The Harvest Mouse Exits the Fairytale Together with Cinderella-Chapter 142
Elodie could have gone straight for the Count’s head.
That would’ve shut up that mouth that spewed nothing but nonsense.
But she didn’t.
Letting this wretched human faint too easily would’ve been far too merciful.
Especially him—Count Bluewood.
Even if she were to kill him right this instant, he first needed to have his situation burned into his brain.
To the point that he’d wish for death.
“You, y-you...!”
The Count stammered, pointing a trembling finger at Elodie, who had somehow made her way right in front of him.
He only realized a beat later that the mirror had shattered, and his face fell into stunned disbelief.
How could she possibly be here?
‘I definitely ordered her locked up in the underground prison. Did she escape by turning into a mouse?’
No, impossible.
This wasn’t human territory—it was Animallia.
There’s no way he didn’t know the Ratson family were harvest mouse beastfolk. They would’ve taken strict precautions, even in imprisonment, against animal transformation.
“What, surprised I’m here? Sera came to find me properly, and you’re giving her a hard time? Wanna die?”
But Count Bluewood had no time to think it through.
Because Elodie was wildly swinging the Holy Hammer at him.
She might’ve looked like a mere child, but what she held in her hands had the destructive power of explosives.
What’s more, though the Count had a sword, he didn’t know how to wield it.
He’d never once bothered with physical training as he aged.
So of course he was helpless.
“G-get away from me! You insane little rat!”
The Count flailed his sword in a panic, desperately trying to block the hammer.
At that moment, Elodie dropped flat to the ground, making full use of her small frame.
Then she raised the Holy Hammer and brought it crashing down on the top of his foot.
“AAAGGHH!!”
With the bones in his foot smashed to pieces, the Count dropped his sword and let out a full-throated scream.
Elodie rolled sideways to dodge him, then bolted into Sera’s arms.
“AAAHHH! AAHHHHH!!”
Ugh, so noisy.
Sera gently covered Elodie’s ears, worried about the delicate child’s hearing.
Meanwhile, the Count was crawling away on the floor, then suddenly pointed at Elodie and Sera and began chanting again, now with practiced ease.
“......”
Sera stared calmly as the previously scattered dark-blue aura began to draw inward once more.
She could see it clearly with her naked eyes.
‘It’s so clearly visible now...’
Before, she’d had to rely heavily on instinct, only vaguely sensing where the core might be.
The more complex the spell, the lower her chances of disrupting it.
It was like trying to find a needle in a pitch-black void using nothing but gut feeling.
But now, it was practically glowing.
Fine, thread-like beams of light coiled in a sphere around a central core.
And she could tell exactly which point she had to break to disrupt it...
Sera grabbed the largest shard of the shattered mirror and hurled it.
“GRAAAAGH! GKH... GAHHKKK!”
The Count clutched his mouth as blood poured out in great gobs.
The dark god’s power he had barely managed to summon scattered and backfired violently.
Elodie stared up at Sera in shock.
She hadn’t imagined Sera could pull something like that off.
Not only had she nullified the power of the dark god, but she’d turned it back against him?
And she’d done it using a shard of the mirror he had mocked her mother with?
“Sera, you could do stuff like that?”
“Mm, not really. But after the mirror shattered, I just felt like I could, so I gave it a shot. And it worked.”
After the mirror shattered?
Then the mirror that had subdued Sera must have had some kind of sealed power within it?
“Our Elodie broke the mirror first knowing this would happen? So clever, aren’t you?”
Sera beamed brightly, ruffling Elodie’s hair all over.
Elodie hadn’t predicted any of that, but she didn’t bother correcting her—she quietly accepted the praise.
‘Honestly, saying she just gave it a try and it worked... Sera’s the real genius here.’
Even without her doting attitude, by any objective measure, she was brilliant.
Just then, the Count, still howling in pain and coughing up blood, shouted desperately.
“What are you all standing around for?! You can’t even stop a single child with a hammer?!”
The hammer she held was certainly threatening, being a sacred relic—but even so, against a group, she was bound to be overpowered.
It was maddening to watch them all just stand there when all they had to do was rush in, subdue her, and take the hammer away.
