Ekaterina floated in the shallow section of the swimming pool, the sound of laughter and conversation of the vampires who, despite the eviction order Heidi issued, decided to throw a party.

The air was noticeably cooler with the absence of the sun, and the moon in the sky wasn't the large silvery moon created by Selene's Phantasm, but the real moon illuminating the world below.

Apparently, some vampires hadn't seen each other in decades, whether due to actual reasons or just staying in their individual territories, and the palpable joyful feeling in the air was more than enough to make Ekaterina feel a bit giddy.

The smell of food, blood, and the various distinct scents of vampires merged together to form a strange scent, one that, while did smell enticing, never quite tipped Ekaterina into an actually thirsty state.

Ever since the girl in her Vision attacked the fleeing Sigmund earlier in the day, Ekaterina had drank Tatiana's blood, she had experienced a different feeling from Heidi's blood despite both Tatiana and Heidi being demons.

Tatiana's blood was more mellow but also carried a sense of life. Ekaterina wasn't sure quite how to decribe the feeling, but it was as if her body had become similar to a human's, without the constant thirst, although she could feel the effect dwindling.

"Ekaterina! Catch!" Sabine was in her home ground as she mingled with the vampires around them with a smile. Inside the large pool, the vampires who were swimming looked to be in their teens and early twenties.

The vampires who seemed older sat around talking or laughing on the pool's rim, but Ekaterina was sure she hadn't seen a vampire that looked older than a human in their early thirties.

"You're quiet. Are you okay?" Sabine swam over, her legs swishing through the water with all the grace of a siren, and her beauty made Ekaterina not doubt the tales where fishermen would throw themselves overboard to meet them.

"I'm fine, it's just the mood went from solemn to... happy so quickly?" While Ekaterina said so, a familiar person, a handsome man in swimming trunks, jumped into the pool, doing a flip and landing with a splash and a growl.

"Demetri!" Apparently, the vampire he'd landed on didn't enjoy being his platform, as Demetri was thrown out of the pool almost immediately and landed in a bush twenty meters away.

"Sorry, sorry." Demetri walked out with a wry smile, looking apologetically at the woman he'd landed on who was glaring at him, then saw Valentina and Christabel lounging nearby and his eyes lit up.

"Valentina! Have you seen Inara?" Apparently, Demetri escaped the menacing glare of the vampire who was unfortunate enough to be his cushion by running to Valentina.

"Didn't you leave with her earlier? If she's not with you, then maybe she's getting ready?" Valentina smiled faintly when Demetri tried to escape the gaze of the vampire by rushing over to her, but she didn't help him.

"Demetri is still as careless as ever." Christabel shook her head wryly, but the smile on her face made Demetri laugh awkwardly.

In fact, when he jumped, the area was clear, but the vampire had been pushed through the water by another vampire and happened to end up below Demetri.

"Lord Demetri, apparently Lady Inara returned ahead of you to use your favorite car. She said she sent me to inform you that you that she'll be using it to work on her driving skills." An Altered human approached Demetri and whispered, and Demetri, as if receiving an electrical shock, hopped up immediately.

"F*ck! That car is a special limited edition model!" Demetri vanished, but not with the use of magic by teleportation, as the howling wind blew faintly across the venue from his hurried movements. 

"Well, Lord Demetri, your wife will be safe even if the car is totaled!" Hearing the almost undisguised laughter in the vampire's voice behind him, the whistling sound suddenly became a harsh boom in the distance.

"Is he... going to run across the ocean?" Ekaterina wasn't sure the island was large enough to actually give Demetri enough space to run very far at the speed of sound, but Sabine shook her head.

"One of the demons should teleport him before he gets too far. Heidi's Phantasm is closed, so Tatiana and Selene should teleport him to the mainland." Sabine then half pushed and half pulled into a tube, and then began dragging Ekaterina behind herself.

"Since Sigmund's free, should the vampires be so... carefree?" Ekaterina didn't whisper, as every vampire's hearing surpassed hers and would hear her anyway.

"It's okay... Miss Starikov! We're not afraid of a lone vampire, and most of us are stronger than Sigmund is. If he came to us, we'd just drag him back for trial." A vampire who looked to be in his teens waved Ekaterina's question off with a laugh.

"Let me introduce you to... Wait, Ekaterina, are you shy?" Sabine turned her green eyes to Ekaterina and asked softly, stopping her movements with a look of curiosity.

"Not really? I can feel everyone's kind of... nice? Well, they don't have any ill intentions." Ekaterina shook her head. Maybe if she were a human, unable to feel someone's inner feelings, would she feel nervous, but she didn't in front of the obviously relaxed vampires.

