The ambiance inside the shopping center was a lot brighter than Ekaterina imagined due to the venue being indoors, and while Ekaterina directed her curious eyes to the bodyguards walking behind them, Valentina smiled gently when noticing her gazes.

"Don't worry, our guards are legally allowed to carry weapons anywhere in the world, besides the central continent." Valentina made an expression that Ekaterina could only place between disgusted and annoyed.

"Witches are for the most part neutral parties, but now... The situation is a little troublesome." As the Lord of one of the Four Houses, Valentina was aware of the Rogue Vampires overall discontent with the status quo, and the witches actions that seemed to point to actions that would soon cause trouble for the vampires.

"Are witches strong? Is a witch strong enough to fight a demon?" Ekaterina's question was soft enough to remain unheard by the humans, although most humans remained out of earshot due to the well armed bodyguards trailing behind them.

"Vampires have very specific magical abilities, due to their Visions~ If you wanted to freeze something~ You wouldn't be able to, but if you wanted to burn a city~ It's way, way easier~" Ekaterina frowned listening to Eliana's voice full of laughter.

"Witches don't have Visions or Phatasms. They can use a wide variety of spells and actual curses. Vampires are generally magically resistant enough to disgust witches, but an Arch Witch could fight a vampire." 

"Depending on how strong the Arch Witch is and how many work together, a vampire who was six thousand years old was killed by four Arch Witches." Christabel shook her head in regret, recalling the memory.

"Arch Witches are the most hostile to demons because demons defy the natural order of the world. Witches like balance and all that." Sabine snorted, then pulled Ekaterina to a stand selling ice cream.

"Arch Witch..." Ekaterina mumbled the words while Sabine waited in line, and Ekaterina couldn't help but chuckle at the people in line who had frozen when they got in line because three guards walked behind them.

"Arch Witches aren't too troublesome~ Demi are the problem~" Eliana's voice came with a hint of undisguised disgust, and Ekaterina couldn't help but curl her lips in spite of herself.

"Demi?" Ekaterina knew what Demi meant. It meant half, as she had read novels with demi-gods being a thing, but Demi wasn't something she was familiar with.

"Basically a super strong witch~ A Demi bailed that guy out, or he would have burned up due to our flames~" While Eliana spoke, a mother pulled her child out of the line ahead of them with a nervous smile.

"Sabine, are we bullying people?" Ekaterina whispered and then ordered chose to ice creams at random, approaching the mother and child and handing them the two ice creams with an apologetic smile.

"Sorry for the... scare." Ekaterina had to push down her discomfort, but looking at the little boy who had become teary-eyed, she smiled and then returned to Sabine.

"Who knew Kat was an angel?" While Sabine's words were playful, Eliana's scoffing made Ekaterina return back to their previous conversation.

"Demis have an annoying ability to dispel unnatural phenomenon similar to a demon's Phantasm~ Demons' Phantasms and vampires' supernatural physical abilities all fall under their dispelling means~" Sabine was the one who had chosen the flavors of the ice-cream, and while Ekaterina typically enjoyed vanilla ice cream, it suddenly became tasteless.

"If a game... it would be stat reductions~ In truth, a Demi can't fight a demon alone, but there are only four demons in the world, and five if you count yourself~" Eliana continued, ignoring Ekaterina's worsening mood.

"There are more Demi than there are demons, and even the demons aren't sure exactly how they come about~ Demi don't operate beyond the Central Continent of Eliria, so vampires belonging to the Houses don't step into their land~" Eliana's knowledge was simply given to her by the four demons, in order to aid Ekaterina's growth.

"Ekaterina?" Sabine poked her face curiously as they walked back to Valentina and Christabel, who had chosen seats nearby, looking towards them with unreadable expressions.

"Ohh! Dad, did you want ice cream?" Sabine belatedly smacked her forehead, squeezed Ekaterina's hand softly, and then ran back to the stand with a bodyguard trailing behind her.

"How are you feeling? Your face looks a bit unhappy." Christabel placed a hand on her cheek and exmained Ekaterina's face with a soft hum.

"I'm fine, Elia-" Ekaterina furrowed her brows, not entirely sure if Heidi had told them of Eliana's existence, but then shook her head quickly.

"It's fine, I'll just enjoy the night. I'll ask when we go back." While Christabel's  brown eyes flashed with curiosity, she didn't press the issue and instead turned her attention to Sabine, who had been given a free pass to the front by the ice cream vendor.

"Bodyguards are often inconvenient in day to day activities." Christabel squinted her eyes ever so slightly and then glanced at Ekaterina, barely concealing the smile in her light brown eyes.