What were they even doing while that little brat got close in the first place?
“Are you all out of your minds? Why are you just standing there? Don’t tell me you’re scared! What, are all those muscles for show? There are only two powerless little girls here!”
Sure, the mirror that blocked dispelling abilities had been shattered, but that was all.
Even if she could nullify intangible forces, the girl herself was weak—she wouldn’t be able to break out of a rope if they bound her right now.
The Ratson brat, too—once the hammer was taken, she was nothing but a ten-year-old child.
The Count raised his voice even louder.
But the mercenaries stood still, /N_o_v_e_l_i_g_h_t/ unmoving, as if they’d gone deaf.
‘What the...?’
It was only then that he stopped yelling.
A chill crept down his spine.
This translation is the intellectual property of Novelight.
At this moment, Count Bluewood, Sera, and Elodie stood atop a massive engraving of the dark god’s sigil etched into the floor.
And surrounding that sigil in a perfect circle were the mercenaries and trainees of this training hall—the ones who had become followers of the dark god.
And yet, instead of being protected, the Count felt as if he were being surrounded.
He was supposed to be their ally.
“H-hold on...”
Intimidated, the Count faltered.
The people who had stood still like statues finally began to move.
At that exact moment, the Count was restrained on both sides.
Before he could utter another word, his knees were forced to the ground.
“Wha—? Wh-what?!”
He stammered like a fool, unable to even process the pain in his crushed foot or his internal injuries.
His mind had been working frantically since earlier, but he still couldn’t grasp the situation.
Because if this were true...
‘They were in on it together from the start?’
There was no other conclusion.
But... but still...
It couldn’t be. It just couldn’t.
“......”
While all attention was focused on the Count, the Countess quietly began to back away, step by step.
She was planning to slip out of the hall unnoticed.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“KYAAAH!”
At that exact moment, the doors slammed open, and light flooded into the once-dark chamber.
“L-let go of me!”
“How rude of me.”
A towering man—so tall she had to crane her neck to see his face—caught her briefly before shoving her toward the knights.
The knights, clad in radiant golden armor, seized her firmly.
“Who do you think you are?! Unhand me this instant!”
It was only after the Countess shrieked in panic that the Count finally realized—
While all this had been happening, Claire had tried to flee and had been caught at the entrance.
Before he could even begin to express his rage—
“Over here, Your Majesty.”
Your Majesty?
Even in a state of blinding fury, the mention of the Emperor would jolt anyone to their senses.
He whipped his head around—and there stood a man of massive stature, who could only be the Emperor of Animallia.
Beside him, the head of the training hall bowed and scraped like a sniveling toad.
“That human over there is the mastermind behind all of this! I was merely following his orders!”
“...What?” 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝚠𝕖𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝕖𝚕.𝚌𝗼𝗺
It was a baseless accusation so absurd, he didn’t even know where to begin refuting it.
“Of course, obeying him was wrong of me, too. But I had no idea this was the power of a dark god! The trainees here didn’t know either!”
The chameleon beastfolk spoke with a pained expression, as if he were truly the victim.
“Just look at him now. See how skillfully he wields the power of the dark god? I’m terrified—truly terrified.”
To think he had used such wicked powers so freely, all while claiming ignorance.
He even pulled a handkerchief from his coat to dab at nonexistent tears.
“T-this was the dark god’s power?!”
“I-I did think it felt oddly ominous, but he kept saying that all we had to do was train to obtain holy power, and I believed him...”
“No one actually believed a priest could absorb divine power like that. That story was bait to lure in Count Bluewood.”
“If even the head of the training hall didn’t know, then who’s to blame?”
“We can’t claim to be innocent. We may have been unaware, but in the end, we used the dark god’s power.”
Unlike Сamel, the trainees had no talent for acting—they spoke like they were reading lines from a book.
The Count was too dumbfounded to even close his mouth.
Elodie watched it all with arms crossed, then smiled with satisfaction.
“Well, well. That’s a serious list of crimes.”
“......”
“Not only did a human commit large-scale fraud on beastfolk land, now he’s trying to pin the blame on His Majesty the Emperor himself. Isn’t that grounds for immediate execution?”