"Great! Most of my friends don't belong to the Four Houses, but they're all pretty well off, so we travel often." Sabine continued dragging Ekaterina to a group of younger vampires who were playing around, with laughter and giggles in the air.

 "Can vampires be poor?" Ekaterina mumbled in a low voice, and Sabine unexpectedly burst out laughing, and the vampires who they approached looked at Ekaterina with a look of mirth.

"Not really. It's really hard for a vampire to be poor in the current world. My name is Lynx." A vampire whose gender Ekaterina almost couldn't tell spoke, wearing a swimsuit and a shirt despite their long messy hair and playful orange eyes.

"Oh crap! Lynx! When did you get here?! I thought you were still in Kotozia!" Sabine reacted with a look of disbelief while Lynx laughed mischievously.

"I missed the trial, but I hurried over to find Safiya and had her teleport me over. She even asked for a transportation fee of seven million! She's such a swindler, I swear!" Lynx showed an expression of helplessness and then shrugged.

"So is this your little sister? She's hot! Is she going to school?" Lynx looked at Ekaterina with a smile, but despite their words, it was more appreciation than lust.

"Not sure if she wants to. Didn't you quit school? You said it was too boring." Sabine moved her legs through the water agilely while Lynx scoffed.

"It was! I'd much rather party instead of attending school with some old fossils! But we have a new student and I won't be the youngest now!" Lynx extended two fingers with a look of victory on their face.

"Lynx, I'm not old." Sabine smiled the same way Christabel did, and apparently Lynx had suffered in Sabine's hands because they automatically distanced themselves from Sabine.

"I have freedom of speech! Help, Starikov is oppressing me!" Ekaterina wasn't sure what to expect, but the vampires who had watched on the sidelines until now burst into commotion.

"Lynx! Your last name is Harrison! How is a Starikov capable of suppressing you?" One vampire sneered with a look of mockery.

"No, Lynx is secretly a Rogue vampire, and we should definitely investigate the source of their funds." Another interjected with a look of mock greed.

"Of course, we must give Lynx the benefit of the doubt, but if the funds are obtained through shady channels, we should confiscate it for the betterment of society!" Lynx looked at their friends with a look of exaggerated shock on their beautiful face.

"You all should go mine somewhere in a desert! I thought we were friends, but you lot are plotting against me for my money!" Lynx shouted at them with such indignation. Even Ekaterina couldn't help but laugh at the sheer absurdity of Lynx's acting skills.

"Lynx is the youngest member of House Harrison. They don't have a gender. They're normally fine with being addressed how they dress on occasion, but don't bind them by it." Sabine rolled her eyes and pulled Ekaterina into the circle of vampires.

"Lynx is sixty years old, pretty young." Sabine's words made a few of the vampires present roll their eyes. Vampires had a long maturation period, and even Sabine, who was three centuries old, was considered young.

"My name's Theo." A vampire with a muscular build waved at Ekaterina with a smile, while another female vampire with light blue hair and a calm expression nodded.

"My name's Athene. It's a pleasure to meet you, Ekaterina. So what do you like to do?" A stark contrast from her appearance, Athene was bubbly once she began speaking.

"The others here are..." Sabine looked at the vampires, and the vampires looked at her speechlessly. Lynx winced and then swam over and pushed Sabine away with a smile.

"Sabine, first impressions for us are rare enough due to the rarity of new vampires. Don't steal everyone's moments to shine!" Lynx scolded Sabine while Sabine shrugged and swam back to Ekaterina's tube and clung to it.

"You can call me Lulu, I work for Lady Tatiana." Lulu bobbed her head seriously, but Ekaterina was more surprised by the glamorous butterfly wings on her back, shimmering in the water with ethereal beauty.

"Well, I haven't worked in the past decade though, I'm on vacation. Lady Tatiana's entered a bit of a lax period, so she gave me the next century off." Lulu then swam over to Ekaterina, and her fainty glowing sapphire blue eyes lit up.

"You can use your magical energy!? I've tried to do it, but the feeling is really weird, like trying to grab a thread that keeps slipping through my fingers." Lulu's words made the vampires around them stir.

"We can use magic?!" Theo chimed in, and everyone gave him the look people would use to look at idiots, to which he laughed and scratched his head with a look of embarrassment.

"I forgot, okay?" Seeing the eyes looking at him with an expression that screamed idiot, Sabine rolled her eyes and gave everyone a look of helplessness.

