famished, they did seem injured and pitiful.
They all looked at each other. Normally, they would be ecstatic to finally see these people alive and breathing.
But… what was this now?