"It was supposed to be an outing so you could relax around the humans, but somehow you seem even more on edge." Christabel closed on eye and sighed.

"If something were to happen, Ekaterina, it wouldn't fall on your shoulders to do something, there are four demons who manage the vampire's affairs and many vampires who would stand between you and any enemy." 

Christabel's ability to feel was the strongest, and she could naturally feel Ekaterina's dread and fear and simply deduced from the possible situations that could occur.

"Hunters are a non-factor, and any vampire who pays enough attention to their surroundings wouldn't be killed by humans." Valentina sighed and shifted her position to a more upright position while Christabel froze.

"Someone's looking at you~" Eliana snickering and a sense of alertness caused Ekaterina to freeze as a feeling of something tickling Ekaterina's skin caused her to stop moving.

A vampire was extremely sensitive to another creature's  gaze, as was any predator in the wild when their survival hung on their senses.

"A Rogue? Or a hunter?" Valentina tapped her finger on the table gently, her blue eyes flashing slightly in thought, but the sensation of something gently running along Ekaterina's skin faded.

Ekaterina's magical energy revolved and expanded outwards, and while humans couldn't detect it, Christabel, Valentina, and even Sabine, who was in line, stopped and turned back to look at her curiously.

"I'm not really opening your Phantasm, just checking to see who was peeping at you~" Eliana's control of Ekaterina's Phantasm left Ekaterina helpless, but on the other hand, Ekaterina was also happy she didn't need to spend centuries learning how to use magical energy.

If anything happened, as long as Eliana assisted with her Phantasm, she could help others instead of being a liability needing to stay behind others for protection. 

"I can't find them..." This time, Eliana's voice lost its usual playfulness, and she seemed a bit annoyed, but she didn't utilize any more of Ekaterina's magical energy suddenly.

"Can you teach me to open my Phantasm?" Ekaterina's words caught Eliana by surprise, and even her stride within the endless grassy plains halted.

"You want to open your Phantasm? Trying to open it now... Ekaterina, it's nighttime, and the sun isn't in the sky... If you open it..." Eliana hesitated, but feeling Ekaterina's silent determination, she stopped speaking.

"Your Phantasm is essentially your ability to dominate the section of the world you carve out. Magical energy is a factor, and since there's no sun in the sky, you might not be able to cover the entire city..." Eliana sighed inwardly but explained nonetheless.

"Gather the magical energy in your body... And pour it out into reality, leaving a thin layer over everything as far as you can until you reach your limit." Eliana wasn't able to read all of Ekaterina's thoughts and intentions, but she knew deep down, despite Ekaterina's seemingly gentle exterior, lied someone who was quite cruel and merciless.

A sun is both something that gives life, and also something that takes it away. A Phantasm awakens the deepest part of a vampire's personality, and under the obscured sun, Ekaterina would change.

Eliana didn't know how much, but she also intended to limit Ekaterina should be become destructive. Regardless of Ekaterina's actions, she wouldn't choose to kill needlessly, as she wasn't an evil person.

"Pour..." Ekaterina wasn't sure how, but the word had barely left her lips when she understood. It wasn't an illusory feeling, but one she could understand as opening.

She instinctively knew that when her Phantasm was opened, the world inside would be her own unless another demon's Phantasm clashed with her own, or a Demi using their own ability, acted against her.

Selene, Heidi, Tatiana, and Safiya were on separate continents, or still on the vampire's island head quarters, Umbral Bay, and Ekaterina had a feeling, a nagging feeling that if she didn't open her Phantasm, something would happen.

"Endless grasslands under the dim light of the eclipse..." Ekaterina's words flowed as quickly as did her magic, and then a sense of fatigue hit, briefly, before it was replaced by a sense of absolute control.

The skies above began to brighten, and suddenly the sun sun reappeared overhead, although it had already set over the western horizon, and it's light strange, dim orange and yellow, sickly shades of what it should be.

Inside the indoor mall, it wasn't much different, the surroundings brightened slightly, but then the sun was eclipsed, as if someone had taken a huge celestial body and fast forwarded it's time until the sun was completely eclipsed.

The sound of wind blowing through grass filled the now silent city, and just at the edge of everyone's vision, there was always an endless field of grass one couldn't quite see if they tried to look directly at it.

"A bug?" Ekaterina's voice held a hint of undisguised mockery, and while laughing, her figure vanished from the chair in a haze of orange and yellow glitter, leaving Valentina and Christabel in both confusion and disbelief.

...