"You know how Theo is. He's quite forgetful on things he isn't interested in." Theo shrugged and looked up at the sky, put his hand on his chin, and sighed.

"My mind is plagued by the worries of the future genera-" Lynx had enough of Theo's pretending and stuffed his head under water with a snort.

"Get lost already! If you wanna act profound, go be a professor!" Lynx's scolding made Theo lift his head out the water with a look of disgust.

"Heck no! I'm not teaching anyone! I hate school, okay?!" Theo shivered in disgust at the thought of standing in front of a podium, drawling on and on about something boring.

"That's why you're an idoi-" Athene's words were interrupted by a sense of joy that danced in the air. It carried an overwhelming sense of relief that Ekaterina could feel vividly.

"Damn! Heidi, you did it!" Selene's astonished came from the kiddy section of the pool, and Heidi's sigh of relief came the same time as Selene's voice. 

"That took way more concentration than I thought it would." Tatiana appeared wearing a swimsuit in a burst of green light, which dispersed into the air and caused the surrounding plants to become more lush and green.

Heidi appeared, cradling a girl in her arms, the girl's dazed golden eyes and short brown hair giving her a sense of cuteness.

"Mom!" Apparently smelling Heidi, she cried out in a sobbing and relieved tone, embracing Heidi and burying her face into the latter's chest.

"Isn't that Millie?" Lynx tilted their head in confusion, their orange eyes mildly confused, but Heidi's attention was focused on the crying girl in her arms, and wisely, no vampire chose to question her.

"Don't worry about the specifics. Tatiana and Heidi worked together to salvage what they could and managed to bring Millie back to the land of the living." Selene glossed over the subject, and the vampires didn't press the topic.

"Millie!" Valentina didn't wait for Heidi to release Millie, which Ekaterina realized would've been pointless, half an hour after Hiedi arrived, she still held Millie and didn't let her go in the slightest, even when Millie hugged other people.

Somehow, the already jovial nature of the vampires was boosted even further with the resurrection of Millie, and several vampires who had restrained from playing around joined in the fun this time around.

"Did... I leave too early?" Safiya appeared in a burst of blue light, and the pool waters instantly calmed, and even the water splashed in the air by the vampires fell into the pool immediately.

"Damn! There was a party and I wasn't invited!" Safiya's tired look immediately shifted when she saw the crowd of nearly two hundred vampires eating and playing around.

"Safiya... You've sent at least thirty vampires here. Why do you think a vampire would be so adamant to teleport and let you extort seven million to do it?" Lynx asked with a mocking smile on their face.

"Safiya, you greedy thing! You actually charged me thirty million!" As several vampires clamored about her pricing, Safiya stuck out her tongue and snorted unhappily.

"What? I need money too! And Lynx, you own a private mercenary corporation, and all of you didn't blink when paying the money!" Safiya's words made the vampires who'd been teleported by her roll their eyes. 

Between thirty million and the party, the choice was obvious! Apparently, they had all decided to not give the real reason why they wanted to go to Umbral Bay due to Safiya's prices, and had kept Safiya out of the loop for almost three hours.

"Who made you a swindler? No one told Safiya there was a party? I thought I did?" Lynx spoke with sincerity in their orange eyes, and immediately received a blast of water in the face.

"Alright, it's already done!" Heidi's smile was somewhere between amused and helpless looking at the youngest of the demons who had an obsession with ripping off her fellow vampires.

Ekaterina absently took the grilled meat Sabine offered and nibbled on it, her eyes lighting up at the juicy flavor and seasoning blending together into a something that was absolutely delicious.

"It's good!" Sabine nodded, her hand holding five more skewers with many pieces of meat stacked on each skewer, handing Ekaterina three and taking the last two for herself.

"That... Ekaterina... I haven't eaten in the last forty eight hours, can I have one?" Lynx swam over with a pitiful expression on their face, but Sabine got between Ekaterina and Lynx with a disdainful expression.

"Get lost you swindler! You and Safiya are the same kinds of people!" Lynx pouted and swam to the edge of the pool in an instant, creating a splash that doused Sabine's skewers with pool water while climbing out.

"If... if I say it was an accident, can you avoid hitting my face, pretty please?" Lynx's expression was mournful, and they couldn't help but feel a surge of regret as Sabine's fist slammed into their stomach in the next instant and blasted them several kilometers outwards, sending a screaming Lynx face first into the cold ocean water.

Ekaterina 

Sabine

Lynx Harrison

Athene

Theo

Lulu

Christabel

Valentina

Millie

Heidi

Tatiana

Safiya

Selene