Knock, knock, knock.
In the silence of the Archway morning, that sound echoed once again.
It was a terribly reserved, polite knocking sound, yet it carried a strange pressure that absolutely refused to be ignored.
Alisha Gray's thinking had completely switched over to that of a Royal Mage.
...Only one set of footsteps. But this mass is abnormal.
The magic power emitted by something on the other side of the door was out of the ordinary.
Although it was intentionally being suppressed, it felt as though boiling magma was being hidden just beneath a thin layer of skin.
It wasn't human. Without a doubt.
Alisha approached the front door without making a sound.
In her right hand, extremely compressed magic was already converging.
It was the [8th Tier: Absolute Severance] magic, a spell that only a few people even within the Association could handle. It was a stealthy, instant-death-class formula that precisely scooped out the very space the target existed in without causing damage to the surroundings.
No matter who the opponent was, she would take their head the moment the door opened.
There was no room for negotiation.
She would eliminate anyone who threatened her peace, without exception.
Taking a deep breath, Alisha left the chain locked and opened the door just a few centimeters with a click.
What blew in through the gap was the cold morning air of London and—a faint, pungent smell of sulfur and ash.
"...What is your business?"
Alisha asked in a low, cold voice.
What she saw through the gap was black.
A well-tailored, yet somewhat old-fashioned, pitch-black long coat.
And a towering height that made her look up.
He had to be easily over 190 centimeters tall.
Raising her gaze, she saw a single man standing there.
Breathtakingly well-ordered, sculptural features.
Pale skin.
And eyes glowing faintly amber, peeking through the gaps of his bangs.
Furthermore, Alisha's outstanding magical vision clearly captured two pitch-black horns hidden by an illusion growing from the man's head.
...A demon. And not just some low-class grunt, either.
This abyssal magic power... he's Duke-class from the Demon Realm...!?
Why was a myth-class monster like that standing at a terraced house in a corner of North London?
Just as the magic gathered in Alisha's right hand was about to reach its critical point...
"Please forgive the sudden visit. Miss Gray... no,"
The man's amber eyes pierced straight through Alisha.
His voice was as quiet as the deep sea, and terribly—exhausted.
"Perhaps I should call you the former ultimate military force of the Royal Magic Association, Royal Mage."
Alisha's heart nearly stopped.
He knows...!? My true identity!?
Three years of a perfect life in hiding.
Her past, which she hadn't let anyone catch the tail of, was completely grasped by this unfamiliar demon.
It was the worst-case scenario.
Even if she erased him here, if the information had leaked somewhere, the Magic Association's tracking unit would be swarming her by tomorrow.
"...I don't know what kind of joke this is, but you have the wrong person. I'm just a freelance—"
"Please. Hear me out."
As if to cut off Alisha's words, the man bowed his head deeply.
A Duke of the Demon Realm—no less!—had easily bowed his head to a human, and a mage he was meeting for the first time, at that.
"I am Dantalion. One of the 72 Dukes who rule the Demon Realm. ...I have been looking into you for the past few weeks. I am the only one in two dimensions who knows you are here. I have not leaked it to anyone."
Deep bags that could not be hidden were clearly carved onto the face of the man who called himself Dantalion.
His voice lacked vigor, and an extreme sense of fatigue drifted from him, as if he were barely managing to stand.
"...So you're saying you didn't come to blackmail me?"
"Blackmail? Heavens, no. I simply... came to ask for help. I'm already at my limit on my own..."
Just as Dantalion started to say something...
"Hey! Why am I at the very back! Think about the hierarchy, the hierarchy!"
Suddenly, a high-pitched voice echoed from beneath the man's pitch-black long coat.
"...Eh?"
As Alisha stood dumbfounded, the hem of the coat began to squirm, and they tumbled out from inside.
"Ouch! Geez, Miko, stop pushing!"
"Nom, nom... this button is hard..."
"Hey, I told you to come out in order! You're causing trouble for the Duke!"
Tumbling out onto the porch of the terraced house one after another were—four small children.
Their ages looked to be around seven at the youngest, and maybe ten at the oldest.
The first to jump out was a boy with spiky black hair.
He crossed his arms bossily with his small body and snorted in displeasure.
Next to him, another boy with a spaced-out expression was mindlessly gnawing on a button on the hem of Dantalion's coat.
Furthermore, a girl with braided hair, who seemed to be the responsible one, was desperately struggling to get the two boys to line up.
And the last one, a girl with a slightly mature aura, looked up with a glare at Alisha, who was peeking through the gap in the door, and snorted.