The searing pain on Vivien's skin felt as if she were being dragged through a bed of hot coals, and despite being a vampire and not fearing fire due to a vampire's high pain tolerance, the pain made Vivien throw herself into the nearest wall, crashing through it and into a room.

The sun had already set, and although Vivien knew she could be discovered, with her allies help, and the already tense relations between the vampires belonging to the Houses and the Rogue Vampires, she was sure she wouldn't be killed by the Starikov's Lord Valentina.

But as she tried to leave, the sun appeared in the sky. She'd lived for almost one thousand years, and she had never seen the sun suddenly appearing in the skies, and although there was a demon who's Phantasm was a full moon, it wasn't the sun!

"Why did you choose to run? If you wanted to peek, shouldn't you try to hide yourself better?" The sudden voice in the room she had thrown herself into made her lash out in the direction of its origin, but a monstrous heat rolled past her, forcing her to retreat.

Standing in front of Vivien was one of the vampires she had been observing, Ekaterina Starikov, a newly transformed vampire with long dark hair and red eyes, only now, her eyes were sickly yellow, mirroring the scene in the sky.

"Can't you speak? Answer me, please?" Ekaterina's head tilted slightly, and then a stick made of orange light condensed in her hand, and a sweet smile formed on her face.

"If you won't speak, then I'll just have to make you speak." Before she could react, Ekaterina slammed the stick into her stomach, inflicting that gut-wrenching, burning pain no fire could cause, to Vivien once again.

Unlike the destructive power of some spells and magical abilities, the stick didn't hold any great destructive power, but the pain it inflicted made her cry out in pain.

"Do you feel like answering now?" She crouched and met Vivien's eyes, and he belatedly realized she had fallen to the floor, and Ekaterina's blazing, sickly yellow eyes stared into her own green ones.

"You know... I'd rather people I like not see me like this? So can you hurry up and speak?" Ekaterina snickered, the stick no longer in her hands. Instead, Ekaterina seemed to take pleasure in her resistance.

"Get lost!" Vivien set a punch at the girl's head, and the air in the room howled and cracked from the pressure generated by her fist. 

Recalling the information she'd read, Ekaterina, despite her magic, wasn't strong enough physically due to her age to resist a vampire, almost a millennia old.

"You want to suffer then? I will help you, since I'm so kind!" Ekaterina vanished into sparks and glitter, and then something pierced through Vivien's back and brought with it a blinding scorching pain that made her screech and brought her to her knees.

Vivien could feel someone stepping on her, and looking up, she could see those sickly yellow mocking eyes staring down at her, and then Ekaterina laughed at her.

"Hmm? Can't you just tell me? I won't hurt you if you tell me why there's magic on you, deal?" Facing Ekaterina whose appearance could be said to be angelic, she was looking down on her with an expression of malice she didn't even try to conceal, Vivien struggled to get up.

"Looks like... You won't say it? What a pity... What a shame... What a disaster!" Ekaterina laughed brightly again, and then a sudden blast of heat blew Vivien away, sending her through several walls and into an office room with a floor to ceiling window.

"We're cooking... There's roasted vampire on the menu!" Standing on Vivien's stomach, was Ekaterina, twirling a sword condensed from yellow magical energy, and she gave Vivien a triumphant smile.

"I..." Vivien struggled to speak, but Ekaterina's yellow eyes didn't change. Instead, she smiled and ran her hand along her sword, frowning when her hand made the sword become illusory.

"It won't burn me... Well, should I hack you into pieces? That guy...Sigmund did that to Millie..." Ekaterina twirled the sword, and the blade became more material.

"You can't kill me!" Vivien wasn't sure why, but she felt that the girl before her, Ekaterina, would find a way to kill her, even if it meant she'd torture her until the morning came.

"My Phantasm can't kill you, silly!" Ekaterina tossed the sword aside and patted Vivien's cheek lightly. Then Ekaterina's yellow eyes peered into Vivien's own ones.

"I'll just take a peek!" Vivien felt something, it was as if someone was fiddling with something in her head, and she realized belatedly, that Ekaterina was a Starikov, and while it wasn't used often, a Starikov was capable of invading a person's mind.

"You can't!" Vivien didn't want to resist because Ekaterina would definitely inflict that heart rending pain on her again, but Ekaterina's smile grew as she dug deeper.

"Rogue Vampires! You guys!" Ekaterina laughed happily, teleporting away to avoid being punched by another vampire who had appeared, crashing through the glass window and helping Vivien to her feet.

"Another bug..." Ekaterina's eyes narrowed, and another sword condensed in her hand, but this time, it was entirely physical, the blade glinting in the sickly yellow light streaming through the broken glass.