"Like, this house is so tacky. What era is that doormat from? Are you a grandma?"
The lethal-class magic that had gathered in Alisha's right hand dispersed with a hissing sound.
…
"...Huh?"
A totally dumbfounded sound leaked from the mouth of the strongest mage.
A Duke of the Demon Realm.
Overwhelming magic power.
A desperate crisis.
...Followed by four toddlers (and one of them just dissed my interior design sense).
There was too much information, and Alisha's excellent brain was on the verge of a processing failure.
Dantalion let out a deep, truly deep sigh, and covered his face with a large hand.
His figure looked less like a ruler of the Demon Realm and more like a sorrowful salaryman who had been forced to work on a weekend and got stuck babysitting on top of it.
"...As you can see."
Dantalion began to speak in an exhausted voice.
"They are demons of my territory. However... due to a very trivial... no, fatal mistake in my laboratory, they have regressed into this... form and mental state of human children."
"...Right."
"To break the curse and return them to their original demon forms will require many years and advanced research. However, I have official duties in the Demon Realm. And... I will say this bearing the shame. I absolutely do not understand the creatures known as children."
Dantalion gently peeled off the boy who was still chewing on his button, and tried to pat the head of the bossy boy, only to be rejected with all his might.
"I haven't slept a wink in three days. If my political enemies in the Demon Realm learn of this situation, my territory is finished. But it's nearly impossible to keep them hidden in the Demon Realm. An entity in the human world who can set up powerful barriers and take care of them... you were the only one, former Royal Mage."
Dantalion's amber eyes looked at Alisha pleadingly.
"Please. I have no one else to rely on but you. Won't you please become their Nanny?"
"......"
Alisha looked down at the scene through the gap in the door without a word.
A Demon Duke on the verge of death from overwork.
Former-demon toddlers who had started making a racket.
And the perfect, peaceful "solitude" she had spent three years building up.
Alisha smiled, plastering on a perfect, amiable grin.
"Please go home."
Slam!!
She ruthlessly closed the door and tried to lock it.
However, right before the door closed completely, a giant hand wrapped in a black leather glove firmly grabbed the edge of the door.
It wasn't by brute force.
It was just filled with a sort of obsession that he would absolutely never let go.
"Wait! The reward will be handsome! Secret treasures of the Demon Realm, elixirs of immortality, whatever you desire—"
"I! Just! Want to live alone in peace!!"
Alisha pushed back against the door with her entire body weight.
"Please! Just yesterday, Puck ate my important documents like a goat! Miko won't listen when I tell him he can't have a Hellhound as a pet, and Yumi's verbal abuse has my mind in tatters! Riri is my only comfort, but she almost blew up the kitchen yesterday too!"
The screams of Dantalion coming through the door no longer held a shred of dignity.
It was just the soul-baring cry of a man on the verge of a parenting breakdown.
"That has nothing to do with me! If you want to snitch to the Magic Association, then snitch! I'll turn them and their trackers into cinders and flee to South America or something!"
"Miss Gray! Lady Alisha! No, Great Alisha! Please, please have mercy...!"
An incredibly low-level pushing match between the former strongest mage and a Duke of the Demon Realm, separated by a front door.
If her neighbor Mrs. Higgins saw this, who knows what kind of rumors she would start.
"Ah-ah, Papa looks like he's going to cry again."
Yumi's merciless voice came from the other side of the door.
"I am not crying! This is an autonomic nervous system disturbance due to extreme fatigue!"
"Papa, I'm hungry~. I want pancakes~."
"Hmph! I shall not eat a weak food like pancakes! Bring me a dripping steak!"
"Everyone, be quiet! You're causing trouble for Papa!"
Chaos.
It was literal Hell (physically).
Alisha pressed her forehead against the door and let out a deep, despairing sigh.
...She knew.
If she chased them away here, Dantalion really might sell the information to the Magic Association.
He was cornered that badly.
Besides, if she threw these children, who were basically lumps of magic, out into London, it would cause a massive uproar within hours, and her life in hiding would end anyway.
Checkmate.
No matter how things played out, the "perfect peace" she loved had just come to an end.
"......Haaaaah."
Alisha let out a sigh for the umpteenth time today, and took her weight off the door.
With a clack, she undid the chain.
Beyond the slowly opening door, Dantalion looked down at her with eyes full of hope.
"...Come inside. However, you are absolutely not to touch anything in my house. And,"
Alisha glared at the four children with sharp eyes.
"I am not baking pancakes. Breakfast is just cereal and milk. If you have complaints, go back to Hell."